Dry Fly 'Expert'

But what have we got here?

2012-01-27T01:10:00.001Z

Click the image of the book to see the text more clearly. Check it out carefully. Charles Cotton explains that Pike Pool gets its name not from the rock springing up in the middle of the river but from the "Pike" that you see standing up there distant from the rock.

Here is the Pike Pool, on the map it is clearly marked. It is still there and you can catch fish from it to this day if you are there at the right time. Right there where Izaak Walton lost "a great fish"!

Here is what it looks like today. The trees have partly concealed the "Pike" but you can make it out. Even in this coloured water during this winter's rain it still looks mysteriously fishy...

Pike Pool from Charles Cotton's Path

Kneeling down there, in years gone by, your faithful correspondent has managed a few trout and grayling. This summer I'm "Going Back" and will be trying to repeat the pleasure!

I'll show you another landmark from the Complete Angler in the next blogpost. On it you can trace one or two of the footsteps, not of our great angling ancestor Charles Cotton but of one of his humble maidservants...

Regular Rod

On the Way Back!

2012-01-24T21:40:00.000Z

I went for a river walk along the banks of the Dove today in Wolfscote Dale and Beresford Dale with Andy the river keeper and Warren and Jan, the river keepers from the estate where I spend most of my fishing time these days. It is pretty exciting seeing the improvements already made. It is also fascinating to listen in on the conversations between the three keepers as they assessed each little twist and turn of the river considering how to make things better and better. What a glorious privilege to be able to walk in the footsteps of Izaak Walton and his talented but much younger friend Charles Cotton and see that many of the features described in the fifth edition of the Complete Angler are still discernable. I hope to be doing this again in a few months, but with a rod in my hand...

The Cradle of Fly Fishing's History starts just here at the bridge near the ford at Beresford Dale. It's marked FB on the map next to the "o" in "Beresford":

"Do you use to travel with wheelbarrows in this country?"

Of course this bridge is like Caesar's Axe. It has had all its parts replaced several times over the centuries, but we are lucky in that it has kept its profile just as it would have been in 1674 and before then too! These locally traditional bridges are no longer common. Most of them have been replaced with wider and safer structures. It is a source of joy to me that this one is here, just as it should be. I hope the Health and Safety folk never get their hands on it!

We can retrace more of the history of this great Sport of ours whilst we follow in the footsteps of Charles Cotton's Piscator and Viator up through Bereford Dale. Next time I'll show you the "Pike Pool".

Regular Rod

Gardening?

2012-01-13T00:57:00.002Z

Keepers can be pulled in all directions sometimes. Here there is some coppicing to be done. The land is council owned and the setting is urban. It is part of the seven and a half miles that make up the fantastic, dry fly fishery on the Haddon Estate, fished by the members of the Peacock Fly Fishing Club and the lucky day ticket holders alike.

If the work was being done on one of the parts of the fishery where the land is owned by the Estate then this fire would not be lit. The brash would be laid in special, elongated piles in a loose thatch. Such a structure is simply known as a "Beetle Bank". I have some in Duck Holds Wood. They break down slowly and provide great habitat for beetles and their larvae, this brings the wrens, dunnocks, robins and other insectivorous birds to feed here.

There is one Beetle Bank near where I sling my hammock in high summer. I doze off. Wake up and there in the Beetle Bank I can watch a wren picking his way carefully through the juicy delights that live there and then he flits up to the top of the brash and sings his head off in stout proclamation that all this is his, all the females hereabouts are his, all the territory around this bounteous castle are his and don't anyone forget it...

Not here though. It's a popular walk and folks like to see everything neat and tidy. They wouldn't recognise the value of a Beetle Bank. There would be complaints about the place looking untidy. So the keepers are requested to burn up the brash even though as green wood it will take some getting going. The turf has been cut away and carefully stored. When the burning is over all will be cleared up and made tidy and the turf relaid leaving no sign that there had ever been a fire there.

Still there will be light on the river bed and the Ranunculus fluitans can regain ascendancy like it has just here.

The river and its inhabitants will benefit and so, therefore, will we!

Regular Rod

Coming Back - So Let's Go Back!

2012-01-09T20:41:00.002Z

The received wisdom about places from your past is to "never go back". You know the reasons why. Places shrink as we get older. More folk have found them and left their marks. Sometimes the places are pitiful reflections of what there had once been. That phrase, "never go back" has a classic fault in it, from an angling point of view at least. It has that dangerous word right at the beginning "never"! So we are in immediate conflict with another received wisdom in angling, "always avoid always and never say never".

From 1978 to 1997 your faithful correspondent was a lucky member of the syndicate that enjoyed perhaps the greatest privilege there was to be had in angling, certainly the greatest privilege in fly fishing. We fished in the "Cradle" of Fly Fishing's History. Fly fishing was happening on this water back in 1675 when its then owner, Charles Cotton, wrote the fly fishing section for the fifth edition of Izaak Walton's Complete Angler under the title "The Complete Angler Part II being INSTRUCTIONS how to ANGLE for a TROUT or GRAYLING in a clear Stream."

It was a wonderful fly water with brown trout and grayling both happy enough to take the dry fly, although the rules did say that "gentlemen may experiment with nymphs"! Politically incorrect most certainly, but we all understood that really we ought to stick with the dry fly for the sake of the fish being allowed some sanctuary in such an intimate water, although you would not get drummed out and black listed if you did cast the occasional nymph to some awkward monster grayling that was hugging the bottom. My biggest grayling there was 19¼ inches long from the nose to the fork in its tail, but that took a dry fly - Charles Cotton's Black Fly!

The "Cradle" can be navigated to this day by Charles Cotton's descriptions. The famous Pike Pool is still there and holds fish under the far bank. The steps, down which his maid came to call Piscator and Viator to their meal, are still there, if a little shrouded by tree branches. The Little Fishing House is still there, only we all call it the Fishing Temple nowadays thanks to the inscription over the door "Piscatoribus Sacrum" meaning "Sacred Fishers". It is easy to approve of such a sentiment. Being anglers and therefore the eyes and ears of the rivers and streams, are we not sacred?

The syndicate sank quietly out of view after 1997, the result of a tragic pollution that just about sterilised the river for several miles. Carelessly discarded Cypermethrin sheep dip eradicated the invertebrates. There was not even a midge left. Silent spring followed for some years after. The fish and the insectivorous birds had no food. The birds were okay. They just cleared off! (Although their broods that summer were certainly unlucky...). The fish: adults and juveniles alike, were not okay though.

Thankfully, that sheep dip is now permanently banned!

The inability of the water to support life meant it couldn't support the syndicate and so the revenues abruptly stopped. There was no one to take care of the river. Without funding there was no way to do restoration to the banks and create the variety of habitat that is necessary for a successful wild trout and grayling fishery. Very occasional visits to the lower reaches of the fishery did produce some success with pioneering trout that were slowly moving in to colonise the waters all over again, but it was not a viable wild trout fishery just yet.

The unfettered growth of invasive, non-native species had hidden the banks and shaded out the river. The Ranunculus fluitans beds were just about gone.

The banks were poached by cattle with the resulting soil run-off, during winter's high waters, blinding the gravel beds with fatal results on any trout eggs that were waiting to hatch.

Things had to change and change dramatically for the better.

This is what happened.

Andy, a full-time, dedicated keeper was appointed. A scheme to attract anglers back to the water, at first on day tickets, did meet with some small success. There was just enough money to start on a little bit of the work that needed doing. Andy works as only the truly committed can. The results, thus far, are splendid. Charles Cotton's river has shown it is a true wild trout and grayling fishery. It is ready for the next stage in the long term plan. It will, once again, support a privileged, international syndicate of rods keen to experience fishing in Fly Fishing's "Cradle"! It will thrive and once more become the Arcadian delight it used to be. Watch this space as I find out more...

Regular Rod

Management?

2012-01-03T00:19:00.000Z

Here's a puzzle.

Remember this picture?

Well here is the same place after the latest gales.

Now do I pull out the fallen branches and keep it an easy place to fish? (Who am I kidding? If it gets pulled out it will be by Warren and Jan the river keepers.) Or do I leave it all alone and see if it provides more hidy holes for the fish next season?

Right now I want it left to do whatever it will do and watch and learn from the results. What do you think? What would be your choice?

Regular Rod

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T20:05:00.000Z

Here's a couple of snaps of that lovely wintertime fly that we try to imitate in the beginning and ending of our trout season in England, the Large Dark Olive. They cheer me up when I see them on a winter wander so are very appropriate for the sentiment of wishing you all a Happy New Year.

Regular Rod

Have a good time...

2011-12-25T08:06:00.000Z

Regular Rod

Duke of Wellington, again...

2011-12-21T14:20:00.000Z

Yes reconnaissance is the main objective for the dry fly angler, at this time of the year, when by the water. Fishing with wet flies for grayling is pleasant enough but, as far as our dry fly fishing is concerned, close scrutiny of mundane things can be informative. These little observations can be stored away in the memory and cashed in when the season starts again.

Here are some pictures of a place that many of the Derbyshire anglers will recognise immediately...

We have had some high and brown water over the last two days but now the river is clearing yet staying restored to a better level than we have had in this year of drought. This crease always generates an elongated eddy when the water is up like this. Facing down river and casting up current near the edge is a good ploy when after fish sheltering from the main current's push. This shot is taken from down river and if you look at the debris in the bottom left you can see the current in the edge is going upriver. Hence the advice to fish from the upriver position if casting a dry fly.

This shot is taken from roughly where the angler might kneel to cast as just described. But look what is happening in the crease itself...

There is a fine grayling working its way upriver right next to where the angler would be.

What a useful thing to remember if we have high water next season! Yes the eddy fish will be there, but I must not neglect the opportunity right next to me.

Regular Rod

Dipper

2011-11-29T15:37:00.000Z

By any clean river or silvery stream
The Dipper bird is often seen.
He bobs and dips and dances jigs
On bankside stones and bankside twigs.
He can dance!
He can fly!
He can even swim!
And when he feels hungry, he just jumps in
To swim underwater among the reeds
And catch the small creatures on which he feeds.

Regular Rod

Where the fish are again...

2011-11-17T11:14:00.001Z

The bonny BBC put out a very misleading report recently about how wonderful hydropower is on the Derbyshire Wye and with a big fat slot dedicated to encouraging anyone to set up hydropower schemes of their own. The spot made no real reference to the constant and enormous impact that turbines have on fish populations. The debate is being weighted in the media for the schemes and how much money they can get for their owners with almost no account being made of the needs of the rivers and their inhabitants. The attitude from the hydropower lobby is universally that the turbines have precedence and the rivers can have what little is left.

There is a voice crying in the wilderness that is trying to get some respite for the rivers and the creatures that depend on them. It is the Angling Trust. BUT the problems are enormous and the underfunded Angling Trust and its legal arm Fish Legal are engulfed in cases from all over the country. The problem is widespread but anglers' support to the Angling Trust, for all sorts of reasons, is somewhat sparse. There are reckoned to be around 4 million of us but even if that is a miscalculation there are certainly 2 million of us. Imagine what could be done if 2 million anglers became individual members (not club members that's a cop out) and the Trust and Fish Legal were funded accordingly. The team would have the resources to tackle this, the biggest threat to fisheries in the UK, and maybe we could get our governement to listen and realise that funding the grant rush for hydropower is a big, big mistake.

Hydro Power Perch Picture Courtesy of The Angling Trust

If you know of a hydropower scheme near you just count to ten - one, two , three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and TEN. There you are! A fish has just been killed in it... Now count to ten again! There you are another fish is dead... Now consider this - that is going on all day and night!

Fish move upstream to breed but they cannot if they follow their instincts and swim up the strongest flow because that instinct leads them to the turbine and not the spawning grounds upriver. Combine this with the deaths of fish taking the easiest route down river from where they were born upriver and it is not hard to see how the dippers, dabchicks, herons, ospreys, otters and yes, we anglers too, are going to have a harder time of it thanks to the lunacy of the tax funded vandalism called hydropower.

If you want to do something about this, the first step is to write to your MP expressing your concerns. The next is to join the Angling Trust and support Fish Legal so that a co-ordinated approach can be made to the government. Whatever, please do something, anything, if you think it might help.

Regular Rod

Money, money, money...

2011-11-08T21:17:00.002Z

A very important aspect of our glorious Sport is what the old Victorian anglers used to call "Gaining leave to fish" they meant getting your fishing permissions organised for the future season(s). It can be expensive but it all depends on what your priorities are just how much you are prepared to set aside for your dry fly fishing.

"That Excellent Inn the Peacock, Rowsley Bridge" circa 1879

My first outlay, for membership of the Peacock Fly Fishing Club, in readiness for next season has just been dealt with and, frankly, although it has gone up 5% compared with this last season, I believe it will be worth it. The water is superb and the river keepers are second to none in the country. The "wild fish only" policy is a massive success with more fish in the river than ever before (at least since I started fishing there in 1969) and they are in a greater variety of sizes from little to enormous and everything in between. The water is beautifully kept without turning the place into a theme park or worse still a "garden" and the wildlife abounds, thanks to the diversity of habitats created by the keepers.

There will be other, greater outlays to come but that will be in Q1 next year!

You may have similar outlays to make, so a good mission during this close season is to make sure to set aside enough money, money money...

Regular Rod

Dry!

2011-10-28T23:20:00.001+01:00

Leakage into old mine workings

Unfettered abstraction

A depleted reach

A very severe drought

The river Lathkill, mentioned by Charles Cotton in the Fifth Edition of Izaak Walton's The Complete Angler, is a river in chronic trouble in its higher reaches. One day the drainage soughs under the old mines might be closed up again. The law might change and the abstractions curtailed. The Hydro scheme down river might be abandoned and the water returned to the river. If that happens then droughts shall cease to be a problem and this little bridge might have water running under it again and fish holding station in front of the supports.

