lifes less of a drag when you leave a footprint.

Although my new business has cut down on my fishing time I am starting to find  the odd evening to do some fly tying and when I opened my fly tying desk this last week I found a half tied f fly emerger still hung in the vice. A  simple CDC dressing but all the more effective because of its simplicity. The more I fish and these last few years I have been lucky to fish quite a bit, I have realised somewhat late in life that the things that make the difference are to a large extent, items that are surprisingly simple in principle. But actually quite hard to achieve in practise. I have gone through the easy stages most anglers do.  The "well if I just had a four weight 6 inches longer" stage of wanting two cupboard fulls of rods and reels.  The stage of having multiple fly boxes stuffed with bezzillions of flies .  I even spent a season making the ultimate tippet sinkant , I would add that dishwasher rinse aid, glycerine  and fullers earth is the best I came up with.

Which brings me back to that little CDC fly , last season it accounted for more fish than probably all the other flies together. Which makes me think what makes it so successful,  Is it the actual pattern it does have a very simple profile and dressing or is it the fact that as it sits trapped in the surface film it is anchored and less likely to drag. For quite a few years I have clipped my fully hackled dries comparadun style.  I find them more effective but is it the profile or the fact that they sit in the film with a very pronounced footprint and are also less prone to drag?.  Same for the paradun and the klinkhammer all killing patterns but is their resistance to drag part of it?.

Which brings me again to that word, drag,  now when I started fly fishing drag was when your fly left a wake across the surface like a motor launch. now I find myself thinking about  micro drag, something that as I fish more and hopefully improve  I am starting to get pretty serious about.  Fishing with a few anglers who usually out fish me there has been a common theme they are all pretty anal about drag .  We have all seen those missed rises when a fish bulges around your fly and turns away at the last moment .  Well I have gone through the obsessive period as to is my leader floating or sinking and still haven't made my mind up about if it matters or not.   But what I am certain is that a fly that is behaving differently to everything else about it will get ignored.

When I was doing the invert monitoring one month last year lots of the baetis nymphs were hatching in the sample trays it gave me a chance to study them in a glass tray of water . looking up from underneath gave me a fascinating insight into the footprint that the natural leaves on the surface ,  certainly it reinforced my liking for paradun style flies.  If you haven't tried it I recommend it its a sure fire way of altering your perception of what make a good dry fly its also an excellent way of looking even more eccentric than fly fishermen normally do.  The footprint thing is for another day I know I have mentioned it on here before but " in the ring of the rise " is one of the more enlightening books I have read for a good while.  I thoroughly recommend it.