Which is the best fly?

[sinbad]

Thanks , i consider myself a not bad/good fisher but got more to learn lads. Most of us have ? Sb

[Traditionalist]

Thanks , i consider myself a not bad/good fisher but got more to learn lads. Most of us have ? Sb

There is always more to learn.

[Traditionalist]

Ah, I see what happened there, I pasted my clipboard when adding a reply and there was already a reply to somebody else in there.

Sorry about that.

[otter]

It would appear that we are all agreed that presenting a suitable pattern that matches the natural in form , movement and location is probably over the course of a season a very  effective method and a sound premise on which to base your approach. Whether you think long and hard, investigate rigorously or not or get there by trial and error or intuition, that is a personal choice and has no bearing on the fact that  the premise would appear to be a strong one.

The interesting thing is that very many river anglers of average knowledge and experience are now able to catch many more fish due to the strong marketing  of  nymphing (french, czech,spanish , whatever names u like to use) and the fashionable but effective methods of fishing nymphs and other subsurface patterns under a dry such as a klinkhammer or simple indicator yarn.  Whats happening here is quite interesting.  Flys are being presented that will with regularity ,  at some point each cast, fish in a way that mimics the natural even if the angler has little control over his team.  So in essence we have an effective method that will on many occasions allow the angler to catch quite a nymber of fish without even understanding either the mechanics or the nuances of why they are catching.

I know many good anglers that are extremely good at this, they, through trial and error allied by experience have worked out how to fish such rigs effectively. Do they know precisely whats going on ,I don't know.  Do they fish general nymphs, beadheads etc, yes, are they more precise, some are.

A club member that I know, a young lad of about thirty is extremley good at this and many other methods.  He was secretive enough in his ways but due to the recession has had to bugger off to Zew Zealand. Before he went and bear in mind many of his flies are beadheads,  I asked him what sort of nymphs he used.  His answer was refreshingly simple,  "ones that matched the naturals that the trout were taking".  Because he is a well skilled angler that catches many trout, fished a river that he knew inside out and plenty of time on the water, he knew the difference between a good fly and the right fly, in his own words, " good fly is 6 or 7  fish an hour, right fly can be as high as 20 fish an hour". 

Every time he fished, he used a throat pump on a few of the better trout, sampled using a sieve and  matched the results to his fly box, took his samples home and if necessary painstakingly tied up ones that closely matched the naturals.  Whether or not going to such lenghts is your cup of tea or not is irrelevant to whether this does matter if your desire is sometimes to catch as many trout as possible whilst on the water.  I have seen how consistently he catches large and I mean large numbers of trout and more often than not , well above average sized trout. He is adamant that with the right fly the results can quite often be quite dramatically different, not always, but often enough for him to believe that the effort was worthwhile for him to do what he does.

I know its not PC to talk numbers and I know numbers is not the be all and end all of fishing enjoyment, but in this instance as we are discussing effectiveness of flies and how you fish them , numbers cannot be avoided. 

Every year the home internationals rivers competition is  fished between Ireland,England,Scotland and Wales. I know competitive fishing is not everyones cup of tea and for obvious reasons, but please bear with me as I think you can learn some things from such anglers.
This competition is generally not the win at all costs like some others, its not a stockie bashing festival and is generally fished on wild rivers. Yes its flawed in that small fish can be targetted, 20cm is the minimum size, personally I think that is clearly wrong but thats another matter.

The Irish team qualifies firstly by qualifying from club, then in a provincial match and finally the top five from each province fight it out.  The club part of the equation is the important bit, these club competitions are based on usually the taking of four fish and size matters, usually minimum is 11 or 12 inches, which on say my river is above average size. To qualify from the club you will have shown that you are capable to catching better than average trout consistently over each month of the season, you cannot achive this using mediocre , small fish targetting methods. So in a nutshell, the bulk of the twenty or so club members fishing the provincial finals have got there the hard way.

Of the twenty there will be about ten hard core competition anglers, good at targetting anything that swims.  The intersting thing here from my point of view is that last year, in a provincial final the young lad I mentioned above and one other angler  came out on top with over 55 trout each in six hours of fishing and were a good 25 fish ahead of some very seasoned skilled  campaigners.   It transpired that both had done the same type of homework in sampling the week before hand, both had
tied up very precisely coloured olive nymphs using almost identical materials and to my eye, the flies were like peas from a pod.