Queen Victoria used to fish here... It was a fabulous river. Some parts of it still are. If we could get the water back into the river and not stolen away before it can do its work, it would be as Charles Cotton knew it in 1676: "by many degrees, the purest and most transparent stream that I ever saw, either at home or abroad; and breeds, 'tis said, the reddest and the best trouts in England"

Ah, happy days...

Regular Rod

PS here's the picture that Anonymous sent in with a comment. It's looking from downriver. The two figures are standing on that self same bridge!

Where the fish are...

2011-10-20T13:47:00.000+01:00

An awful prospect has reared its ugly head over the last few weeks. A company ironically calling itself "Sustainable Bakewell", relying on taxpayers' money for its very existence has a CEO who wants to dredge an ancient millrace that hasn't worked for over 60 years.

One of the Perfect Pool and Riffle Sequences at Risk of being Dredged Out

This millrace is a fantastic river in miniature, with pool and riffle sequences and meanders making it the ideal habitat for all the species we hold dear: Ranunculus fluitans, Starwort, Flag Iris, Sedges, Elm, Alder, Freshwater shrimp, Mayflies and Olives, Needle Flies, Yellow Sally, Willow Flies, Sedge Flies, Brook Lampreys, Bullheads, Stone Loach, Minnows, Wild Rainbow Trout, Grayling, Brown Trout, Dabchicks, Kingfishers, Herons, Coots, Moorhens, Mallards and Water Voles.

Grayling and Trout thriving in this Miniature River

All these are to go if this company is allowed to proceed with its ghastly plan to feed a micro-hydro power scheme capable of a maximum output of 4kw!

The proposed turbine will turn fish into slush and will be killing a fish every few seconds for the next fifty years!

It gets worse. The dredging will cause more water to flow down this channel instead of down the main river bed. Half a mile of the main river will lose 35% of its water to this hydro scheme. The resulting depleted reach will be reduced to a silty trickle. The traditional spawning gravels in this reach will cease to be of any use to spawning trout. The good population of adult trout in Bakewell will have no new recruits once this area of the river is depleted and in a few short years will become just a memory of the days before hydro power came to Victoria Mill in Bakewell.

It is only natural for most of us today to default to a supporting position for renewable energy and the proposers of this scheme have set out to capitalise on this by trying to get public opinion behind their plans. Well this scheme will wreck too much of the best habitat in the Bakewell area for it to be allowed to go ahead without a fight.

There is a blog for folk to register on and to use the comment facility to make their opinions known. I've registered and hope I can persuade you to help with your comments and blog presences.

Please click on http://bakewellgreen.blogspot.com/ and make your feelings known. Thank you.

Regular Rod

A Problem but yet a Tool for Reconnaissance!

2011-10-11T12:32:00.001+01:00

Have a look at this photograph from last Friday 6th October 2011 (rather blurred, my apologies).

On Friday the leaves in this very productive feedlane were a nuisance but not an insurmountable problem. What would happen is that the artificial fly kept getting concealed from the fish during the drift. Then the leaves would interfere with the tippet. Finally, on picking off to recast, sometimes a leaf would be caught on the fly, which required instant intervention to avoid twisting up the tippet into a corkscrew in miniature.

The remedy was to simply keep trying but ensuring that the fly was a long way from the target fish before attempting to pick off. Picking off too close with a leaf being moved unnaturally would scare the fish. Not perfect but to fish where the fish are needed the fly to be in amongst this floating debris and to be stealthy required this careful and slower process of letting the fly drift a long way down from the fish to avoid the risk of disturbing them.

But just observe with me for a moment. Look how long that tell tale line of drifting leaves is! In summer the influence of the feedlane is not so obvious. It is easy to see it to a foot or so below the last of those trailing stalks. Now, with all these leaves, it is clear that the feedlane extends way, way down stream. Next summer, the intelligence gained from this reconnaissance will lead me to make sure I start my approach from "way, way down stream" where the feedlane opportunities really begin and not to just start fishing up there by the trailing stalks!

Regular Rod

Gardens of...

2011-09-30T20:51:00.000+01:00

EDEN!

Today I went looking for fish that hardly ever (probably never) see an angler.

It involved clambering over garden fences and other obstructions to get to this amazing section of river that is missed out on by so many of the other members of the water I fish most days. It was worth the effort.

The river is beautiful along here.

The trout are fantastic.

That little bit of effort to fish where the fish are, be stealthy, and observe rewarded me with a superb day of discovery and Sport.

Are there places where you could fish that are currently overlooked by your fellow anglers?

Regular Rod

Too Early?

2011-09-21T20:12:00.000+01:00

She is mottled already and has claimed this clean bit of gravel.. She hasn't cut a redd on it yet. The cleared area has been done by an upwelling spring under the river bed.

If she spawns too early it will all be in vain...

Regular Rod

A Guest!

2011-09-16T23:34:00.002+01:00

My guest today had never seen my water before but it didn't take him very long to appreciate it. He used the vegetation to hide behind and instinctively fished on his knees or backside. He had a good time too...

It is a joy to look up river and see an angler fishing like this...

Kneeling, hiding and watching before making his cast

Those fish never knew he was there until it was too late

Regular Rod

Maelstrom!

2011-09-16T08:55:00.000+01:00

Pools like this can be very rewarding. The trick is to get as close as you can without showing yourself to the fish. Make an accurate cast. Then keep as much of the line OFF the water as you can for as long as you can. The rises can be quite casual in despite of the violent water. Strong trout seem to be able to move about in these places with ease.

Regular Rod

Something in common...

2011-09-10T23:09:00.004+01:00

Have a look at these fish (apologies for the first two photographs as they were only made with the mobile telephone). Can you imagine what they all have in common?

Here's a few more clues...

The clue is in the thick overgrowth of brambles, nettles, meadow sweet, willow herb and other assorted thorny, stingy, trippy, tangley and grab hold of you-y plants. All the fish came from places unfished by most other rods. At this time of the season, on a popular water, it can be a very productive strategy to deliberately seek out the unfished for fish. Their quality is usually superb. The tangled banks provide cover to compensate for the difficult casting. It is a wonderful way to spend a couple of days of the late season and I commend it to you all. Get away from the car parks. Go a bit further than normal. Be prepared to make long round walks to get to the place you want to begin your fishing and then...

Fish!

Paradise found!

Regular Rod

IOU...

2011-09-07T13:53:00.001+01:00

a step-by-step of the Tup's Indispensable (Variant)
For use when the fish prefer to eat one of the flies that we anglers just call the Pale Watery. There are several flies that get clumped together under the name "Pale Watery" but you don't need lots of different flies to match the hatch. This very old fly serves well and the modification I have made to the dubbing renders it an even more effective fake of the real thing(s).

The dubbing in this variant of the original is fluorescent Sunrise Pink seal's fur.

Here's the very easy method of making the Tup's Indispensable (Variant)...

This is a size 16 Kamasan B980 the thread is Primrose Yellow, equivalent to Pearsalls' Yellow No.4. Run on a short bed of the thread.

Tie in a bunch of pale Honey Dun or pale Honey cock hackle fibres to make a tail about as long as the hook shank.

Carry on with tight touching turns back to the start of the thread, tying in the hackle fibres as you go and trimming off any excess hackle fibres. This makes the body of the fly.

Dub on a very sparse amount of the Sunrise Pink fur.

Wind a short "thorax" over the front part of the body, leaving enough space for the hackle in front, wind a tight ribbing turn onto the thorax as you bring the thread back to the front.

Tie in a pale Honey Dun cock hackle as shewn with the concave side of the hackle outermost. You can use a very pale Honey hackle if Honey Dun is not available.

Wind the hackle four or five turns to the thread. Tie it in tightly and wind the thread through the hackle to the hook eye then make a whip finish, varnish the head and clean out the wet varnish from the hook eye with the hackle tip left in your hackle pliers. There you have it the Tup's Indespensable Variant, which, from July to late September, I would hate to be without.

Regular Rod

"Indispensable!"

2011-08-28T01:05:00.003+01:00

Tup's Indispensable Variant

The olives were hard to see through the blizzard of little sedge flies this afternoon and early evening. A fish took my Double Badger but it was a speculative rise and not convincing. The sedge flies were certainly not on the menu, in despite of their presence in their millions. They were airborne and so out of the reckoning. Then the cloud dispersed momentarily and it was possible to see the olives and see some of them being eaten too! The flies were what anglers call "Pale Wateries". There are several species of upwinged flies that can be called a "Pale Watery" it is just about impossible to tell them apart when they are on the water but that is no hardship as long as we can match the hatch with a suitable artificial. One of the very best is an old fashioned fly called "Tup's Indispensable". So named because the original dressing called for the dubbed thorax to be made of the creamy pink wool from a Tup's scrotum (Tup is an old word for a Ram or male sheep). So you can see that for the Tup to be a Tup this part of his anatomy was clearly "Indispensable"...

Just look at the candle flame on his dorsal fin! (click to enlarge)

It was just what was needed and the trout confirmed this by eating it. Some lovely fish coming to the net as a result. It would have been an easy matter to have mistakenly put on a sedge fly in response to their massive presence today, but they were not what was being eaten and as soon as the little Tup's Indispensable was deployed the results came thick and fast.

Such distinctive spotting makes it easier to track this brown trout's career

The summer has been good to the trout round here as you can see from the super condition of these two examples. Old fashioned flies work just as well now as they did over a century ago. In fact they probably work better today thanks to modern floatants and modern leader materials.

Regular Rod

Frolics in the Froth

2011-08-20T21:46:00.000+01:00

Have a look at this. The flies were getting stuck in this big patch of foam. So a trout was getting stuck into the stuck flies...

Here's a close up crop that shows the fish rising in the foam and to the left of the fish you can see a couple of the trapped olives. I put on a Double Badger that would show up well, sat down beside the foam, let a yard of tippet dangle from the tip ring and plonked the Double Badger as near as I could to the rises. He took it almost immediately and then promptly pulled all the leader and a few yards of fly line out through the guides as he shot up river and then back down again. After a little while he came to the net and the hook fell out as the net took his weight. I had no cover to hide behind. All I did was sit there. The foam hid me well enough. Amazing what you can get away with sometimes!

Regular Rod

A friendly reminder...

2011-08-16T17:18:00.001+01:00

You may already remember this post from last year and maybe this one too from our winter time anticipations of the new season?

You might like to see this additional example of similar rewards for being stealthy and observant that led to fishing exactly where the fish was, even though the approach was originally to try for a fish over behind the willow fronds on the other side of the river. Instead of chucking the line out there and possibly scaring this fish, all that was needed was a very short cast almost under the rod top and a very nice trout was the result. I didn't know the fish was there until it rose whilst I was taking a few extra moments to have a good look around the pool...

Regular Rod

Access...

2011-08-14T01:05:00.004+01:00

Is often much easier than it first appears...

From here this looks almost impossible...

A little closer and it still looks somewhat forbidding...

Here you are at the brink of the bank...

Well, well, look what you have found! Some lovely tree roots that will get you down to the water's edge, give you somewhere to sit below the skyline and...

A good clear view of the feedlane and...

A very easy backcast with only a few obstructions that you can easily avoid by turning to watch the flyline on the backcast as well as on the forward cast.

Find vantage points like this and suddenly the river has a thousand more places from where you can fish.

Regular Rod

Visitor or Resident?

2011-08-08T12:32:00.000+01:00

It is remarkable how two anglers on the same river, on the same day, in the same conditions, can feel differently about the fishing. Saturday was a very hot, sunny day, as days go in England it was anyway. It made sense to fish until dark and during the day to look for rising fish in shaded places.

One angler reported afterwards that it had been important to keep changing the fly to suit what was being eaten. He didn't stick with a favourite fly. He also happened to take his time and invested heavily in those three principles...

He signed off, filled with joy, saying that it was as if fishing in Dry Fly Paradise.

The other didn't think so. He had found it very difficult to find rising fish but was happy enough that he had caught some on a fly he favoured. He reported that he had fished "Pretty much the whole stretch........just walked and cast at any likely looking spot.........good job I had the whole day!"

This might be a choice deliberately made as a visitor wanting to see all 8 miles of the water available on this stretch of river. It was a choice that was very likely to gravitate against the angler as it left little time to get to know a piece of the water well enough to cease being a VISITOR and instead become, even if only for a short time, a RESIDENT.

Numbers of fish caught are not all that important here but enjoyment is. I can't help feeling the second angler missed out by his VISITOR status whilst the first angler enjoyed the benefit of becoming a RESIDENT for the day.

It is hard to explain. I hope you can understand what I am trying to say here...

Regular Rod

The Year Turns Full Circle

2011-08-02T22:37:00.001+01:00

This blog does anyway...

Last year about this time I reported on the rise forms telling me which fly to try and I ended up using the Poly Prop Sherry (PPS) to pleasing effect. Recent evenings this year have delivered great results on variations of the PPS that I am trying, which have their bodies made with an alternative to Seal's Fur. Tonight, in my enthusiasm to continue the trials I started with my synthetic bodied PPS making the error of not OBSERVING the rises carefully to determine what the fish were eating. I kept missing that nose angle that gives the clue to consider a fake of a midge type fly.

With no fish eating my PPS I was brought to my senses and so after watching carefully the angled upwards nose showed so frequently in the rises that midges surely must be on the menu. The fly was changed to a traditional fake for midges and reed smuts and the like, the Sturdy's Fancy on a size 20 Drennan Super Specialist hook with an eye just big enough for the 5x tippet to be threaded through. With such small flies the instinct is often to put on a much finer tippet but 5x gives you more chance of avoiding a break if you end up with a zoo creature on in the dark.

The results were remarkable. Fish after fish came to the fly and so it became necessary to move from pool to pool in the fading light to avoid hammering the fish too much in each spot. It was actually a very easy night and a time for restraint. So after a nice brown trout returned at only 21:40, the line was reeled in followed by a pleasant stroll home in the sultry and scented night air.

