Category — Fly Tying

I’m pretty bad when it comes to procrastination. For the last couple of closed seasons I’ve always had great plans of tying up hundreds of flies to last all season: nymphs, streamers, loads of dries. I always end up getting distracted by things like winter hillwalking and grayling fishing. This means my season’s fly supply has to be replenished on the fly (pun intended), which generally leads to panic tying and missed fishing time.

This evening I finally got myself in gear and started preparing industrial quanities of hare’s mask dubbing. All that was needed was a pair of scissors and a home made dubbing rake, made from part of an old hacksaw blade. I find I use hare’s mask, in one form or another, in most of the flies I end up tying. In past, darker days I’ve been a user of packet bought dubbings. These days I’ve grown to be in awe of the range of fantastic, buggy dubbing to be found by harvesting a mask yourself.

So I’ve now got one of those small sewing boxes full of different mixes of dubbing, all neatly compartmentalised and ready for some turbo-flytying. Tomorrow I will do the same for a couple of dyed hare’s ears I’ve got. It won’t be long before there’ll be enough dubbing combinations to take over the frigging planet.

If you’ve never tried this approach to getting your dubbing, it’s well worth a go. Half the fun is comming up with your own dubbing combinations to suit the kind of fly you’re going to tie. It’s also a lot cheaper and makes you feel like you’re a *real man*, which I find rather nice.

Things have been hot recently. Weather wise I should add. It seems there’s been continuous sunshine for weeks and all my regular rivers are looking thin and summer silky.

I managed to fish three days in a row this weekend, down on my favourite bit of water. We spread things out so no water was fished more than once. Turned out to be a fascinating run of fishing. I think it highlighted some important things to me, which I may have ‘known’ already but are best learnt with real experience.

First night it was hot, with a little breeze to start with. We headed to a bit of river we haven’t fished before, but were dissapointed to find it was poor fly water. Actually it was more reminiscent of a narrow loch, the surface rippled in the wind. Not the nice streamy pocket water we usually fish. The water temperature was just about right for simmering bulgar wheat, so we walked and walked in search of riffly water. I felt smug that my decision to wet-wade was not going to be regretted.

Eventually came to a cracking pool, with dozens of channels between streamer weed and rocks. I waited whilst the brother fished the nice bits. As he was flicking the fly line out of the rod tip, the fly (a standard DHS, superbly tied once again) landed a couple of rod lengths ahead in some slow flowing water. A nice fish slashed at it and a Class A Bullet Strike followed, sending him packing to his bolt hole.

I ambled upstream finding more dead water and some enthusiastic parr feading on floating fag ends and anything else on the surface. It wasn’t until the sun was well gone, maybe 10.15, when I noticed some nice fish moving in a pool just downstream. I crept up and watched. There were mini-submarines in that pool. Big swirling wakes were all I saw of the fish as they supped down sedges and BWO spinners. One fish was well over 2lb judging by the water displacement, the other at least 2lb. Casting to them was just about impossible due to wading issues and sh!te casting ability on my part. So I accepted as much and enjoyed the knowledge that I’d found some whoppers.

These photos are of a BWO male spinner. As far as I know they don’t feature much in an evening rise, as it’s the females that lay eggs and die on the water. I think sherry spinners are much more vividly orange as well.

Next day and some serious fly tying took up a good bit of the day. I think I’ve cracked those DHEs. Seem to turn out well every time now. I tied a few with a bit of fluff to suggest a shuck. Not sure if that makes sod-all difference but I felt slightly intelligent doing so.

The weather was a little more cloudy this evening, and very humid. We were fishing at the bottom end of our more usual beat, again an area we haven’t fished much. A couple fish rose lazily, and I felt chuffed to catch a nice one of around 10oz to the DHE above. The brother had a few throughout the evening, to the DHS.

