A touch of Italian flair....

Due to work commitments I often find myself away from home for several days at a time in hotels.  Where time tying a few flies in the room is very preferable to spending every night in the bar.  Also where fishing with holidays is combined a vice to take with me is a real bonus.  I am not a great tier but enjoy tying and not been able to tie flies on the spot frustrates me.

Anyway I have had a couple of so called travel vices the only thing I can say is that they were great for travelling but rubbish as vices .  Then some time ago I became aware of these.............

These fold up flat and the head assembly detaches as does the handle .  The engineering is very fine the hook hold is brilliant and it looks like a million dollars or perhaps i should say Euros ,Better still it is very transportable .  The tripod base in very stable and the hook hold very good .   So far its handled size 12 to 20 hooks with equal ease.  The vise is by Cottarelli lets hope that it doesnt rust like the Italian cars of my youth does...

CDC emerger...

I have been restocking fly boxes over the last few weeks.  One interesting aspect of that is by inspecting the various boxes I have it gives a pretty good review of what worked last year.  The box of mayflies and sedges   was pretty much untouched all year apart from the daddies.  The wet year meant that the crane flies had a bumper year and when the rivers were fishable the daddies did well. My  box of yorkshire spiders was virtually intact from last winter.  Whereas the small dries were largely unused apart from the tiny size 18 and 20 adams.

One box that was virtually empty was the CDC box.  F Flies and IOBO humpys were thin on the ground and my version of a CDC emerger had been completely exhausted despite tying some more misd season..  This fly has been a killer for me the last couple of seasons and seems as useful for Grayling as for Brown trout.  Tied in sizes 14 through to 18 .  It seems to be effective across the board.

Sometimes I include a light dubbing of rabbit around the root of the wing . It is a fly that has caught a very large proportion of all the fish landed by me this year.  A very simple tie but very effective .  I have recently started to reinforce the stripped herl body with UV resin .  The hooks can be the very light Varivas 2200 or my preference the Daiichi D900.  These are all tied with natural quill but of course dyed quill can be very effective...

Tying up some Mayflies beats the rain.....

Had booked a days holiday today well actually had a day booked earlier in the week but ended up working it so had today of instead.  Anyway today all the rivers were up and running very coloured so for a couple of hours I amused myself filling a fly box.  For the small streams I have two boxes scientifically split into two groups these I call big flies and small flies....

Over the last few years the number of patterns I tie have been getting less and less but the mayfly is one I always have prepared.  I am fortunate in that several of the rivers I fish can have superb mayfly hatches so being ready is a must.  The mayflies  reside in half of my big fly box, the other half is sedges and daddies and the like....

Anyway today I tied half a box of mayflies , spinners , duns and some spent patterns with cdc instead of hackles .... The patterns I use arent complicated and are very simple to tie but they all take fish and it doesnt hurt to bad when I leave them in overhanging bushes ....

It isnt as good as spending an afternoon fishing but it helps you look forward to warm evenings filled with the sound and sight of rising fish.....

As for pattern , The spinners are silver badger hackle , Cream Antron body and microfibbets for tail.  The Duns have light Olive antron body and Golden badger hackles and the Spent pattern has Cream antron body natural CDC feathers for wings and pheasant tail fibre for tails.  All patterns have fine black wire ribs..
They are a very simple pattern but I have found they work well .

More on North Country spiders or soft hackled flies

As readers to this blog will have read last season saw my introduction to fishing spiders or soft hackled flies as they say in the USA a term that I think is more apt than spiders but more of that later . Last season my first fishing spiders, I tied and fished the Partridge and Orange the Snipe and Purple and the Waterhen Bloa. These were my team of three.  The flies are a cinch to tie and of those I tried the Waterhen Bloa proved to be the most successful.

This winter I have obtained and read the works of  T E Pritt, Edmonds and Lee and Stewart.  Also the more recent Roger Fogg which I found excellent . All in order to better understand the method and to a lesser extent expand the patterns at my disposal.  I have also explored the internet for resources.  I can also recomend watching the the Oliver Edwards series of DVDs . I found them excellent and I am sure helped me to early success. I think when you can appreciate the difference between across and down and down and across and you realise an escalator isnt something you find in Marks and Spencers then you are well on the way..

So what have I learnt so far?, well like all branches and styles of  the sport there is as in most forms of fly fishing a fair amount of dogma. I have read interminable internet discussons regarding the correct thread for a partridge and Orange, and the correct number of turns of thread on the body and turns of hackle for that perfect style. the choice of hook alone seems to cause more discussion than I could have thought possible.  I am sure that such worries werent on the mind of the likes of Stewart and Pritt. I am also pretty sure the fish couldnt give a fig.

 Although there are some anglers who have stuck with the style for years it is now to some extent enjoying  a renaissance .  As for literature the old works can still teach us a great deal and are still a major source of knowledge ,   Stewart in particular is excellent, his approach is very different to what I imagined.  He talks of stealth and natural presentation and has tactical understanding that would not be out of place in todays publications. There is an article in the current FFand FT that talks in the same terms it just gos to show that in the fundamentals theres nowt new in the world.

To many readers who may be proficient with spiders this is an obvious comment but one of the keys to the success of these spider patterns is the mobility of the hackle materials. The feathers of the game birds used have a softness and open structure not found in cock and even hen hackles. Hence my reference in the first few lines to soft hackle flies been a more apt description . The waterhen and partridge hackles  have a mobility and translucency that beautifully mimics the drowned or crippled delicate dun wings .  The more robust hackles of the woodcock and grouse are perfect for sedges and stoneflies.  Combine this with the bodies of silk with sometimes the meanest of dubbing which have a lovely translucency when wet, dress this on a light hook and you have a very effective combination.