It is on nights like tonight when I am convinced once again that we are truly blessed to be anglers...

Regular Rod

Time Left?

2011-07-29T00:51:00.001+01:00

I apologise in advance if you have already come across this simple way to see how you are doing for time. Fishing in the late afternoon and into the evening you may want to have some idea of how much time is left before sunset. The method is to open your hand as wide as you can. Aim your little finger at the horizon. Count the spaces between the fingers going up until you reach the sun. Each space equates to about an hour. So in this picture you can make out where the sun is at the time of taking the photograph by the little flare around my second finger below the tip. This indicates that sunset will be in just under two hours. In summer this often helps me decide when to move to get ready for the light changing and the fly life to get very intense and the evening rise to get underway. Give it a try if you haven't already. It is remarkably accurate, but you must force your hand open as wide as you can.

Regular Rod

Distraction - Self Inflicted!

2011-07-21T12:17:00.001+01:00

Did I make a mistake last night? The recent rain has at last raised my mother river, the Derbyshire Wye, to a nice level. Naturally it had been made brown for two or three days. Last night it looked brown but fishable at 17:00 so I thought it would be a good idea to do two things at once. Henry was bored out of his skull. I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms through the lack of dry fly fishing. I could walk the couple of miles down river to Duck Holds Wood and take Henry with me to perk up his spirits. I could fish, he could get some exercise and practice his investigative skills.

On hooking my first fish it splashed in a spectacular manner. This was too much for Henry. He too made a splash as he charged through the margin into the river, headlong and struck out vigorously swimming towards my fish! "Henry! Leave it!!", I bellowed. He did so and swam back to the bank climbing out in time to see me bringing the fish, a nice grayling, in the net over the margin for me to unhook. Henry wanted to get hold of the fish and I loudly told him, "NO!!! LEAVE IT!!!" He did so, looked at me with blinking eyes and thought I was completely mad to release it unharmed after going to the trouble of catching it. Henry doesn't understand C&R.

The Sport became more and more brisk as the evening passed. Trout and grayling were all feasting on a mix of olives that were now hatching in profusion. My Kite's Imperial was all that was needed.

Henry and I wandered back up river together. It was a good time, plenty of fish fell for the Kite's Imperial on the way home, but I'm sure I would have been much more efficient had I been alone.

Henry is a fine chap. I love him dearly but his preferred Sport is definitely hunting and shooting game birds. It is all so much easier for him to understand.

Henry

Maybe it was a mistake, but it was still fun - for both of us!

Regular Rod

Night Moves...

2011-07-17T16:19:00.004+01:00

...and Comfortable Arrangements!

Late to get out last night I wandered downriver still undecided as to where and how I might start the evening's proceedings. I met Paul, a fellow angler who had been more diligent than I in getting out and fishing through the day. He reported encouraging news of his day thus far. We chatted very briefly about a nearby tributary we both know well, mutually bewailed the drought conditions and then went our opposite ways to start fishing for the evening. He going up and I going down river.

I started in a comfortable place, for me, which meant I could sit on the exposed roots of a giant crack willow. It is one of those spots I mentioned last year, where in low water the angler can get almost unrestricted access to water that is otherwise awkward to cover well. As well being very comfortable these roots and trapped silt offer the angler the added advantage of sitting crosslegged like a garden gnome thus maintaining a low profile and remaining hidden from the fish rising upstream.

Here is the very spot. Moss has grown on the trapped silt, soil is forming as other plants take root and I have the benefit of the tree trunk to lean against as a very easing back rest.

However, it would not be such a comfortable place to lay a fish for hook removal before release. In Town many of us regulars use unhooking mats to protect the fish, but in Town we are not tramping miles between fishing stations. Even where the river flows through Elysian fields, the ground is not always a fish friendly place to lay our captives momentarily, before they are free to get on with their lives. Remember those overtrousers I favour? They make an excellent unhooking mat to lay the wet net on and they are always there ready for the job if you are fishing on your backside in the quest for invisibility.

I couldn't resist making an attempt at photographing the rise forms of a fish sipping away at spinners. This one shows the elongated ring(s) nicely. I apologise again for the noisy image and the somewhat excessive Photoshoppery to try and overcome the low light levels but it shows quite nicely the so very distinctive shape of the spinner eater's rise that signals to us we should be putting on a little spinner fake and making the most of these piscine Night Moves.

As always, click the images to get a closer look and click them again for an even closer view.

Regular Rod

"Heartbreak Corner"

2011-07-07T08:07:00.003+01:00

This is a corner on my local river that others have named "Heartbreak Corner". It's a ludicrous name. The fishing here is as hard, or as simple, as anywhere else on the river. Nevertheless, it always manages to teach me something whenever I visit there.

Three things could easily lead to failure on this long bend.

It is usually approached on the inside of the bend. This means that the water will be flowing more slowly on the angler's bank, where it is shallower due to gravel and silt deposition, than on the far bank where the water is deep as the stronger flow has scoured the channel deeper. The surface currents are different so drag has to be controlled, or else the fly will not drift naturally, the fish will ignore it and heartbreak could be the result.

One of the three basic principles is frequently broken here too. I have seen anglers standing up next to the water, sometimes wearing pale hats (even white) whilst they cast, and cast, and cast. Heartbreaking!

On many days there will be multiple species of flies drifting through here. It is easy to see one sort and decide to start fishing with a representative of that fly. If the fly chosen is not actually the one that the fish are preoccupied with then you can have your heart broken as the fish rise, whilst you cast, and they rise, and you cast, and they keep rising and you keep casting thinking "I just need to get the fly to land right and I will catch him!" Unless you stop, look hard and watch for the flies actually being eaten then you will again have your heart broken...

On this bend is a superb hidy hole. There is nearly always a good fish rising under the branches and twigs here. There is a gap. I know it is possible to get the fly in through that gap. But there is a tree behind the kneeling position and it is just at exactly the distance to catch the fly on the edge of the back cast. It means the trajectory of the cast has to be made at an angle to avoid the tree behind and then a mid-air mend made to get the fly travelling in the right direction to land in the hidy hole. I've managed to get the fly in there a few times but it never gets in there far enough and with enough slack in the tippet and leader to drift over the fish convincingly. It is downright heartbreaking!

Long may it be so! Dry fly fishing should be a meritocracy! Someone better than me will manage to cast in there and catch that fish one day. I hope the tree behind is never felled...

Regular Rod

Now you see 'em...

2011-07-02T11:33:00.001+01:00

...now you don't!

Okay so I have this back to front. You can walk by a stretch of water on a sunny day and looking at the river you can often be forgiven for asking yourself:

"Where are all the fish?"

You wander on worrying that there may be none there.

Come by in a summer's evening though and you will find yourself on the other end of the see-saw. My pocket camera is very good but like other small cameras it refreshes rather slowly compared to a professional's DSLR or Leica M9. So the sequence below is over four and a half minutes, but the results would have been very similar if taken over four and half seconds with a quicker camera. The pictures are noisy due to the low light levels but you can still see the activity going on here.

Click each picture twice to get a much closer look.

At times like these I start asking myself not where all the fish are but instead:

How do they all fit in?

You can see why I implore you all to stay as late as you can whenever possible.

Regular Rod

Walk on by...?

2011-06-28T12:27:00.002+01:00

That might be OK for Dionne Warwick but you can miss out on some astonishing opportunites if you forget yourself and wander by water that at first glance would not be worth your effort. In a healthy river there are very few places where there will be no fish. Some tiny pockets will only hold small fish but it is a source of constant surprise just how often there will be exceptions to that "rule". Yesterday I was a privileged guest on a section of my mother river a few miles upstream from my usual haunts. It was a very stimulating and pleasant change. The tuning in process naturally takes longer on an unfamiliar water. The senses are heightened as it is now even more important to practice the three basic principles before I can become a resident and not merely a marauding visitor.

It worked. It always does. Mine host ensured I had free reign and generously let me fish as and where I pleased at the pace to suit myself. The result was a delightful time. Here is one shot of one of the many, many interesting spots that all held fish and rewarded a few extra moments of contemplation and observation with closer contemplation of the wild brown trout and wild rainbow trout that the Derbyshire Wye is justly celebrated for. It would have been very easy to just walk on by so many of these places. Frankly I believe most folk do on this section, as it is something of a military training assault course. It was worth the perspiration!

Back on home water, here is a fish that I have seen many anglers wander past never even imagining that such a large specimen could be found happily holding a constant station, day-in-day-out, in such a shallow pocket of water. Look closely. Can you can see why this is such a prized position for the fish?

Regular Rod

Project Fish...

2011-06-22T16:48:00.004+01:00

... or how to use up a lot of fishing time!

This season's Drake festivities, even though a little more perfunctory than is usual, still unveiled the whereabouts of some stunning fish. Those of you who spent some formative years of your angling career fishing for the so-called "coarse" fishes (a silly English term referring to fishes without an adipose fin) may have found yourselves involved in "specimen" hunting. It's a phase most of us have to go through when only very large examples of each specie is deemed worthy of our attention. Eventually, many of us move on to simpler goals. My goals these days are to fish as often as I may and enjoy whatever happens.

HOWEVER...!

This year I espied some extraordinary grayling in the Derbyshire Wye. Bigger than any I have caught in Derbyshire and nearly as big as "specimens" I caught as a younger man in North Yorkshire. So maybe a little time will be expended, spent, invested, wasted... (Whatever!) in pursuit of these splendid creatures. I had a little try a few days ago and immediately caught some lovely grayling from the shoal headed up by the monsters I was after. I failed with the bigger fish but had some exciting moments with the fine, yet smaller, fish that were in the sentry positions downstream of them.

This one shot off down river as if it was starring in a bone fishing film! On netting, it was clear that this was a lucky fish! Can you see the scar on its side level with the pelvic fin? That fish had escaped from the saw toothed bill of another imported alien that has no natural enemies within our shores and so reaches plague proportions quite easily and quickly...

Project fish? Well I will have another try or two I'm sure, but without any extreme efforts. I finished with ultra-cult a long time ago. More frequent moments of Joy and Contemplation are my ambitions these days.

Regular Rod

Management

2011-06-14T11:55:00.001+01:00

Here's a little patch of river Heaven. The stretch here is mainly shaded. Where the sun can consistently get to the bottom of the river and, where the water has enough briskness of flow, here we find the water crowfoot, or water buttercup, Ranunculus fluitans. See how it flourishes where the sun can get in and right next to it the shaded water has almost no sign of this brilliant plant. Herein live freshwater shrimp, ephemerid nymphs, other invertebrates and, of course, trout!

The fronds speed up the flow locally, like so many little hose pipe jets, which in turn keeps the gravel a perfect substrate for spawning trout, grayling and brook lampreys, by clearing it of silt. On the wild trout fisheries, where no stocking of farm bred fish takes place, the river keepers concentrate on improving and maintaining water quality. Part of that work consists in coppicing trees to get a mosaic of sunlight on the river bed so there are more places to suit this valuable water "weed" and so in turn create more places for invertebrates, fish and their eggs. It's a wonderful chain that starts with sunlight and finishes with very happy anglers...

Regular Rod

Easy pools and hard ones

2011-06-10T20:06:00.000+01:00

Both can get you swearing under your breath. The easy pools get taken for granted and you snag up behind you on a grass seed head. The hard ones, well they are just plain hard!

Here are two pools to consider...

This is an easy pool by an island where the river is turning sharp left as we face it. There are some drag conditions to take into account but basically if you keep the back cast up high you can expect some success if you haven't frightened the fish. But don't take places like this for granted or you will get caught up and the Recording Angel will be adding to the list...

Here's another on the same river...

This is hard. Not so much a letter box more a keyhole but the fly must be placed under those white flower heads of the elder bush on the other bank because that's where the fish are in that run. It's no good going upstream round the other side of the tree on your right here because you may as well have thrown yourself in for the way the fish would clear off! The wind will of course be blasting downstream at you to add to your trials. But don't swear too much. Expect it to be hard and plan the cast accordingly. Fitting the line through the keyhole up the middle of the river and with that slightly longer tippet on your leader the wind will turn it under the flower heads and you have a chance! It matters not one jot whether the fish is a big or little one, catch here and you can be justly proud of yourself and if you do swear in amazement, the Recording Angel will probably join in with you and note down that you did b***dy well!

Regular Rod

How many hidy holes?

2011-06-07T22:33:00.001+01:00

There are four here!

Click to enlarge the image

Three for the fish and one for me...

Regular Rod

James Ogden Day - Remembering a Genius

2011-06-05T23:19:00.001+01:00

Today was James Ogden Day. On June 5th 1865 he proved to the Duke of Rutland's Steward (Robert Nesfield) that his artificial floating flies would "kill during the Drake". From then on the rule was made, for the first time anywhere in the world, that on the Haddon Estate single artificial floating fly only was to be used, making the very first dry fly only fishery.

Ogden was a brilliant innovator and astute business man. As well as creating the first flies designed specifically to float, he created the Invicta, introduced a creel strengthened so that a man could sit on it to fish and so keep low and out of sight from the fish, devised and sold folding landing nets that could not tangle and (my favourite) he introduced the idea of using a short fly rod, instead of the customary 11ft to 16ft rods that were normal for fly fishing in those days.

Today I used one of his rods from 1880, it is 8ft long in built cane and is called a "Multum in Parvo" roughly meaning "much in little". The first fish today was a nice little brown trout that Ogden would have been familiar with. The second he would not have been familiar with. It was a wild rainbow trout that had the 130 year old cane hooped over for a few hectic moments.

All in all, James Ogden Day turned out to be a cracking day for fly fishing and his old rod (and reel) were a joy to use. (Well the rod was, the reel was terrible...)