Something we both noticed was that drag was even more of an issue than normal, and it’s normally difficult to control. We reckoned the low water was making things worse, as the surface of the pools and flats we fished was always very ’swirly’ if you catch my drift. Of course all rivers are swirly, but this was noticibly difficult. I thought about things for a very long time and came up with an amazing formula:

warm water + crap casting + bad drag = difficult

Next night I opted for a longer leader than usual, probably around 15′, with oodles of limp tippet (if you know what I mean). This definitely helped the drag issues (of course), but my hyper-crap casting made controlling where the fly went interesting. This was worst when casting only a couple of feet of fly line, fishing pocket water at close range.

Interestingly I caught a grayling, which seem quite rare where I fish. I see Ali had a similar experience the other night. Total fluke on my part, I was just beginning to drag the size 12 DHS across the water to cast again. Late on the fish really started to show, taking some of the BWO spinners that had returned. Definitely some caenis feeding going on as well. And some sedge feeding fish, so all in all quite good given the tepid water.

So fishing three days in a row at this time of year taught me a lot. The importance of timing of course. At no stage was it really worth fishing before 9pm. Peak of any rising was 10-11pm. Spinner feeding fish are a damned arse to cast to when you’re fishing a long leader and can’t see a thing. Caenis feeding fish take the piss. Give me a sedge feeder any day, please. At least until my casting gets better (it will I hope).

And each night it was quite different. First night some rises, very late on. Second night not much, despite apparently better conditions. Third night the best by a mile, as there were more flies on the water. Just shows how much you miss out on by fishing only once a week. Solution: fish every day.

Well it’s a couple of days since my last trip out. I was fishing another Scottish river I’ve not been on before. Things looked promising with last weeks good weather building up to a glorious spring day on Saturday. I had my permit by 8 o’clock and was riverside before half past. At this time of year it’s actually not really worth fishing until nearer lunchtime, but I love being on a river almost anytime, especially on such a bright sunny day. I opted to start fising some upstream spiders through a couple of nice riffles, and noticed a little stab on the leader after about two casts. Turned out to be one of the smallest parr I’ve ever caught at about 3-4 inches. It’s always good to see a river with plenty of small fish like this as it bodes well for the future. I fished on for a while, before eventually moving to another run. Here I turned around and fished the spiders across and down just slightly slower than dead drift, and it wasn’t long before a pretty little half pounder came to hand.
It was soon midday, and at last some flies began to hatch. Great big march browns they were too, always a good bet to bring the better fish to the surface at this time of year. It wasn’t long before fish started moving to the hatching flies and I could fish a dry fly with confidence. On the leader was the deer hair emerger I mentioned before. It’s really a cracking fly, well worth trying.

Of course when actually fishing the barb will be crushed as I fish catch and release on the rivers around here. Here’s one of the pretty wee trout that were avidly munching on the marchs’.

Things were pretty sporadic after that as a few more waves of duns came off, occasionally sparking a little frenzy.
Later on I was back fishing spiders down through riffles and pools. In one particularly good looking pool I felt a slight ‘draw’ in the line as a fish turned on the point fly, and I was immediatley fighting a much better fish. He went absolutely crackers and lept about 2 feet out the water before heading for the sea. I followed him downstream and after a (too long a) while brought him to the net. A beautiful fish of 1 3/4 lb, and a lovely way to finish things up.

Fishing spiders has a long history, perhaps as old as fly fishing in this country. I find it is still a really good technique, although it can be very frustrating if not done correctly. I am by no means an expert, but I have just about got hold of the idea, and it’s starting to be pretty useful. I fish the spiders upstream dead drift, across and down and just about any way I think will be useful. The most important thing is to lead the flies through the current in a controlled manner, either dead drifting them, or letting them drop downstream just slightly slower than the current. I have a feeling this last point is particularly useful, because the water speed under the surface is generally progressively slower with increasing depth. So what looks like dead drift on the surface is perhaps not so 6 or 10 inches down. Thus by controlling the drift of the flies just a tiny bit slower than the current, I think you might get both a really good presentation, and immediate contact with any taking fish. Certainly worth a bit of perseverence.
Finally, here’s a shot I took after the last fish was released. Spot the trutta!