Last season was a bit of a learning experience for me - every season is. However last year i discovered why clyde style flies are really deadly at times. Fishing in a stiff wind the adult flies were being drowned - something not obvious unless you were actually in the water at the time of the hatch. These were floating down just a few inches under the surface and the fish were ignoring the flies on the surface and the nymphs. They were going for the easy prey - drowned adults. Once I had that sussed it led to some really good fishing while the rise was on. I'll have a couple of clyde style LDOs and March Browns in case I come across the same conditions again.
I invariably do well on this when the adult olives are drowned;
(http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/8245/sw4u.jpg) (http://img560.imageshack.us/i/sw4u.jpg/)
Yellow silk well waxed with clear wax, ( turns it a translucent olive), ribbed gold wire. Wing is a sparse bunch ( 4...6 fibres) of waterhen. "Hackle" is a small amount of hare's ear around the hook and the wing.
For a good march brown like that: Body orange silk very sparsely dubbed with dark hare's ear. Wing 4...6 fibres brown partridge, thorax and hackle dark hare's ear.
TL
MC
Now that looks very nice indeed. I'll be tying some of those :8)
Alex
I have had success with dry ldo's but march browns have always been a mystery to me. Best fishing I had had have been during mb hatches but always with a nymph. I might take up you advice Malcolm.
Nice tie mike.
Cheers
Paul
After a very poor early season in the NE last year I had also been giving this some thought and remembering various posts on drowned duns I was wondering if the old and now nearly lost technique of upstream wets / spiders would do the trick. That was my plan for this year anyway.
The flies I posted will only work well when fished upstream Fred, or at least with a dead drift. Anything other than "dead drifting" causes too much movement and puts the fish off. Dead drifting drowned duns don't drag! :)
Minimal drag, ( which is always present on sub-surface flies), is advantageous as it causes slight movement.
Basically they are fished like conventional dry flies. I have done exceedingly well with them. Much better than with "ordinary" spiders. They are really only "half spiders"! The slight wing movement works a lot better than a full hackle movement when imitating drowned duns. Also of course, they look a lot more like real flies than most spiders do.
TL
MC
Just getting a box filled for some early season rainbows, browns, cut throats, cutbows and indeed splakes. There may have been some buckets involved!
Quote from: zeolite on March 11, 2012, 10:41:44 PM
Just getting a box filled for some early season rainbows, browns, cut throats, cutbows and indeed splakes. There may have been some buckets involved!
Those'll do well for the target species. I've found the black and red bugger/egg sucking leech type things
very good bow catchers.
Are the Splake stocked or natural as it's rare for them to reproduce as a single species ?
The North Platte is an artificial river, controlled by dams and the spawning is not great. A lot of fish are stocked and it seems like it is hard to tell as they adapt very quickly. The cutbows breed very well I am told. The splakes are stocked.
I am told white is a good colour early on.
Quote from: Mike Connor on March 10, 2012, 10:53:08 PM
I invariably do well on this when the adult olives are drowned;
(http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/8245/sw4u.jpg) (http://img560.imageshack.us/i/sw4u.jpg/)
Yellow silk well waxed with clear wax, ( turns it a translucent olive), ribbed gold wire. Wing is a sparse bunch ( 4...6 fibres) of waterhen. "Hackle" is a small amount of hare's ear around the hook and the wing.
For a good march brown like that: Body orange silk very sparsely dubbed with dark hare's ear. Wing 4...6 fibres brown partridge, thorax and hackle dark hare's ear.
TL
MC
I tied some of these and sent to a friend in Montana. He fished them in DePuy Spring Creek a few days ago, on a three fly cast (the third fly being a spider) upstream. He used a silk line and a bamboo rod and the first rainbow trout took the March Brown softwing on the second cast. He then continued catching on these flies the rest of the day. He was very impressed but told me that the wing only lasted one fish after which it fished as a nymph. He suggested a fuller wing made from chickabou or maybe fibers from some feather. I replied that maybe the sparseness and mobility is what makes this pattern work so well. I have not had the opportunity to use them myself yet.
Any thoughts?
Stefan
Yes, the wings are delicate. Sometimes you will only get a couple of fish before they break off, on occasion only one good fish, as larger fish can "chew the fly up", although some will work for a dozen fish or more. However, they do work very well indeed. Using fuller wings makes them less effective. They are easy and quick to dress, and I think if you get a good fish on a fly like that then it has basically done its job. I have tried various things to make the wings more robust. Dark grey antron works, but the flies are not quite as effective. Some materials work very much better than others for specific purposes, but some are by nature delicate. Not really much one can do about it.