Regular Rod

Postman

2011-06-03T00:36:00.000+01:00

So many places are missed by anglers walking past them taking the view that they are unfishable. Sometimes you have to spot the letter box so you can post your line through with a careful bit of casting. Next time you see an "impossible" place, give it a moment or two of careful reconnaissance and thought. See if you can spot a letter box that you might just fit your cast through.

Here's one from Monday's joyous day by the Derbyshire Wye. The line needed to go under the branch at the top of the picture and over the stalks and stems coming up into the middle of the picture. It was worth it.

Regular Rod

Colours

2011-05-31T01:08:00.000+01:00

This picture is just a quick snap to illustrate the tell-tale mark of a true wild rainbow trout in the Derbyshire Wye. It's that candle flame orange on the very top edge the dorsal fin (click the image and click again for a closer look). Any rainbow trout in the Derbyshire Wye without this mark has a question mark over its origin...

This creature is a Yellow May Dun. A female, she has a drop of water at the tail end of her body because I hadn't the heart to let her stay stranded in the surface film after a rain drop had bombed her flat. She is drying off on my finger before getting on her way to take her chances. In forty two years of dry fly fishing I have never seen a fish eat one of these. Have any of you good folk ever seen fish eat a Yellow May Dun?

Regular Rod

"Fish where the fish are!"

2011-05-22T11:13:00.001+01:00

On this theme, which really should become a natural part of any angler's strategy, at the risk of boring you with repetition here is another example of putting that principle to work.

Here is a lovely tangle made by the river keepers when they put faggot bundles into the left side of the river, planted fleur-de-lys (flag iris) to consolidate the bank and so made some extra habitat, with a good flow bringing a constant stream of food to the fish that decide to take up home within its secret intricacies. The tiny fish can live securely in the little gaps between the twigs and branches in the faggots, whilst the bigger fish can hang out a little further (and so get the first pickings of the food) but instantly disappear under the faggot bundles at the first sign of danger from above.

So here is a great spot to "Fish where the fish are". The faggots here are made of live willow and willow being so tenacious of life has made roots and sent out shoots afresh with new leaves. Eventually this area will be canopied by overhanging willow fronds and so become even more attractive to the fish.

Attractive to the fish usually means a little bit harder casting and fishing for the dry fly angler, but what delightful rewards await the one who is prepared to risk all by sending the fly over to visit the home of Mr or Mrs Trout!

Not the biggest trout in the river but just look at its fantastic condition! That constant food source, which can be partaken of with very little expended energy, has been well used and so may it continue. River keepers eh?

Regular Rod

Detecting in the dark...

2011-05-18T22:26:00.001+01:00

One advantage of living by the side of a river is that you can get out at all times of night and day to "see what is going on". This evening is no exception. The river is not alive with rising fish as it can so often be. However, there were still plenty of rises to look at and to puzzle over as to what the fish were eating. This is a useful exercise in that it helps you to understand what is happening on similar occasions when you are there with a fly rod in your hand.

I watched some rises very near to the bank I was on and first impressions were that there were at least four fish rising very close to each other. This should make you ponder straight away. Trout dislike each other and will only tolerate each other, when feeding, if there is a very large amount of easily consumed food around. Might this be a pod of grayling, which are shoal fish and enjoy each other's company? Well it is unlikely, as grayling usually rise from near the bottom of the river to the fly and then they go back down again, to rise again a few moments later if they are in a feeding mood.

These rises were being made at a rate of about 15 to the minute. That's a lot! They could not be made by grayling. The rises were different from the spinner rises in that the fish was hanging in the water at a steep angle that made the neb, when observed from downriver, appear like a triangle or wedge shape. In this rather dark photograph (it is night time after all) you can see that there has already been one rise immediately in front of this second rise, where the camera has luckily caught the neb above the surface for a moment.

Now this seemingly crowded bit of water raised my curiosity so I sneaked up river until I was level with the rises. What a surprise! All the rises were being made by one trout! It was not still for more than a second at any time. Left, forward, right, drop back, forward, forward again, to the right, to the left, drop back, drop back some more, sip, sip, sip every time. The trout made each rise from directly under the midge it was about to eat. It spent its time just under the surface and tipped up at the angle you might just be able to make out in this even darker photograph.

Could I detect it was eating midges from the rise forms? Not really, it was a slight clue but could easily have been aphids, reed smuts, or some other fly. No I only know it was eating midges because when I got really close it was possible to see the midges on the surface and watch them being sipped away by this very active wild rainbow trout. But, next time I see rises like that, I will be trying an attempt at a fake midge and carefully checking just how many fish I am going to be trying to cast to.

Regular Rod

Rises to spinners...

2011-05-15T12:43:00.000+01:00

You may recall last year, when this blog started, we discussed how to spot the rise forms of fish potentially feeding on spinners.

Click and click again on the image for a closer look

Last night, as it started to go dark, I came upon a trout rising to spinners very assiduously and under a high bank near enough to attempt a photograph. The image is noisy owing to the low light levels, but hopefully you can see the start of the elongated ring of the rise form, just made by the head and dorsal fin and shortly to be augmented by the mark made by the tail, that dark triangle just behind the rise form, breaking the surface as the trout levels itself a few inches down, in readiness for the next fly on the conveyor belt.

No I didn’t catch it. I didn’t even fish for it. Sometimes it seems wrong to intrude on such a much deserved meal.

Regular Rod

Prepare for later this season...

2011-05-06T14:06:00.001+01:00

It may still seem a while away yet but before you know it high summer will be here. The grass will be taller and seed heads will begin to appear, cow parsley will be in flower. Then it will be time to watch out for another crop of terrestrial insects that have crash landings on the water. The soldier beetles will be with us. There is unlikely to be a furious flurry of activity with these in the way that trout behave when the Hawthorn flies are all around us (as they still are right now). Instead the soldier beetle casualties are more likely to be quietly engulfed in the back eddies and the edges to slack water. As such, the fake of the soldier beetle makes a great ambush fly, which you deploy whilst laid face down to carefully watch a big brown trout perambulating his bailiwick. Every now and then up will tilt the trout to take a morsel. You gauge where and when to place your fly and, as the trout comes round on his serene progress, your fake is too good to leave behind. Up tilts the trout and the rest is down to you.

There is a circa two thousand year old fly pattern that makes an excellent fake of the soldier beetle. It works as a caricature rather than an exact imitation but is seems to have all the stimuli necessary to convince the trout that it is indeed another of the nutritious beetles.

It is called the Red Hackle and it is a simple and fast fly to tie. You can have a dozen ready in twenty minutes or less so put a little time aside and make sure you have a few in readiness for the return of the soldier beetles.

You need red knitting wool (I use scarlet wool), natural red cock hackles, black thread and some hooks about size 12 or 10.

Put the hook in the vice as shewn. Run on a short bed of thread at the front of the hook

Tie in the cock hackle as shewn with six turns of thread. Snip off the waste hackle stalk.

Teeze out a small ball of red wool from a strand of the knitting wool and dub this onto the thread in a long thin sausage of wool.

Wind the body tightly down to the bend of the hook. If the amount of wool is guessed correctly it will all be used up when you reach the bend. Let the thread dangle here under the weight of the bobbin holder.

Take the hackle point in the hackle pliers and wind four to six tight, touching turns up to the start of the body. Then carry on winding down to the hook bend in open, spiralled ribbing turns. Tie in the hackle with a couple of tight , touching turns and then rib the body with the tying thread and wind the thread quickly through the front part of the hackle. Make a bold head with your whip finish and varnish it well. Use the waste hackle point to clear the varnish out of the hook eye whilst it is still wet.

Voila! The Red Hackle.

You can use this fly on fast rapids too. It shows up well and is another good "bring 'em up" fly. This might possibly be because it looks a good mouthful and so worth the effort of rising?

Regular Rod

Tip from the Treatyse

2011-05-02T18:32:00.000+01:00

Here is some of the oldest advice ever given in angling (click it twice to get it full size):

See that second tip? "Also look that ye shadow not the water as much as ye may. For it is that thing that will soon fraye the fish. And if a fish be afraid he will not bite long after."

The first tip has the answer when you are on the west bank and the sun is setting behind you. "or else behind a bush that the fish see you not..."

It is surprising what you can get away with if you take some simple precautions. Here's a modern day version of following this medieval advice. Sneaking in using the tree to shield the angler from view, then sliding down under the tree to make a completely undetected approach to the fish rising in the run below the (west) bank.

Regular Rod

Those three principles all over again...

2011-04-26T22:31:00.002+01:00

A wonderful day in the sunshine watching Hawthorn flies in their courtship dances and also seeing the trout grabbing every one of them that ended up on the surface of the river in the unpredictable breezes.
You may recall the three principles that I gladly bang on about to anyone who might pay attention...
Well one example of putting this blessed trinity to work was as I passed through a little gate, it was possible to OBSERVE over on the other side of the river that the fish were hammering the Hawthorn flies. I tried a cast or two. Reaching the fish was no real problem but controlling the line was another matter entirely.
What to do? Simply put I needed to FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE and so walked back upstream, crossed over by the bridge and then worked my way through the pathless swampy wood on the true left bank. Arrived at the place it was then necessary to BE STEALTHY as there was no cover at all. The place to be was sat cross legged on the exposed gravel bed. Crawling to the spot was the only choice. Undignified certainly but it was worth it.

The reward was almost an hour of exciting Sport with each hooked fish blasting away downstream in the fast currents, side strain persuading them into the slacker water in the edge followed by a gentle guiding into the welcoming meshes of the long handled landing net.

That evening my close pal, John, joined me. He had a new rod.

"Aren't you going to take the plastic off the cork handle?"

"Only when I catch a fish on it..."

Hmm.... He had arrived quite late on. There were fish still prepared to eat the Hawthorn flies but the daylight was now fading quickly. After trying a few places with a Charles Cotton's Black Fly exactly like the one I'd been using all day, his rod was still not about to lose the plastic wrapping. Part of the problem was a lack of visibility on the darkened water. A change of fly (to a Double Badger) and he quickly caught a very nice little wild rainbow trout. The plastic could come off, later...

We made our way slowly upstream back to where he had parked his car. On the way he had a few speculative casts whilst I went ahead a little to OBSERVE! Lo and behold! There were several rising fish in both sides of a line of flow.

"C'mon John! Get up here!"

For John to FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE, he had to BE STEALTHY so he crawled into the vantage point and knelt where I suggested. Two or three casts later...

"I think your fly's come off!"

"It never has. Has it?"

"Aye it has."

"I never felt anything..."

"Never mind that! Can you see all these flies around us?"

"Aye! What are they?"

"Spinners!"

They were male blue winged olive spinners and the fish were eating their wives.

So, for the first time this season, a PPS was tied onto his tippet. A few minutes later John was testing his new rod nicely with a very strong wild rainbow trout that certainly did its best to be elsewhere. It looked brilliant in the last of the daylight and had the reddest stripe on each side and a big red patch on either "cheek". I hope you can get some idea of how lovely this fish was from the hurriedly snapped photo. We watched him swim back to where he came from then we shook hands and grinned at each other like a couple of daft kids...

It was a perfect end to a perfect day!

Regular Rod

Snags, structure, hidy holes...

2011-04-23T12:35:00.005+01:00

... call them what you will, but pay attention to these bountiful places. They are too good to miss!

Those of you British anglers, who may have spent some happy times coarse fishing before now, will probably be very familiar with the chub. A beautiful creature, with a big, all enveloping mouth, that bites boldly but lives timidly. Chub like to hide in snags. Tree roots, tangled, flood-borne, woody debris, weedrafts snagged on bridge supports are all excellent places to find chub. Show yourself to a chub though and he will just melt before your eyes.

Chub are not alone in liking their living quarters to be surrounded with snaggy branches and tree roots. Carp too can be found near to, or within, the most tangled of hidy holes.

I understand that, in the USA, bass enjoy lurking in similar places. The expert bass angler makes it a special skill to identify "structure", knowing that here is a place where bass can usually be found.

Wild trout, both wild brown trout and wild rainbow trout, like these snaggy places too.

Here is a little spot from yesterday's visit to the Derbyshire Wye and below is the delightful wild rainbow trout who lives there.

When catching a fish in such places, the technique can best be described as "hook and hold", with no line being given unless absolutely forced so to do. Those first thrashings can decide all. Hold on enough to guide the fish out of its fortress and you then have a fair chance of winning the argument.

Regular Rod

And lead us not into temptation...

2011-04-22T11:32:00.001+01:00

Take care that you do not yield to temptation and just take a little peep too many and from too close a vantage point whilst out with the dry fly early in the season. Right now our allies in the margins have not yet grown high enough to help us in our attempts to be unnoticed by the fish.

You may find some blades of fleur-de-lys are high enough now for you to hide amongst. If so, do use them where you can. BUT... whatever you do, you must resist the temptation to raise your head up to get a better view of the rising fish. These pictures help to illustrate the point. The first is what you might see while standing well back from the water's edge and so unseen by the rising fish. Having spotted the rising fish you sneak in low to hide amongst the cover.

The second picture shows you what your (hidden) head height view is likely to be. It is not as easy to see the rises. That is when the temptation is strongest. Resist it! Make your cast and reap the reward of your stealth...

Regular Rod

Risky Business?

2011-04-20T15:54:00.003+01:00

You have to speculate to accumulate!

Take a peep at this little vantage point, hard up close to the opposite bank. A nice overhang that prevents attack from above. Some stalks from last year’s nettles that act as a comb to comb your fly and tippet away from the occupant. It is a good place to live and a good place to try a cast and presentation into. The risk is that the fly will hook up on the dead stalks and even if you get the fly back, the fish will be off his food for a little while owing to the disturbance of a fly behaving in a very odd way overhead.