When you combine this with a high level of control in the presentation which the close range and  dead drift gives it makes for a very effective technique.  This is not the cast at 45% downstream and let the flies whizz round approach that so often is thought of as downstream wet fly .  I think that this is every bit as immitative as the upstream dry.  Incidentally fishing spiders upstream is a variation I am yet to try but I can imagine it to be extremely effective. So we are presenting an accurate imitation of the drowned or emerging fly at the speed of the current in or beneath the surface what could be better?, I for one am a convert and spiders will now have a permanent place in my kit.  I just have to learn more and get better at using them.

My selection of spiders so far is the Greenwells , Partridge and Orange , Waterhen Bloa, Grouse and Green and Grouse and Red ,  Woodcock and red , Snipe and Purple , Black Spider , March brown and some copper bead  Endricks.  Still room for a couple more patterns so any suggestions welcome...Only another month or so to wait now and I will be able to try them in the river....

A Fly tyers christmas

Shooting season is in full swing around here , when passing the local butcher and game dealer the hooks above the window displayed a fly tyers delight.  Pheasants, French Partridge and Red Grouse.  A pair of each for the pricely sum of £12 .  Now one pair of the Pheasants looked very nice, long tails and lovely church window hackles ,  thoughts of PTN and bracken clock.  The Red Grouse lots of flies here those lovely mottled feathers look very spiderish. Those Grouse series of sea trout flies.  The French Partridge not as good as the english but I am sure they will have their uses those nice barred feathers look good so do the little dark neck hackles...So money changed hands.....

Next the birds were skinned and left to dry a while.  Then the skins will be frozen for a few days before been trimmed and cleaned up then treated witha little borax, 

Of course you cant waste what comes inside the beautiful feather wrapping so the pheasant legs will be added to a yuletide casserole and the breast meat from all the birds will go into a christmas game pie.  Best £12 I have spent all year...

Soon be time for these. The Mayfly

I tied some of these up last night I got the size 12s and 14s done. Its good to know that the Mayfly will be hatching soon..and if this settled weather stays then we wont have long to wait.  I hope that the hatch is on a par with last year. This simple pattern has worked really well for me over the years and is pretty unsinkable,,

I tie them in size 14, 12 and 10 the size 14 can at times work very well although they are smaller than the actual insect. I need to tie some size 10s  then some mayfly nymphs. and maybe a few klinkhammer style emergers,

Whats in a Greenwells Glory and few thoughts on flies.

Ask a none fly angler to name a fly pattern and the chances are the name Greenwells Glory will be the one mentioned, it is certainly one of the oldest recognised patterns and yet its one that very few anglers I come across seem to carry.  Anglers now seem to want the newest trendy patterns and the older patterns seem to find little favour.  Personally along with the red tag family that I have previously mentioned the Greenwells is one of the ever present patterns that I carry,  along with the Kites imperial both tied in various sizes from a 12 to a 20 and with various shades of hackles will cover all the Olive family of flies. and a few others as well.
I am constantly mystified why anglers I meet have fly boxes stuffed with dozens of patterns and yet they only cover a couple of sizes which are nearly always 14s and 16s .  Personally I beleive that fly size and correct presentation is almost more important than the pattern. 

 I have given up wondering what the exact dressing Cannon Greenwell beleived was correct as every text you read seems to give a slightly different pattern.  However I tie a well waxed yellow thread body with a light gold rib and a few hackle fibres as a tail.  Hackles vary I will occasional go very light using a golden badger hackle but mainly though the colours I use are below...There is an Indian cape and a genetic neck and saddle cape

The Greenwell is one of the easiest of ties which suits me I like quick simple flies that I am happy cast into tight places and risk losing. Also I dont like using winged patterns.  I find winged flies lead to leader twist and offer no appreciable advantage over hackle only patterns. 

The fact is both the Greenwells and the Kites Imperial  in a range of sizes and hues and  tied on varied hook patterns tied sparse and full will I beleive provide more fish in the net than a load of patterns in a ltd range of sizes, They work very will tied parachute style as an emerger pattern as well.  I think It was said that Oliver Kite used his imperial pattern to the exclusion of all other dry patterns and he certainly knew a thing or two.  Give them both a go you wont regret it.....

Traditional Flies

Being a bit of a traditionalist, and when I say that I dont mean bound by tradition, I mean that I enjoy using tradtional flies because they work. I tend to use a farly ltd range of patterns but use them in a wide range of sizes.  The few fly patterns that I use are not to the exclusion of all others but certainly they are the ones I return to time and again....

First and foremost is the red tag and its varients the Sturdys fancy, Treacle parkin and Erics beetle  I have always used these flies, firstly as a teenager and remember thinking that the little coloured tag gave me a bit of confidence. Also because  this family of flies has very strong local associations on the rivers I fish  The Sturdys fancy is attributed to Tom Sturdy who was river keeper on the Ure,  The Erics beetle was created by Eric Horsfall Turner who fished the rivers and becks around Scarborough where he lived,  Includng my little beck you see so often on the blog.  Another fly similer to these is the the John Storey. Which unusually has an advance wing style but has the peacock herl body and was developed by a former river keeper on the Rye which I also fish.  The scruffy looking bunch are taken from my fly box and have all seen duty over the last season . 

I find  all these to be particularly effective early season for wild brownies and late season for grayling.  I use them in a range of sizes from 14 right down to a size 20.  I also find when tied with a palmered hackle they make great pocket water fly , particularly the John Storey the advance wing gives wonderful visibility...