TL
MC
There are a couple of points here. You will hear time and time again that sparse raggy flies will catch fish better than most others. The softwings are an attempt to emulate flies like this to begin with, ( along with some other considerations), and they work. Adding more wing or other material makes them less effective although they will still catch fish, just not as well or as many.
Much the same applies to hackled spiders, if you put too much hackle on them they wont catch very well until they have been well shredded by the fish. I prefer my flies to be optimal immediately and not have to wait until a few ( often smaller) fish have savaged them before they work properly. Most of my small spiders have a maximum of eight hackle strands. They don't last very long but they catch a lot of fish, and they work immediately. Flies with a lot more hackle wont.
I think you have to view flies generally as basically "disposable" items. Trying to make them indestructible also often makes them less effective. Adding more material is a very bad way to do this anyway. You can reuse hooks if you want, so all you "lose" is a very small amount of material.
TL
MC
I have been using Mikes Waterhen Greenwells Softwing for three seasons. For one reason or another I have not had that many opportunities to fish it on the right water at the right time which funnily enough is important when evaluating a pattern :), just as important is fishing it in the right way. On the occasions that I did fish it, it took fish, more importantly , it was taken confidently and by good trout.
As a dead drift style it would appear to be quite optimum for many of the olives. I gave one of these a few seasons ago to an excellent angler that I know, earlier this season a good friend of mine showed me the fly stating that the other angler reckoned it was the best spider type pattern he had ever used for LDO's. Like many optimum styles , if you dont fish it correctly and at the right time it can appear merely average.
Another pattern that I have only used this season and also passed on by Mike is "Baillies Purple - seems a sensible name for it", basically a Sterwarts Black spider tied with purple silk rather than the brown. I can vouch that it is a good un when iron blues are on the menu and works quite well as a general dead drift pattern. Early days for me , but given my limited use of it so far, like the softwing, the takes were very confident and that is always the sign of a better than average pattern. I look forward to trying it next season during a decent IB hatch. I had a double hookup during one such hatch this season and during one mixed hatch of IB's and Small Spurwings they wanted it before it even hit the water. :o
When I posted this I expected that this year would be the same as last with the drowned adults being a mainstay. Instead the dry fly did it for me this year but I still had a good few to the clyde style flies.
I've now got a 12ft 3/4 blank arriving this week, specifically for short line wet fly fishing and am hoping to do much more clyde style wet fly fishing and will be using these style of flies early next season.
That's what keeps us going Malcolm
Whose blank is it as a matter of interest? I'll be interested in hearing how you get on.
Cheers
Paul
Quote from: Malcolm on October 08, 2012, 09:07:26 PM
When I posted this I expected that this year would be the same as last with the drowned adults being a mainstay. Instead the dry fly did it for me this year but I still had a good few to the clyde style flies.
I've now got a 12ft 3/4 blank arriving this week, specifically for short line wet fly fishing and am hoping to do much more clyde style wet fly fishing and will be using these style of flies early next season.
That's basically what I use for spider fishing, although I use "converted" match rods as I had trouble sourcing the right blanks for a long time. Actually works well for a lot of stuff, including dry fly work as long as you have the room. Can be awkward on some very overgrown streams though.
Quote from: bibio1 on October 08, 2012, 09:49:45 PM
Whose blank is it as a matter of interest? I'll be interested in hearing how you get on.
Cheers
Paul
Paul,
The description is absolute nonsense I believe but at the price I'm taking the chance. If it is unsuitable I'll make something else out of it.
http://theanglersroost.com/products/graphite-blanks/im-6-12ft-4pc-34wt-dark-brown-graphite-blank/ (http://theanglersroost.com/products/graphite-blanks/im-6-12ft-4pc-34wt-dark-brown-graphite-blank/)
Cheap and cheerful. It's ages since I built a rod looking at the bumph it seems that the new polymer whipping coatings need to be rotated for hours so I'll just be using some lo-build varnish and putting lots of coats on.
Good price that so you aren't risking much, but I think the IM-6 in that configuration might be a little softer than you want. Only way to tell is to try it of course. I discovered a long time ago that somewhat stiffer rods are better for upstream spider fishing among other things, they are a lot more responsive and that is often critical.