The trick here is to cast so the leader is upstream and the tippet is laying downstream in advance, but you must get the fly right up close to the edge, within three inches to have a real chance. To make the leader fail to turn over you can extend the length of the tippet where there is room to deploy it and it will fail to turn over nicely. Here the angler is surrounded by vegetation and trees behind so the lengthened tippet is not an option. The way to make it fail here is to deliberately put extra force on the forward cast and the leader will fail to turn over fully. To avoid scaring the fish with a nasty hard landing, aim the cast upstream a little more than you would normally and cast as though the water is actually up at shoulder height.

You only need the fly to drift into the fish's hole for a couple of seconds. Manage that and bam! You have the rise and the rest is up to you. Of course if the fish doesn’t take the fly then the dead stalks will. It is indeed “Risky Business”...

Regular Rod

Behold! My Prodigal Fly...

2011-04-17T13:26:00.007+01:00

... has returned unto me!

Let's admit it. You and I, we all lose flies in: trees, bushes, long grass, last years figwort seed heads, barbed wire fences, even inquisitive livestock, which may sneak up behind us, has been known to take our flies from us. No doubt you do your best to get them back, especially if they are dangling, as a wicked trap, waiting to bring the life of a passing bat to an unwarranted early end.

Last year, during the Drake, I caught a blessed sycamore tree (why this invader is not eradicated from the British Isles is beyond my comprehension) high and over water too deep for me to paddle into. The break was close to the fly and the hook point was embedded deep, so no dangling and no dead bats. Oh well, never mind, put on another fly and return from aerial gardening to fishing once more...

I forgot all about it.

Until, that is, the other day when I repeated the error and caught up in almost the same place as last year. This year the river is so low I could walk out on the dry shingle and carefully pull down the offending branch, safely retrieve this year's fly and could just reach to snap off the twig in which last year's fly was held fast.

It was interesting to see the knot had held firm whilst the monofilament had failed. On extracting the fly I might have repaired it with new tails but... the hook is rusted. The fly may have returned unto me but it is, in truth, defunct!

We owe it to the bats to do all in our power to get those dangling flies back.

Regular Rod

Too Early?

2011-04-14T09:22:00.003+01:00

Too Late?

A dawn raid in summer, especially after the previous day and evening had been one of great activity amongst the Drake, is pretty well known as a good thing to try. But what about in April when, seemingly, fly life is not yet in abundance?

Derbyshire Wye 14th April 2011 5:33 a.m

Derbyshire Wye 14th April 2011 6:02 a.m.

Have a look at these two pictures. I apologise for their great size and bandwidth gobbling propensities but I want you to have the option of making a click on them twice to see the rise forms. Check out the times they were taken this morning.

Maybe we are missing some opportunities here?

Regular Rod

Low Water, Too Low...

2011-04-10T20:28:00.000+01:00

Although the first week of the season round here has been pretty well superb, the rivers are very low for this early in the year. We do need water. Time to pray for rain again methinks...

Regular Rod

"Twisting by the Pool?"

2011-04-06T19:25:00.000+01:00

Not with the Poly Prop Spent Gnat (PPSG) you won't!

The keywords statistics for the blog recently showed quite an interest in twisted tippets and leaders. Following the tracks of the readers, who were seeking information with Google searches including the keywords “twist”, “tippet” and “leader” in close proximity to each other, showed that some of you are indeed interested in how to avoid this devastating, time-wasting and potentially damaging condition.

Apart from always removing any accidentally hooked up leaves from the fly before casting, what else can be done?

Some of the worst twists I ever experienced were when I used to use fan winged mayflies during the festivities with the Drake. They looked truly wonderful but they used to make fishing at mayfly time a frustrating exercise in repairs and replacement. This frustration led to the preference for hackled patterns with no wings. Where wings were certainly needed, it was necessary to devise patterns that didn’t behave like a propeller on a model aeroplane, spiralling up the tippet and leader as if they were part of some extended rubber band motor.

Here follows an example of a fly that has very obvious wings and yet it never spins up and spirals the tippet. It is another fly for the Drake and is my attempt at the “Spent Gnat” or more accurately named (but not traditionally) the mayfly spinner.

The adult female mayfly (Imago), once her eggs have been fertilised by one of the males dancing nearby, in the lee of anything on the bank, including any conveniently seated angler, will make her way to the river again accompanied by great numbers of her sisters. In low, swooping flights they pass up and down over the water until ready to make their bombing runs. During these seemingly exploratory flights many of these adult females will fly a little too close to the surface and be plucked from the sky by acrobatic trout leaping out to seize these tempting morsels. Unable to work out a strategy for presenting a fly to catch fish feeding in this way, the tactic is to sit and wait until the flies are actually managing to touch the water and deposit their eggs. As they do this some will have accidents and end up stranded on the surface. Their oviposition unfinished, they struggle to release themselves, writhing and squirming, bodies curved and maybe one wing up with the other hopelessly down, glued to the surface. These flies are usually taken vigorously, as struggling prey so often is. Maybe a struggling meal might be successful in extrication and escape now and then, so it has to be secured decisively and speedily?

Most of the ovipositing flies will succeed in completing the cycle. They will dive down to the water and at the last moment curve themselves to scrape off the eggs against the surface as they fly back up to their approach height and repeat the process. Their work complete they continue the same flight pattern until the last few calories of their energy stores, which they had spent up to two years in the making, are finally used up. Then with wings outstretched they fall. Some are already dead in the air, others are dying. They land with outstretched wings and lay there, cruciform, completely flat to the surface.

There are no struggles, apart from the odd slight twitch. No signal is made that they may escape. None of them will escape because that is how it should be. Now the trout will feed on these flies in a very different way from previously...

The whole process is calm and easy. There is neither fuss nor sense of urgency. The flies are drifting down river on a seemingly endless conveyor belt. Each fish positions itself on its own station, holding a level pose, a few inches at most below the surface. The rise is made as a tilting action in just the same way as we considered last July with the Sherry Spinner stage of the Blue Winged Olive. The nose breaks surface, followed by the back and dorsal fin, then the tail and the fish returns back to the original level pose. The rise form is elongated just like the rise to the Sherry Spinner. The only difference is that the flies are so big we can see them more easily and so judging where to place our fake on the conveyor full of real ones is also easier.

Under these conditions, when the artificial is right, it gets the same easy, steady, no-fuss rises. If the rise is splashy... it means the fly is not quite right.

This “Spent Gnat” really is “right” in more ways than one. It is right for the angler because it is easy to tie, lands gently and never twists up the tippet, in despite of its prominent pair of wings. It is right for the fish because it has enough of the triggers to convince the fish it is indeed one of the flies it is busy eating and so it is accepted in a calm and serene way. A fish eating a fake spinner in the same innocent way that it eats a real one is a sight that can give you a, justifiable, feeling of pride. It is surely the one true moment when Vanity is not a sin but, because you earned it, is a solid virtue!

You need the following:

Size 8 or 6 LS Hooks

Brown tying thread

Cock Pheasant centre tail feathers

Ethafoam strips as per the EBM

White Polypropylene yarn

Black or Dark Blue Polypropylene yarn

Large Badger Cock Hackles

Dark Brown Permanent Marker Pen

Debarb the hook and put it in the vice as shewn. At the bend start the thread and with tight turns build up a tiny ball of thread.

Take a good bunch of cock pheasant centre tail feather fibres, here I am using a mixture of black and natural red fibres. Gauge them to be one and a quarter times longer than the length of the hook shank.

Tie them in against the ball of thread and splay them out, locking them in position by tight turns against the ball.

Continue forward to make a slim base of tied in fibres and thread, leaving about ⅜ of an inch clear behind the eye. Trim off the waste ends.

Tie in a strip of the ethafoam, taking the thread in tight touching turns back to the bend. This is to keep the underbody slim.

Wind a slim body of the ethafoam in tight overlapping turns making a thin carrot shaped body finishing with the ethafoam at the bend. Tie it in with four tight touching turns. Trim off the waste ethafoam strip and if there is a tiny bit showing, tie that in with a couple more turns of the thread.

Rib the body with the tying thread. Continue forward with tight turns making a bed of thread about ¼ of an inch long.

Take about five inches, just over a hand’s breadth, each of the white and the black (or dark blue) polypropylene yarns. Lay them side by side and carefully split them up into separated fibres and mingle them together side-by-side. When they are evenly dispersed, gently twist them together into a “yarn”. You may need to halve the result with your dubbing needle to get the yarn slim enough, say about as thick as one of the original yarns.

Take your mingled yarn and tie it on top of the hook with two turns of thread and leaving just over a hook’s length of yarn pointing forward over the eye and the long remaining yarn back over the hook bend.

Take the long end and pull it towards you, holding it horizontally at 90 degrees to the hook, take a turn of thread under the hook and bring it over the yarn from the bend side and then over the hook.

Now hold the shorter end of yarn out in the same way but on the other side of the hook. Bring the thread over the hook in front of the yarn and then make figure of eight turns to lock the yarn in place making an untidy cross shape.

With the thread dangling in front of the yarn, take hold of both ends of yarn and pulling them back tightly with the fingers and thumb of the left hand (right hand if you are a Southpaw), gauge their length to be just about level with the end of the hook, a little longer is OK as you can always trim them again, snip them to length with the scissors. Take care not to cut the tail fibres!

That takes care of the wings. The fly would work like this but it would spiral your tippet in a few casts.

Prepare the badger cock hackle and tie it in as shewn, with the concave side facing you and the stalk over the hook bend. Take the thread to the start of the body as you tie in the hackle. Let the thread dangle there.

Wind the hackle fully taking care to trap the wings out at their 90 degree angles. Tie it in and wind the thread quickly through the wound hackle. Make a whip finish and varnish the head well, remembering to clear the eye of varnish whilst it is still wet.

You now have a fly that would catch the occasional fish and would never twist your tippet. However, as a “Spent Gnat” it is almost useless. We have one more job to do.

Turn the fly upside down. Take your fine point scissors and very carefully cut off every bit of down pointing hackle from the centre as close to the hackle stalk as you can manage without cutting the stalk itself.

Dab two or three little blobs of brown permanent marker on the sides of the last two or three segments of the body as shewn. Now you have the finished fly. This fly, done like this, is now perfect for the job we had in mind. The trout will eat this in calm, serene innocence. Please do use it with restraint. In unkind hands it could lead to excess...

Regular Rod

Checking a bit more carefully...

2011-04-02T23:30:00.001+01:00

...check list?

Huh! Fat lot of good if you don't look closely.

If you get to fish regularly your monofilament doesn't get chance to exceed its sell by/use by date. It gets used up!

I did a silly thing yesterday. The spools of monofilament were all there. Each had a little tail of mono sticking out from the hole in the elastic that stops all the line spilling off the spool. I needed to make a new tippet. Pulled on my 5X and off came a foot of the monofilament. That was it! A foot!

Fortunately I had another spool but I nearly didn't bother bringing it. Black spools don't let you see how much is left. The elastic covers the turns so you don't get to see the arbor starting to show through, unless you check it. There's a new item for the check list... Check the amount left on the spools. Check?... Check! ü

Regular Rod

All Fool's Day is...

2011-03-30T17:35:00.002+01:00

almost upon us!

Is there anything worse than arriving at the waterside to discover you have forgotten something and that something is going to be sorely missed this day?

Hopefully this might help you. If you want to add stuff do so and you may not need it all anyway. For example, my first day out will require no waders so they will be ignored. You may need to wade so you may eschew the wellies and overtrousers... and so on.

Right click the list and choose Copy. Open a new document in your wordprocessor and right click and Paste it in. Then print it out for your checking off all the things you might need.

Of course you may need a couple of mates to help you carry it all...

Have a great opening day, all of you!

Regular Rod

A Confidence Booster...

2011-03-24T14:58:00.008Z

...for the fish, when the Drake is just starting!

If any of you kind readers out there in the blogosphere are getting fed up of fly dressing posts at the moment, I apologise in advance. It’s still the fly tying time and once the season gets underway it can be difficult to set time aside to tie flies in quantity. You probably know too well the pressure that can creep in when you suddenly realise you need to replenish a dwindling stock of certain patterns because you have a feeling you will need them this day. The materials are snatched out of their boxes and packets, hooks are debarbed, maybe five maybe ten, then it’s on with the Anglepoise and tie, tie, tie for all you are worth because you really need to be setting off to the river - now!

Let’s do a few flies in anticipation of the season being really well underway, when the world is alive and in full swing.

Last time we looked at a pattern for use when the Drake has been around for a while and the fish need something to convince them to eat your fly, instead of all the hundreds of real ones that litter the surface.

This time here is a useful pattern for quite the opposite set of conditions!

The Drake puts in its appearance in dribs and drabs early in its own delightful season. All the usual behaviours are there. The flies that manage to eclode and be away to the surrounding vegetation in no time at all, the flies that eclode as cripples with crumpled wings, the flies that get stuck in their nymphal shucks, the flies that appear to be perfectly okay but sit there, drifting like tiny sailing yachts for ages before they lift off to the river bank and the relative safety of the underside of flowers, leaves, twigs and branches.

They are all there.

The thing is, there are relatively few of them in the first few days of their season and they are not always taken with confidence by the trout. We need something that will look worth eating but without seeming too big to tackle in safety and it needs to appear as an easily taken meal.

Our fake for these circumstances is a little smaller than the real thing. It is designed to hint at some of those easier pickings amongst the flies that have their shucks still attached and it carries a wing to ensure delicate landings are easy to achieve when you make your casts. It has a fur body and so absorbs lots of floatant, which helps it to stay nicely afloat.

It is called, very simply, Hairwing Mayfly!

You will need:

size 12 Long Shank Hooks
a piece of wild rabbit skin
brown tying thread
cock pheasant centre tail feathers
badger cock hackles
grey squirrel tail
(I do like them natural but dyed yellow, rather than bleached and then dyed)

If you have tied a few of those Grey Dusters already you will find this fly is just an easy development of the Grey Duster plus some little modifications...