Coincidence maybe,  but when you discover that those that do pay this sort of attention  to detail, be they competitive or not, catch more and better trout than anyone else it would be foolish to consider it as a nonsense.

Off course the efficacy of beadheads is a debate all by itself.

If this sort of thing is of no interest to you fair enough, if it is then useful debate is very interesting.

[Traditionalist]

There is little doubt that more or less any deep fished "general" nymph will always work on rivers. Accurate imitations of what the fish are taking will always work better.

Bead heads do work fairly well in a lot of cases, as will Czech nymphs, even when"general" patterns are used.  I am not sure why bead heads work so well generally, they don't look or behave naturally, but they still catch fish. I have used them, also Czech nymphs, in the past, just to see what all the hoohah was about, and both methods work pretty well in many circumstances. One major reason in my opinion is that when fish are on the bottom they are harder to spook and so you are likely to hook more just because of that.  Indicator fishing can be fairly quickly learned and invariably works well. Still of course on the premise that the better your flies are the more fish you will get.

Neither method is quite so effective on still waters, primarily I think because the movement is critical and is different on rivers.  Very hard to get movement right on still waters. Fishing more or less any small stuff deep can be very difficult.

If I am using teams I always like to have at least one fly on the team which is a very good imitation, the other(s) being mainly control components. Invariably the vast majority of fish will take that fly, although of course they will sometimes take the others as well.

It is not just about catching more fish although that is a side effect, I find it is a lot more fun to catch fish on something I have worked out correctly. I would doubtless catch a fair number of fish using general patterns, but I catch a lot more on good imitations which also confirms that I got it right. I find that an important aspect of the matter.

Something else related to that. In order to catch large numbers of good fish you have to be on a water that actually contains them. If you are fishing some barren beck somewhere you will not be having many 100 fish days whatever you do. Indeed, on some streams really accurate imitations are often only marginally more successful than "general"patterns, if at all. I think this is because the fish will far more willingly take all sorts of things, and seldom "key in" on any particular food item. I would assume this is similar on many hill lochs but am unable to comment knowledgeably on that as my experience of such loch fishing is extremely limited.

[Fishtales]

If this sort of thing is of no interest to you fair enough, if it is then useful debate is very interesting.

You will probably find that the majority don't even read these threads. The more experienced angler has heard it all before and just skims over it or doesn't come back into the thread. That of course is their choice. Newer anglers generally find it interesting and then get put off when the discussion gets more intricate and goes into even more depth. There are the few who find these discussions interesting and, at times, helpful in that it broadens their understanding, but they are few and far between

[Traditionalist]

Another few things that occurred to me. Where fish are present at all there are always a lot more than the majority of people imagine.  In some places there are populations of large fish which are virtually never seen or caught because of their specialised feeding methods. The large browns ( 3...4 lb plus) I have consistently caught on some rivers can only be caught using specialised tactics and you have to be in exactly the right place at the right time to do it.  The tactics are using large ( 3...4") baitfish imitations at night. You wont catch these fish on small flies, because they dont take them, and you wont catch them during the day either because they only feed at night.  They hunt for a few hours at most, take a few fish and lie doggo the rest of the time.

[otter]

It is not just about catching more fish although that is a side effect, I find it is a lot more fun to catch fish on something I have worked out correctly. I would doubtless catch a fair number of fish using general patterns, but I catch a lot more on good imitations which also confirms that I got it right. I find that an important aspect of the matter.

I would agree with that entirely and it applies to everyone that fly fishes, if they work something out ( 100% correct or even 50% correct ) it is very satisfying and is what keepsmany anglers returning season after season.

[otter]

You will probably find that the majority don't even read these threads. The more experienced angler has heard it all before and just skims over it or doesn't come back into the thread. That of course is their choice. Newer anglers generally find it interesting and then get put off when the discussion gets more intricate and goes into even more depth. There are the few who find these discussions interesting and, at times, helpful in that it broadens their understanding, but they are few and far between

Would agree with that. What we need here is someone with a video camera, Mike fishing a couple of common hatch situations over a season on decent trout water - showing his methods and thinking  for each hatch  -  now that would be interesting -  whats the expression , a picture is better than a thousand words... 

[Traditionalist]

That is extremely difficult to set up, there is a great deal involved. Also, it is very difficult indeed to fish optimally with camera people clumping around. They always want to "arrange" things, or repeat shots. This is impossible, the fish wont cooperate. I have thought about it often, but invariably given up as being to difficult to set up.  One reason for my considerable admiration for some of Fred's and other people's video stuff.