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flys for wild trout...and why!!

Started by pedropete, April 07, 2018, 06:45:06 PM

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pedropete

thanks to everyone who chipped in,  they do eat anything..true hahah.. it's a timing thing!!and thank you  Mr highlander.thats kinda the thing I was "angling " for..makes a lot of sense, I must write it down somewhere though...what you say might sound obvious if you've been at wild trout fishing for 20 yrs...but I've not..so thanks!!

Robbie

Can't think of many other rules of thumb to add.

But one thing I would add is to always have some emergers, DHE or parachute emerger / klinkhammer are my got to patterns.

pedropete

thanks robbie, thankfully I've pinched a few off here..sorted.!!

rannoch raider

The mystery of where, when and with what, dependant on wind direction, cloud cover, air pressure, temperature, agriculture, aquaculture, water clarity, speed of flow, river bed composition and time of year all combine along with many other factors to beg the million dollar question, 'WTF am I going to fish today?'. I for one am very glad that there is no easy answer and that we should have to think about it every time we visit the water.  :wink:

arawa

#14
As I have aged, and what I want to get out of fishing has changed, my fly tactics have also changed. For most of my life I used traditional wets (favourites: Alexandria, Peter Ross, Invicta) for bank fishing usually on small lochs in the NW Highlands.

Why these? Because that is what I was told to use by the elderly Highlander who introduced me to fly fishing over 50 years ago. And I did OK – or perhaps even better than OK – for many years. But then I began to judge my fishing pleasure by metrics other than the number and size of the catch. These days I have gone from a #7 to a #5 to a #4 or even a #3 -weight rod and most of the time use dries – and a single one at that. Although I have perhaps a thousand flies  :shock: (and bought more yesterday from Hugo Ross in Wick!) most of my fish are taken on just 3 because those are the ones I almost always use. If there is nothing moving and a dry does not bring a fish up then a small (14/16 or even perhaps an 18) haresear (goldhead early in the season and in a hot August) is what I will try. Alternatively, for variety I might try a black "Shipmans" buzzer that my wife ties for me after I gave her fly tying lessons with Trevor Howard as a birthday present some years ago  :lol:.

But the clear majority of my fishing, and trout caught, is with size 14 or 16 elk hair caddis usually in black or alternatively in natural either fishing blind in likely spots or ideally after sitting on the lochside and then picking out a rising fish.

Could I catch more fish or larger fish with different tactics? Quite probably. But I usually outfish (not that it is a competition) my good friend and regular angling partner who changes his flies every few casts if he is not catching.

As someone else mentioned, I am glad there is no magic formula that if used always produces fish.

PS. On reflection, I should add a black hopper to the above list as that has worked well for me especially in the Scourie area when terrestrials are being blown onto the water.

Part-time

I'd also go along with confidence thing when it comes to fly choice - if you are not confident in your flies it's probably going to have a negative affect on everything else like presentation and stealth etc. What makes you confident is probably different things for different people - match the hatch, colour, bright day bright fly, what worked last time, or the fly someone near you just caught on - even if its an orange blob :)  Like Dave says, keep changing things until you you find what works best for you.

Only specific fly I'd add is the CDC & Elk (winter roe in my case) which is one of the main flies I use. Great as a dry fly and will work like a wee muddler if pulled as a wet fly. One of my confidence things with it is, tied with roe hair, it makes a great clegg imitation - not that I've ever seen a trout take a clegg :)

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