Debarb the hook and put it in the vice as shewn. Half way along the hook shank, begin a bed of the brown thread and run it down to the start of the bend.

Gauge a good bunch of the pheasant tail fibres to make the tail a little longer than the hook.

Tie in them in.

Carry on tying in the fibres right up to a point about ⅛ of an inch (3mm) behind the hook eye.

Snip off the waste ends.

Cut off a bunch of squirrel hair from the dyed tail. You can decide how thick or transparent you want your wing by the quantity of hair you use for each wing. Flick out all the downy underfur. Use a stacker to line up the hairs by their outside tips.

Carefully tie in the bunch of hairs on top of the hook shank, gauging the length to be a little longer than the hook shank from the start of the bend to behind the eye. Tie it in tightly for five or six turns, leaving the ends of the hairs pointing out over the hook eye and the butts of the hairs pointing at the hook bend.

Trim off the waste butt ends at an angle as shewn.

Put a tiny drop of varnish onto the trimmed hairs and run the thread down over the varnished roots.

Run the thread back to where your frontmost turn of thread is over the squirrel hairs. Tie in either one long badger cock hackle from a genetic cape or else two badger hackles, prepared in the same way as for the Ethafoam Bodied Mayfly, from an Indian cape. Indian capes provide the best badger colours and markings, but the genetics provide the best quality hackles. Tie in the hackle(s) and bind the hackle stalk(s) down for about ten tight touching turns of thread. This will be the bed for the hackle(s) when wound. Snip off the waste hackle stalk(s).

Dub on a good pinch of the rabbit fur.

Wind the body and rib it with the tying thread finishing with the thread dangling where you started the body.

Wind the hackle (or hackles). Tie them in and quickly wind the thread through the turns of hackle.

Take the hair wing in the fingers of the left hand (or right hand if you are a Southpaw) and, whilst holding it up and back out of the way, wind turns of thread tight under the root of the wing to lock it pointing forward and up at an angle of anything from 45 degrees to 60 or 70 degrees.

Let go with the left hand. If you want to raise or lower the wing do so by either adding or taking away locking turns of the thread.

Make a whip finish and varnish the thread well. I use the brush in the Sally Hansen Hard as Nails bottle. Use a waste hackle tip to pull through the eye, clearing it whilst the varnish is still wet.

The finished Hairwing Mayfly.

As intimated earlier, this fly seems to work really well when the Drake is new to the fish. It lands like thistledown and “always” the right way up. It is vital to only make one wing. Two wings will spiral your tippet in no time at all, whilst one will let you cast all day without any trace of a twist.

Grey Duster

By changing some of the materials but using the same anatomy, you easily can make variations of this fly, which is just as well as it only a variation of the Grey Duster in the first place.

What do you like to use during the start of the Drake? Do you fancy this idea of suggesting an easy prey when there is still a while to go before the fish are confident to mop up every Drake they can find?

Regular Rod

Boy Scout's Motto is...

2011-03-13T16:59:00.001Z

Be Prepared!

It is nowhere near the time for the Drake yet but it is worth looking ahead and making some flies in readiness. One very handy fly that seems to work well right into the latter part of the Drake’s season, even after the trout have seen quite a few artificials already, is this effort, which goes by the name of Ethafoam Bodied Mayfly (EBM to its friends).

It is made of recycled rubbish that you have to obtain and process.

It is not the easiest fly to keep afloat.

It is not as robust as some patterns.

Nevertheless, it is deadly and the trout mistake it for the real thing... a lot!

Obtain one of the thin ethafoam bags that Television sets are often packed in. The type you want has a discernable membrane of plastic on one side. Some thin ethafoam bags do not have this membrane. You need one with it, as you will see shortly. No membrane? You bought the wrong TV!

Cut out a panel of the material about a foot square, with no printing on it and avoiding any holes put in to stop you suffocating your children with it. On a cutting board (or flattened, breakfast-cereal packet) lay the panel flat and then take a straight edge and scalpel, or very sharp craft knife, slice it into strips approximately ⅛ th of an inch wide and almost as long as the panel, leaving about ½ an inch uncut. Repeat this until you have made as many strips as you want to make flies. The end result is a tassel of ethafoam strips all held together at one end. This is the body material.

The rest of the fly uses, long shanked hooks, pheasant tail fibres, brown tying thread, badger and dyed yellow cock hackles and brown partridge breast feathers.

Put the hook in the vice, this is a size 10 LS, and run on a bed of the brown thread.

Tie in a bunch of cock pheasant tail fibres with the tail about the same length as the hook.

Snip off the waste ends at an angle. Then tie in a strip of the prepared ethafoam you prepared earlier.

Wind back and forth with tight turns (hence the earlier quest for the membrane-reinforced ethafoam) to build up a body, finishing at the tail end, tie it in with three or four tight touching turns. Pull the waste end tightly to load it with tension. Cut it off as close to the turns of thread tying the ethafoam in. The tiny end should disappear under the last turn. If it doesn’t, then take another turn or two over it.

You should now have a brown band of tying thread right at the end of the body. Now take one ribbing turn forward and then make several close touching turns of the thread to make another brown band of tying thread.

Then carry on with the ribbing turns forward over the rest of the body. Continue with the thread to just behind the eye to make a bed of thread to take the hackles.

Prepare the feathers by stripping off the fluffy fibres at the base of the stalks. Lay the partridge feather down on the bench concave side uppermost.

Lay the yellow dyed cock hackle, concave side uppermost, on top of the partridge feather with the base fibres of each feather aligned with each other.

Lay the badger cock hackle, concave side uppermost on top of both stacked feathers and align its lower fibres with those of the other feathers.

Carefully pick up the stacked feathers and, keeping them aligned, tie them in, all together, winding the thread over the stalks until they reach the front of the body.
Trim off the waste ends of the stalks. Leave the thread angling here.

Take the badger hackle tip in the pliers and wind it fully up to the thread and catch it in with two tight turns. Keep the thread dangling here still. Tweek off the hackle point. Take the yellow dyed cock hackle tip in the pliers and wind it fully through the badger hackle turns until it reaches the thread. Tie it in tightly and then quickly wind the thread through the wound cock hackles, take a couple of turns of the thread in front of the partridge feather making a short bed behind the eye. Tweek off the hackle tip.

Take the partridge feather tip in the hackle pliers and make two turns or even three if you can manage it in front of the wound cock hackles and tie it in as tightly as you dare. Make a whip finish. Tweek off the partridge feather tip. Stroke and hold all the feather fibres back out of the way and varnish the head well. Finish off by pulling one of the waste hackle tips through the eye whilst the varnish is still wet.

Voila the EBM!

This fly caught me my biggest ever river trout, which is probably why it gives me such a lot of confidence when I use it.

Regular Rod

Helping the police with their enquiries...

2011-03-06T21:38:00.000Z

No I am not wearing wrist restraints but I hope to be helping the police fly fishing club on Tuesday evening with a "talk". I've never done one of these before and was thus stimulated into thinking things through in some detail. What can I tell them? Well then it dawned on me that telling people how to fish is not always a good idea.

I understand that there is a saying from Spain that goes along these lines:

"You may criticise an Englishman's wife but never criticise his driving!"

Is angling not a little bit like that? Am I causing offence when I pass on a few bits and pieces intended to help?

Well maybe the best thing to do is simply explain how I go about this wonderful Sport of ours and if the ideas are deemed worthy of trial then so be it, and may it bring us all great pleasure.

The only certainty that I can offer the police and you dear blog reader is that those three, integrated principles touched on in this earlier post and then this one are paramount to the angler's enjoyment and success.

You can drop onto any point of this "wheel of fortune" and you will find it leads you to the other two. Try it! Start at "Be stealthy" - this makes it possible to "Observe" without scaring the fish and so gives you more chance to "Fish where the fish are". Start at "Fish where the fish are" because you happen to know that there are fish just there and if you decide to "Be stealthy" you will get chance to "Observe" them and what they are eating. Start with "Observe" and okay your first observations might be seeing scared fish fleeing before you. Never mind! That signal should encourage you to "Be stealthy" and, by so doing, scare no more fish, see where they are and begin to "Fish where the fish are". Round and round this wheel turns and much joy can we derive from where it takes us...

Regular Rod

Stephen asked...

2011-02-24T14:07:00.008Z

"My question is ' Why no wings on your flies thus far, is tradition overtaken by efficacy and common sense'?

I realise a number of gifted anglers of the past, Richard Walker being but one, avoided tying wings on Dry flies, suggested that after 30 mins fishing, the wings would be a mess. Is this your reasoning?"

Ironically the first fly I ever tied had two badger hackle point wings and was tied, in an engineer's vice on the kitchen table, according to instructions by Dick Walker in one of his letters to Maurice Ingham in that wonderful book "Drop Me A Line"!

It worked and led to a lifetime of dry fly fishing...

To answer the question properly: I do use wings on some flies but only one of my flies uses a traditional type of wing and even that is very "North Country" in style being tied leaning forward over the hook eye. This is a traditional pattern for the river Dove that Staffordshire angler, Tony Bridgett, taught me. It is called a "Cock Winged Dun" the word cock meaning that the wing is cocked forward, not that the feather comes from a cock. It comes from a starling's wing actually. This is a very good fly to see on a dappled water as is commonly found on many parts of the river Dove.

Click on the picture to see it larger, click it again to see it at maximum size

The rest of my winged flies are either hairwinged, like the mayflies and sedge in the picture, or else they are made of polypropylene and are usually meant to represent spinners after they have finished egg laying.

Traditional split winged floaters as well as being beautiful, have the added advantage of being easy to see on the water but hackled flies seem to work better for me. They are quicker to tie and keep their shape better than the traditional feather fibre winged offerings.

What do you do about wings on your flies?

Regular Rod

Still approaching but...

2011-02-19T18:00:00.004Z

What fly to put on?

Aha! Don't get caught out by that question. You can make an intelligent guess what to put on but remember what we have been considering in the approach. Let the results of your observations determine the fly you will start the season with...

Yes put something on before you start. (Ooh very Norman Evans!) Do be ready though to change it immediately you have been able to reconnoitre the water.

Nevertheless, we can start guessing.

In spring we often have the benefit of the end of the Large Dark Olive's season. The Large Dark Olive (or LDO) is a true winter fly putting in its first appearances towards the end of a typical trout season. It then carries on appearing to conduct its affairs of the air world until the early part of May. It is worth carrying something to represent it in the Dun or Sub Imago stage of its life. There are lots of artificials that can be used for this fakery. You already you know of the Grey Duster.

Here is another, very well known fly that can be tied to make a pretty good effort at the real thing. You will find it particularly effective when there is some sunshine around, under which conditions it seems to have the edge over the Grey Duster. It is the Kite's Imperial and was invented by Oliver Kite, I believe inspired at the time by a traditional Welsh pattern. The original dressing asked for a thorax made by doubling the body material, heron herl, back and forward again as is done with a Pheasant Tail Nymph. The version here is slightly easier to tie as experience has shown that a thorax is better hinted at by the list in the hackle.

The materials are worthy of consideration. The hackles specified are Honey Dun but that choice is almost certainly for making Kite's Imperials to mimic the Blue Winged Olive rather than the LDO. By using subtle variations of hackle you can make Kite's Imperial represent many different types of upwinged naturals. For the LDO we will use Dark Honey Dun hackles, which in this case we are using the cape in the bottom right corner of the picture on the right.

Here are the materials you will need for a Kite's Imperial to represent a Large Dark Olive. They consist of: the Dark Honey Dun cape; a Heron hackle with long herls; fine gold wire size 26 gauge is good; purple tying thread and for the size of fly we are intending to fake we will use a size 14 hook.

Don't forget if you use this fly for other upwinged flies such as a Blue Winged Olive you will use a more orangey cape. If you tie some little versions for the Iron Blue Dun, you would use a very dark cape and maybe use heron herl from a wing primary that are a lovely deep slate blue. Heron feathers cannot be bought and sold in the UK. You have to find your own. You need to look around for the feathers on the ground under their heronries or, typically in a hard winter, look for corpses usually washed up on the bank after the floods. It is Nature's way that for these splendid birds life is pretty tough in winter. That is probably why you rarely see herons that are not in the peak of condition, only the strongest survive to pass on their genes.

Here is how to tie it:

Run on a bed of the purple thread, well waxed to where the bend starts

Take a large hackle from the cape, tear off a good bunch of fibres and tie them in to make a tail a little longer than the hook

Bite off a length of the ribbing wire and tie it in as shewn (biting it off makes a little hook on the end that will grip well when tied in fully)

Take five herls and nip about 5mm off the thin ends. Tie them in as shewn.

Wind a bed of touching turns back to the starting position tying the tails, herls and wire in tightly as you go. Trim off the waste ends of the hackle fibres used to make the tail.

Wind the herls up to the start of the body and tie them in tightly.

Wind the gold wire ribing in open spiralled turns in the opposite direction to the way the herls were wound. Tie in the wire tightly and rock the wire back and forth until it fatigues and breaks away. This makes another little hook on the end of the wire and two more tight turns of thread will anchor it very firmly by that hook.

Trim away the herls and wind the thread forward two or three more turns to make a bed for the hackle stalk.

Tie in the hackle with the concave side facing you and the stripped stalk pointing to the rear of the fly. The tying in turns make a neat bed for you to wind the hackle.

Wind the hackle, six turns is good for a hook this size (14). Tie it in and wind the thread quickly through the hackle to avoid trapping too many fibres (do it slowly and you will catch in lots of hackle fibres, so do it quickly) finishing with the thread just behind the hook eye. Tweak off the hackle tip held in your hackle pliers. Make a neat whip finish of three or four turns. Cut off the thread. Varnish the head well. Sally Hanson Hard as Nails is good. Whilst the varnish is still wet take the hackle tip out of the pliers and use it as a pull-through to clean out the surplus varnish from the hook eye.