For the price of the finished article;
http://theanglersroost.com/products/graphite-rods/4-piece-12-foot-34-wt-im6-graphite-rod-with-2-tips/ (http://theanglersroost.com/products/graphite-rods/4-piece-12-foot-34-wt-im6-graphite-rod-with-2-tips/)
I wouldn't bother building.
You can use such a rod single handed of course but it can be punishing for your arm, shoulder etc. I have mine set up as double handers but I do use them single handed as well.
Good luck. I have a rotar if you want to borrow it.
Cheers
Paul
Thanks Paul, I may well take you up on that if the low build varnish is crap.
Well the blank has arrived, I already have rings and handle, reel seat ands bits and bobs are ordered from Daviad Norwich. So rod andf all the bits have cost just over £100. The blank is very stiff! It does this by having a very stiff bottom 6ft and the tip section is very flexible. I had a wee cast with taped on rings and a 4 weight and it seems to cast very well. Of course I won't really know until I have it built up and have it balanced with a handle and reel. I fancy it will feel a lot softer with the hardware on board.
These winter projects aren't cheap... nearly £90 for the makings of a wading staff, Cedar strip canoe is £530 so far but at least that's not my boat so I won't be paying for the materials although I get the fun of building it, £25 for a new drawer for my fly tying desk. It costs a lot this saving money lark.
Quote from: Malcolm on October 17, 2012, 11:31:00 PM
These winter projects aren't cheap... It costs a lot this saving money lark.
Tell me about it!
£30's worth of wood arrived the other day for my winter project and I started marking out. Lovely stuff to work with and it takes a fine finish. I was planning to turn up the bolts myself and went looking on the web for dimensions- they need to be early 19th century style and stumbled on a supplier of the sizes I need, and that will save me a lot of time and effort. But 50p each and I'll need over 100! I don't mind a project that grows arms and legs, but why do they always cost?
I'm after a bit of advice here.
I have all the bits here and although I've built rods before I'm no expert so:
1. Ring Spacing: I had this sorted out or so I thought. Having looked at various options I decided to leave 4.5 inches between the tip and second rings then increase spacing by 1.2 inches every ring - so 4.5 in, 5.7, 6.9 etc - meaning 12 rings which I've got. Putting them together I now think I've ben a bit mean and should in fact order another ring stripper ring to make 13. Any thoughts?
2. In the past I've built up the blank under the reel seat with masking tape to take up the gap. Is there a better alternative.
Apart from that I've got a small motor from David Norwich as the basis of a rod turner so the only thing I've missed is a wee cosmetic detail - a silver ring beween the handle and the blank which I could ignore.
Quote from: Malcolm on October 25, 2012, 10:46:42 AM
I'm after a bit of advice here.
On longer rods using an extra stripper ring is fairly common. Can also improve casting. Some info;
http://www.hexrod.net/Guide/guideN.html (http://www.hexrod.net/Guide/guideN.html) ( This is good)
http://www.hookhack.com/html/guidespacingchart.html (http://www.hookhack.com/html/guidespacingchart.html)
http://www.flexcoat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/fly_rod_guide_spacing_chart.pdf (http://www.flexcoat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/fly_rod_guide_spacing_chart.pdf)
It's best to tape the rings on ( sellotape is fine), and make sure the spacing looks OK and then have a gentle cast. Tip to second ring spacing is critical as the wrong spacing can cause line looping over the blank.
I don't know of any better method than using masking tape.
You can find a lot of info here; http://rodbuilding.org/list.php?2 (http://rodbuilding.org/list.php?2)
Just something else I thought I might mention which may be of interest. I gave up using epoxy on my own rods a long time ago and I don't use it on whippings either. I don't like high gloss rods at all and I invariably use matte finished blanks. Using epoxy as a rod finish just adds weight and I have found no advantage at all in using it. I just use a good matte varnish on whippings and nothing at all on the blank itself. This also makes it a great deal easier to refinish rods, or replace rings etc at a later date should this prove necessary.
The epoxy ( or varnish for that matter), does not make a carbon fibre rod more robust. In the majority of cases you can just leave the blank "naked" without any problems. This also makes the whole process a lot simpler. If you have high gloss blanks to begin with then very careful use of fine steel wool will usually render them matte.
The "flash" from high gloss rods can put fish down, and often does.