The finished Kite's Imperial

The most useful sizes for Kite's Imperial through the season are 14, 16 and 18 but do try a few extreme sizes like 10, 12 and 20. The LDO can seem right on a 14 one day and then another you might need a 12!

This is a fine fly and has caught me well over an Imperial Ton of fish in the past forty odd years. Here is an extract from an old journal of mine that I had posted on a forum six years ago this spring. It illustrates the efficacy of this splendid fly quite well.

5th May 2005
"On what was intended to be a saunter up to Black Barn Weir and the end of the day, I peeped over some sedges that were already high enough to shield the right side of a very long and slow eddy. A rise had me genuflecting immediately. The saunter forgotten I slid into a vantage spot to sit and watch awhile. Several fish were rising. Two or three in the central main downstream current but...

Less than a yard from my bank head facing downriver but actually into the eddy's upstream current was a monster of a brown trout. The light was awkward but I could see it was a cock fish and that it was longer than my arm (and much fatter than my arm). What was it eating? Well it was eating anything and everything, midges, duns, bits of stuff I couldn't see, everything! I had on a Kite's Imperial tied on a Drennan Super Specialist carp/barbel hook nominally a size 14 but really between a normal 16 and 18. The big fish had a beat. It went downriver a yard from the bank passing under some dead stalks from last year's marginal fringe. It carried on down a good 10 yards then turned left coming back upriver, on the edge of the current proper, passing me and turning to start his mopping up operations all over again. I decided to cast as he reached the overhanging dead stalks. He tilted, levelled off and then I struck...

He fought quite well but I was able to keep him turning and turning until he was turning above my net and that was that. The hook was never going to come out without human intervention, it being firmly in the right hand scissors. Out it came and wasting no time I decided to weigh him. I can guess fish up to 3 pounds quite well but I don't have fish of this size often enough to trust my guesses.

The scales showed me 8¼ lbs. So in my head subtracting 1lbs 2oz for the wet net my beautiful brown trout was 7lbs 2oz, or was it? After a careful release and the butterflies in my stomach settling down I picked up my scales to put them away. Aargh! The dratted things weren't zeroed properly. In fact they were fast by quite a bit. I ended up guessing that I'd been a good half pound out. It was therefore "only" 6½ lbs or so. Who cares? It was a splendid fish and after all, "Numbers don't matter anyway" do they?

The saunter was reinstated. A few fish were caught in the Black barn Weirpool. A pleasant 10 minutes were spent chatting with a young man from Congleton who had had a good day. A last cast at the junction pool by the big island and then home.

The evening had been a delight and reinforced my long held view that this river, on which I have been taught so very much, is one of the very best places to be. If they won't hang my carcase over it when I die (so the maggots can drip out and feed the fish) maybe they'll use my fishing clothes to reinforce the bank somewhere? Anything like that will do. I just don't like leaving the place behind!"

Regular Rod

Approaching some more...

2011-01-27T15:36:00.010Z

So you have carefully positioned yourself somewhere downstream where you can watch and wait awhile. You have enjoyed some of the wildlife in and around the river. Maybe watched a little fry like the one pictured earlier? Sometimes this can be heartbreaking. I was once watching a little tiny troutlet minding his own business, intercepting the occasional food item. When, from under a fist-sized stone, without any warning and so suddenly it made me jump, a Bullhead darted foward to engulf my little friend in one gulp! The bullhead quickly disappeared, back under the stone from whence it had launched its deadly, Monkfish-like, attack.

If the bigger fish showed themselves no doubt you were able to enjoy some Sport with them, but now you decide it is time to start working your way upstream. Go slowly. Stop a lot and keep soaking it all in. Look around for those fish that will turn you into stone if they see you. Keep low when near the water. As you approach a new run, or pool, or riffle, or eddy remember to watch out for those fish in the edge. It does no harm to stop and sit down cross legged on a rock in the water's edge or loll on the grass and do a mini-watch and wait as if starting all over again. Take your time to enjoy the pageant as it unfolds before you.

Here is a picture (click it twice to get it as big as possible) taken whilst on a mini-watch. If anything the view point is too high as I held the camera up to get a better sight of what was going on.. It is hard to see but there are at least two rises happening as the picture was taken. They are on the right of the faster water in mid-stream. The thing is, I had already seen two very decent fish rising in the fast water but was faced with another of those sentry-on-guard adventures that we looked at together last summer. If the writing is too small under the picture by the way, just do Ctrl and + until it is big enough for you to read it easily.

So staying sat down we catch the nearer fish then the next one and this allows us chance to fish for the fish in the fast water. All this is done on your waterproofed backside. Do get into the habit of fishing whilst sitting down. It sends some folk into a shocked state when they see you doing this but they start doing it too when they see your success rate. I was once asked to fish a spot for a photograph for a magazine. We were on the Derbyshire Wye together. I crept into position and fished. After a few moments my writer friend came over and said "You will have to stand up for the photograph!" "Why?" "You look as if you are Coarse Fishing!" This got me laughing so much he saw the funny side of things, abandoned that photographic opportunity and later found a composition that was much better and yes, I was sitting, huddled up in the hemp agrimony and the figwort and hidden from the fish. If you are a Coarse angler please do not forget your hard learned habits of concealment just because you are now dry fly fishing.

Those nice fish in the fast water? Well I managed one of them. It was not particularly big but it is probably the most beautiful brown trout in the world, well my little world anyway. Here it is. Who says, "Only rainbow trout have spots on their tails?"

Do you recognise this trout's exquisite markings on its sides? They form the front cover of the 'EXPERT' information booklet that comes with each 'EXPERT' Dry Fly Line...

We'll experiment with flies next time. Oh, in the meantime, if you have any observations or questions to put, don't hesitate to use the comment facility. You will get my undivided attention!

Regular Rod

Anonymous (well it was Stephen really) said:

2011-01-19T14:47:00.004Z

"I fully understand the value of thorough reconnaissance, but like a lot of anglers I have to travel a fair distance to follow my sport. How long do I wait before I go searching for the Trout when they are not rising and what tactics do you use to do so?"

The real answer to the first part of this very reasonable question is: "It all depends..."

It depends on: what time of year it is; what time of day you are starting; the nature of the water you are fishing; and what you can see already now you are there.

At the beginning and end of the season the best of the fishing day is usually compressed into a short time of about three or four hours in the centre of the daylight hours. This is variable though, as weather conditions can change and a sudden warm spell occur that can extend the day until dark as flies and fish make the most of these special occasions, but generally you will be doing most of your fishing in that central part of these shorter days. So if you have arrived at the at the waterside by 11:00 you will be waiting a short time and if no rises are evident within half an hour you would do well to, slowly, go-a-hunting, working your way upstream until you find either rising fish or see a fish on station that looks like it might come up to your artificial.

In high summer the dry fly fishing day is more complicated but we are blessed with more hours of opportunity. Complicated in that it starts and stops and starts again and stops and starts again...

Get there before dawn and you will very likely find that there are fish rising. These have probably been feeding all night. You would start fishing immediately in these circumstances, but an hour or so after dawn everything goes quiet. This has prompted me to think that when we say, at around 08:30 or so, "We are too early!" we are kidding ourselves. We are actually too late, for the first activity of the day that is.

At the "normal" time of starting, mid-morning, you will probably have to wait a while before any serious hatch, and consequent rise, gets under way. To answer part of your question, your own mood should determine how long you are prepared to watch and wait.

For the second part of your question, you can have a perfectly reasonable and productive time searching for fish that are on station, not yet rising but might be tempted by a fake of a terrestrial (particularly in the weeks after the Hawthorn Fly has been on the river). Fish seem to seize these quickly, as terrestrials on the water are opportunities that can easily be missed. Hence the often violent takes that a terrestrial, such as a Charles Cotton's Black Fly can induce.

Usually brown trout will be found lurking in the edges under the canopy of bankside vegetation, whilst if you are fishing the Derbyshire Wye you will have the added bonus of Wild Rainbow Trout that hang around in mid-river amongst the fronds of Ranunculus fluitans. Either of these will respond to the inducement of a bushy fly representing a terrestrial. Three of my favourites for this job are: of course the Charles Cotton's Black Fly; the Double Badger; Nondescript Sedge; and the Red Hackle (to be shown on this blog in future)

The Sedge fly is a fly associated with the evenings but they do put in appearances at other times too.

If you are starting your day of dry fly fishing later in the day, you may be latching onto a rise that is already underway. Now you must try and determine what flies the fish are eating. You don't have to be very scientific or detailed about all this. There is no real need to know the exact species and sex of the flies that are on the menu. All you need to be sure of is, "Of the flies that are around right now, which are being eaten by the trout you would now like to catch?"

Having determined the answer as best you can, you now consider the colour, shape and size of those flies, look in your box and choose one that is pretty much similar to the real ones. At this time of day your fish will very likely be eating olives. These are little upwinged flies that stand on the water with their wings up high and when they do fly they look like tiny ballerinas as they waft themselves to tree cover to wait until they are ready to eclode as adults.

A good fly, amongst many others, to represent olives is the Grey Duster.

The day can switch off for a little while during high summer in the late afternoon or early evening. The hatching flies stop hatching and the adult flies are not yet ready to return to the river to lay their eggs. If the flies included the Blue Winged Olive (BWO) you can expect some activity later on as their adult females, the Sherry Spinners, return to the river to lay their eggs and finally die, ending up on the water, cruciform as spent spinners. These returns of spinner often lead to what many regard as the cream of dry fly fishing. You can read about some tactics here and the flies here.

This has turned out to be a long answer to a shortish pair of questions, please do forgive me. There is no firm answer, but I hope these ramblings will give you a starting point or two. Angling is unpredictable. Dry Fly Fishing is even more so. That's why we love it, I think...

Regular Rod

The Approach

2011-01-11T17:08:00.000Z

In our migration from stillwaters to dry fly fishing on rivers and streams we now come to the most important part of the move. It concerns what is going on in our heads. Let's start with: "Why do we go fishing?" To which the simple answer is because we love it. We get joy from it. So let's concentrate on that.

When we go to a stillwater we more or less start fishing as soon as we get to the water. Dry fly fishing is immediately different. If we arrive in the morning it may be some time before we start to "fish" simply because there appears to be nothing happening. No flies are out so no fish are rising, sometimes it looks like there is not a fish in the river...

Fear not dear angler. They are there and soon all will be revealed but for now we can start tuning in to our surroundings. This we do by finding some vantage point where we can sit and take it all in. Look around you.

What flowers are there? In the early season you can gain some insight into what the day's weather is going to be like by looking at flowers like the Lesser Celandine. If it has its petals wide open flat to the ground you can bet on four or more hours of dry weather.

Look in the water. Again in the early season you can gain reassurance that all is well with the river by spotting individual small fry, each of which has already taken charge of its own tiny territory. These troutlets behave just like their full grown counterparts; hanging in the flow, darting up, down and sideways to intercept microscopic organisms even now with all the grace that makes a trout so desirable to us.

This observation is not a waste of your time. It is part of your conditioning. If you are to gain the maximum pleasure from your dry fly fishing I truly believe it helps you if you become so familiar with your surroundings and all that is going on, that you gain the residential status referred to in an earlier post. This relaxed but thorough observation helps you to be more than just a visitor and it gets you ready for when, in an hour or two, the flies will be on the water and the rises will start.

When you do get there early, waste no time, go to the water, walk down river to the place you fancy starting. Get sat down somewhere where you can watch and start taking it all in. This is the start to your approach. Worry not about catching fish. As a resident you will have success anyway, you will see so many more opportunities because of your tuning in, but the bonus is that you will enjoy your dry fly fishing to the utmost and will come again. Next time we will actually start catching fish.

You can practice becoming a resident instead of a mere visitor right now, in the close season, by going for river walks and trying this reconnaissance out for yourself.

Regular Rod

Titchy bits of tackle...

2011-01-02T11:56:00.000Z

...to complete your dry fly arsenal.

So far in this imaginary migration from still waters to dry fly fishing on rivers and streams we have considered your clothing and how it will help you be successful whilst remaining comfortable on most days. We have nearly considered all the tackle requirements, some of which can almost certainly come from your still water gear, at least to get you started. There remains a few small items that are usually carried in the pockets of either your clothes or your fishing bag...

You will need some dry flies. Therefore you will need something to keep them in. There is a lot to be said for boxes that let the flies have a bit of room and not crush their hackles. BUT... there are modern dry flies that don't use spiky cock hack les and these can perhaps be best stored in boxes with slotted foam in them to grip the hooks and keep the flies all in neat rows. Expensive boxes are not essential. In fact, for large dry flies, like mayflies, spacious tins like those originally for strong mints are difficult to beat.

To the right of the top picture above you will see some bottles and some brown, raggy looking material. These are the potions and remedies for keeping your flies afloat and in good presentable condition. The brown stuff is Amadou and is my favourite material for drying flies out. You simply squeeze the fly in the Amadou and every bit of water is pulled out of the fly making it like new again. The alternative is to use one of the dessicant powders and follow the instructions on the container. Before fishing, you use one of the floatants to "proof" your fly against the water. This proofing is never permanent, in despite of the claims, so you just have to keep repeating the anointing process throughout the fishing day. It is something we all get used to.

The forceps and scissors can come from your other fishing tackle. The function is universal so there is no need to buy fresh ones, unless you really want to.

Some monofilament may need to be acquired in addition to your regular still water stock. Simply make sure you have a stock of the gauges described in the earlier post about leaders and tippets.

Well that just about covers the tackle. There now remains one of the most interesting parts of the migration from still water fly fishing to dry fly fishing in rivers and streams. That is the Approach and we will start on that next time.

Regular Rod

Landing Net

2010-12-30T17:17:00.001Z

If you are making the move from stillwaters, what landing net did you use? Did it have a long handle? Did it have a good sized head so you could easily fit big fish in it? If you answered yes to both these questions you need not be out buying a new net for your move to dry fly fishing.

There is a view in some quarters that a net is not needed. It's a macho thing and unfortunately such an attitude is bad for the fish, especially if the fish are to be returned.

Why use a net? Nearly the right question...

Why use a long handled net of good sized capacity? Now that is the right question!

If your net has a long handle you can bring your fish over and into it much more quickly than without. This means your fish is not exhausted, will recover more quickly and have a better chance of surviving. In a fishery where wild fish are the quarry this is vital for the future. You can look on Warren's blog at some video of how this works in practice. From 04:09 to 05:04, less than a minute, from being hooked to being landed. This fish is far from exhausted and is beaten by the simple fact that the net is out there ready for it and eventually it is steered over and into it, despite its best efforts to be elsewhere.

Don't be embarrassed if you are carrying a net around that others deem is too large. That larger capacity will also come in mighty handy one day. Imagine being without it when you needed it! For years I only had one net. A large Efgeeco that served me for carp, chub, pike, seatrout, roach and oh yes, trout! There are better, pan style, knitted nets nowadays that give the fish a much better time of it. Take your inspiration from the modern coarse match anglers rather than the Victorian dry fly anglers when deciding on your net design.

What about afterwards? You've landed your fish and it is time to get the hook out. With the fish laying in the folds of the net on soft ground, if the hook is not accessible to your fingers you will need your forceps. The same ones you used for your other fishing will be fine, so that is something else you can save money on without sacrificing efficiency.

There is another item that you might consider using if you are practicing Catch and Release and if the location you are fishing has no soft vegetation to lay your net on during the unhooking. If you have done a bit of specimen hunting amongst the so called coarse fishes you will no doubt already have an unhooking mat. They are a bit awkward to carry about being bulky, but if all you have is stony ground to lay your fish on then why not give one a try?

Regular Rod

What have you already got?

2010-12-28T13:08:00.000Z

If you are making the move from lakes and reservoirs to rivers and streams it can be more to your advantage to spend your money on your fishing ticket(s) than on tackle. You already have some tackle so let's take a look at it and see what can be put to use without having to buy new. Of course eventually, if you fall in love with the Sport, then you will indeed be investing in some new items specifically for your dry fly fishing.

What will you need? Let's be conventional for now and agree to leave Macedonian, Medieval, Tenkara and other fixed line arrangements to one side. So, among your stillwater rods, do you have one that is between eight and nine feet long and that uses a line no heavier than a six weight and no lighter than a four weight? If you have then that solves your rod requirements. The only cost may be to buy a spray can of matte black paint, to paint the rod and rings so you get rid of any shiny surfaces before they scare all your fish away. Simply assemble the rod. Mask off the corks and maybe the writing on the butt then waft two or three thin coats over the whole rod making sure the guides (if not already black) end up matte black too.

If you are going to be spending money on a new rod for dry fly fishing, choose a rod of eight and half feet to nine feet long that uses a number five weight line and has a middle to tip action. Most importantly your rod needs to be matte with no shiny whippings or fittings. Yes there will be those who suggest other rod lengths and other weights of line and other actions but if you start with a rod as suggested here, it will serve you very well on most rivers and streams in all wind and weather conditions and let you build on your own experiences. If you are anything like most dry fly fanatics you will end up with a cupboard full of rods representing a great variety of line weights, rod lengths and rod actions but you will come back to this starting point rod again and again.

So, this rod from your stillwater armoury, have you got a reel with a floating line (any floating line) on it to suit the rod? Yes? Well, for now, that has saved you some more money but... You will need to change the colour of the line. To do this you need a Pantone or similar broad tipped permanent marker pen in dark brown. This next bit is messy so put on some rubber gloves before pulling off twenty yards of the line from the reel and then carefully rub the line with the marker, working your way forward until the front twenty yards of the line are now brown. Okay this is not the perfect answer but it is a very important improvement to make before you begin dry fly fishing in earnest.

If you are going to buy yourself a new reel and a new line make sure the reel is NOT SHINY and try to get as small and as light a reel as you can. We are looking for tools not jewels! Your reel is not (well should not be) a piece of jewellery. It is there to hold the line and not much else.

Look at these two reels, I've had them for the same length of time. One of them was a prize in a Wild Trout Trust competition, only one of them has made it to the riverside though (clue: it has a line loaded on it). There is no place for shiny stuff when Dry Fly Fishing!

As for the line...

Whether you decide to invest in one of the 'EXPERT' lines or choose something else is entirely up to you but please, for your own sake, do end up with a mucky brown line on your reel even if you have to colour it yourself.

Next time we will look at landing nets and some of the smaller but pretty well essential items for your dry fly fishing.

Regular Rod

Middling...

2010-12-17T18:32:00.001Z

So having considered our tops and our bottoms we can now consider our middles.

In mountain biking circles in the Peak District in Derbyshire there is a saying: "There is no such thing as 'bad' weather only incorrect clothing."

You must clad yourself as you see fit for the weather on the day but whatever the weather do remember that basic principle... Stealth is required at all times, so choose the colours accordingly.

On a hot day it may be best to wear a shirt and carry your tackle in a little shoulder bag.

On a temperate day you may be happier with the weight of your gear spread over your torso in the pockets of a 'weskit' (waistcoat that is) or a vest. Personally I don't like those high waisted vests that are intended for wading as they present all your fly boxes and stuff on the front of your breasts. Crawling on your tummy to approach your fish becomes a nightmare when the bulky pockets get in your way and it is impossible to adjust them out of the way.

When I wear a vest I like the long type like a travel vest. On days when it might rain then it is worth carrying a rain garment in with your tackle.

This summer I treated myself to a Rohan Windshadow in Trail Green. It folds away in its own inside pocket and it works very well indeed.

On days when it is simply raining all day then you will need a suitably coloured coat. I still use a Barbour because I get involved with thorns on some of the rivers I frequent but there are other excellent jackets of more modern materials. Yet again the colour is paramount if you are to have any chance at keeping your presence unknown to the fish.

On those hot days when you will be wearing a shirt, don't forget that your arms may be the wrong colour for hiding from the fish, so wear long sleeves and choose materials that will defend you from nettles and such...

Well that's the clothes dealt with, next time we can start getting controversial with some tackle talk. A subject to almost guarantee disagreement when discussed between two or more keen anglers. No don't worry. If you have already been fly fishing in still waters you will be surprised how much of your gear is perfectly usable for dry fly fishing on the rivers and streams.

Regular Rod

The Lines...

2010-12-07T17:28:00.000Z

Click on the image to enlarge it and click again to get a closer look still

...are now available in WF3F, WF4F, WF5F, WF6F and WF7F. They are the best quality possible today and are the only lines made specifically for the rigours of dry fly fishing, with no consideration towards other types of angling. You can of course use them for other stuff, like wets and nymphs, but they are designed and built for dry fly fishing.

There has been no compromise made at all. The best and latest core material was chosen, so memory won't spoil your first casts of the day. The coating uses the finest glass balls, so the surface is as smooth as possible and yet the line floats really well. The anti-friction content is a special material that doesn't cause a shine, so lets the lines be slick running through your rod's guides, yet still keep a dull finish to avoid flash, even in bright sunlight. The brown colour is unique, being that of smooth, high organic content, MUD! This has proven to be the best colour for avoiding the flicker and flash effect of pale coloured lines, as you make your false casts. You will frighten fewer fish when casting this line.

The taper is especially designed to let you make accurate and delicate casts with only a very short amount of line through your tip ring. In fact, during the trials, it proved easy to cast with just the weight of the line threaded up along the rod and no fly line actually outside the tip ring. Then, when you need to make longer casts, the combination of the belly, the rear taper and the special anti-friction material in the coating lets you do this with ease and accuracy. If you follow the advice about leaders, in the booklet, you will find even at long range your casts can turn over nicely and your presentations can still be delicate to help avoid scaring your fish.

The packaging is simple but attention to detail has been continued here as well. The lines are bound with "pipe cleaners" rather than tapes. The thought of a nearly fifty quid line being accidentally cut when snipping off tapes is too horrifying to bear. Each line comes on a spool, so you do not risk kinking, knotting tangles when trying to get the line onto your reel. It is a simple matter to push a pencil through the card insert in the spool and get someone to hold this "axle" whilst the spool turns as you load the line. If you are doing this alone, simply make two small columns of books or magazines a couple of inches apart and trap each end of the pencil inside books opposite each other in the columns. Then wind the line onto your reel whilst the spool turns between the two columns of books, or magazines.

You will be pleased to note that each line has a label attached to the reel end of the line with the legend "ATTACH THIS END TO BACKING", which will save you from putting the line on the reel back to front.

How much? £47 plus postage and packing. These are lines that I vouch for personally and are guaranteed against any manufacturing defect. If you would like one, drop me an email on dryflyexpert@o2.co.uk telling me your requirements.

That's the end of the commercial break. We'll finish off clothing in the next post and move onto... tackle.

Regular Rod

Getting down to the bottom of the subject

2010-12-06T23:32:00.000Z

Where you, dear angler, are the "subject".

Last time we examined your head, so now we consider your other end. What you wear on your lower reaches will depend on several considerations. Will you be wading? Will you be deeply wading? (No not deeply wailing! Save that for church.) Or will you be fishing from the bank and only the bank. In a dry summer it may be much more comfortable for the bank angler to leave the wellies behind and instead wear some outdoor boots. I know some very successful dry fly anglers who wear chest high wading stockings in all conditions, even though they do not intend to wade. They value the protection above the potential for cooking a little on warmer days. These considerations are mainly down to where you will be fishing and your personal preferences, but...

Remember that your quarry must not be aware that you are there. A low profile is most desirable. To this end if you are not wading then the posture of your daily supplications can bring an answer to your prayers, but often, even better, being seated is the way to keep low yet still be able to cast and control your line reasonably well. So on your knees, or on your backside, the matter of what you are wearing on your legs and lower loins becomes important.

If you have overtrousers that resist the onslaught of thorns, thistles, puddles and cow pats then your problems are solved more comfortably than with chest high wading stockings. Mine are inexpensive, Goretex bib and brace style trousers with built in braces. Ex-German or Dutch army, they cost about £30 and they are tough enough to last 5 seasons at least. Whatever you do get, make sure you wear them even on hot days. A pair of nice Rohan or Craghoppers outdoor trousers will be cool and comfortable until you start working your way through waist high nettles and thistles, then you will wish you had slipped the overtrousers over them before you decided to angle in places where the fish do not have a well worn path beaten to them.

This is mundane stuff but if you overlook these details it can spoil your chances and your comfort. So please do take it seriously when you begin this toe-to-toe, creeping skulduggery we call dry fly fishing.

Regular Rod

"Clothes maketh man..."

2010-11-30T15:18:00.000Z

They also maketh more successful anglers, especially anglers who must be stealthy for their branch of our wonderful Sport. If you are coming to dry fly fishing from still water fly fishing you probably have perfectly suitable clobber already. BUT there is a chance that you may need to watch out for the colours. The lush vegetation by the side of a typical lowland river means that greenish hues rather than limestone "whites" will be more appropriate. Darker shades seem to be the most useful, let cow pats be your inspiration rather than the High Street.

Clothes can contribute, or detract, from your ability to make use of the second and third basic principles for successful dry fly fishing, observation and stealth. Let us begin at the top with the head. Starting with the eyes. Your polarised spectacles will be vital for fish spotting and protection from a wayward cast. Mine are a very old pair of Optix Cormorants that are a pale grey and work well even in dim light. Whatever sort you prefer, you can optimise the effectiveness of your polarised spectacles by wearing a hat with a full brim to shade them from behind as well as above. This will let you see more clearly, in the same way a lens hood often improves the quality of photographs.

On a recent comment, Warren kindly put a link to a photograph he took that shows two pretty reasonable examples of good shape and good colours of hat to go for.

John's hat is a darker greenish olive of rabbit fur felt. This is pretty good in cool weather and is okay in light rain too. Mine is the khaki one in canvas duck that came from Orvis. It needed modifying by covering the silly leather hat band with a strip of material, webbing in my case, so damp flies can be stuck into it. That way they do not bring water into the fly boxes and rust all that hard work away...

This hat has been superceded at Orvis by the River Guide Hat and sports a reinforced brim so you can shape it. My advice would be to keep it shaped like an upside down dish to get the maximum shading effect for your polarised spec's.
You may like to obtain several hats to cope with the vagaries of weather, a dark green or brown straw hat maybe, for boiling hot days in summer; one of canvas duck for most days and maybe something waterproof, or at least water resistant for rainy days. Just make sure that whatever you get, your hats should shade the back of your polaroids as well as the top and, most importantly, they are always as drab as you can get.

Well that's your head taken care of. Next time trousers and how they also contribute to observation and stealth!

Regular Rod

Migration...

2010-11-24T23:38:00.000Z

John Neville in typical pose at Ladybower in the late 60's

...from still waters

"Whence come you?"

"The Lakes and Reservoirs!"

"Whither directing your course?"

"The rivers and streams!"

"What do you hope to find?"

"The true secrets of dry fly fishing!"

Of course they are not really secrets! Nevertheless, there are some key differences from all the things you had to learn whilst fishing the Lakes and Reservoirs. Having a go at dry fly fishing need not be a disappointing experience.

Over the next few weeks we can consider some of the differences facing the many anglers who, having built up a treasury of experience on still waters, fancy getting to know, first hand, the joys of dry fly fishing on rivers and streams.

There are mainly 3 adjustments to make in a migration from still waters to dry fly rivers:

Clothes
Tackle
Approach

There! Now that doesn't look too hard a list does it? It need not be but we will take it on in easy stages just to make sure. If you are fancying this migration do feel free to drop in a comment with any aspects of the move that concern you particularly and I will make sure we cover your points specifically.

Regular Rod