evening folks,
as most of you know I'm pretty new to the wild fishing mullarkey, very new in fact, but so far so good, I'm still trying to get to grips with fly design, shape, size ribbing etc..for wild trout, maybe some of the forum members with more experience than me could make a comment regarding rules of thumb so to speak,Andy had a bash at explaining to me about fly size and the wisdom behind it, thanks for that, made a lot of sense
1...fly colour choice versus watercolour/quality, peaty lochs, limestone, highland
2...wide tinsel ribs on wets/palmers etc as opposed to ovals and wire ribs on western isles flys v mainland/highland
and again maybe a few words on your experience on fly size in general or specific if you like.
please feel free to add anything else you think relevant!!
cheers.
I'm not the best to ask about pretty flys. Like Dave I like to make big bold streamers larger the better I could go all day and get one fish on them but it's usually a lump. For both river and still water. When fishing traditional wets I never moved far from size 12s and 14s for still waters.
wide tinsel vs. oval sounds very techy to me. my rule of thumb is there are no rules. switch it up, ring the changes, watch what's going on and adapt & improvise.... i'd say don't get hung up on it too much and try & think like a fish :8)
thanks for the replies so far, wise words from all, especially Daves "think like a fish" and andys "I see some terrible examples of fly tying with flies with awful proportions - and of course they all catch fish"
what more do you need to know!!
Anglers and fly tiers have probably been disagreeing on the points you bring up since the first fly was tied. For my tuppence worth, I would say that the best pattern on the day will be any one of your choice that inspires you fish with total confidence, presented in the right place at the right time.
There you go . Nothing to it! :lol:
Quote from: rannoch raider on April 08, 2018, 07:22:59 PM
Anglers and fly tyers have probably been disagreeing on the points you bring up since the first fly was tied. For my tuppence worth, I would say that the best pattern on the day will be any one of your choice that inspires you fish with total confidence, presented in the right place at the right time.
There you go . Nothing to it! :lol:
Well said. When I started I would swap and change every 15 minutes. Most days now I'll keep the same flys on my cast unless I'm changing tactics.
Brownies can be pretty aggressive hunters and will have a go at some big flies if they represent minnows and such. There are some old sayings like dark water dark sky dark flies. Bright water bright sky bright flies. Big wave big flies. On some poorer waters terrestrials like bibios and daddies can be a big part of feeding.
Otherwise .... If in doubt .... use something small and black !!!!
Quote from: Bobfly on April 08, 2018, 09:51:32 PM
Brownies can be pretty aggressive hunters and will have a go at some big flies if they represent minnows and such. There are some old sayings like dark water dark sky dark flies. Bright water bright sky bright flies. Big wave big flies. On some poorer waters terrestrials like bibios and daddies can be a big part of feeding.
Otherwise .... If in doubt .... use something small and black !!!!
The thing is.....wee black flies actually look like flies :)
Alex
Those pesky trout eat any old stuff! Unless they are "educated" of course :D
I am a great man for "fishing in harmony" with the water.
Dark foreboding water then dark flies. Pennell, Black Zulu, Bibio, Connemara Black etc etc
Peaty waters: Red & Clarets with a hint of gold do well
Machair or Limestone lochs. Lighter flies, Greenwell, Loch Ordie Invicta. Butchers, Dunkeld can be useful if Stickleback or Minnow present.that sort of thing.
Around weedbeds green flies can do well Grouse & Green, Burleigh etc
Sandy bottoms favour flies with a touch of flash, Teal Blue, Blue Zulu, Butchers
Nothing in fishing is written in stone & then again it might be the opposite :roll:
If in doubt a good starting point is "dark day dark fly. light day light fly". Andy is spot on about using oval for ribbing & other than overwinding flat tinsel with fine same coloured wire I smear a wee bitty varnish over the thread underbody before applying the flat tinsel. Do the same with herl but a smear only.
50 years of experience does help but even then get beat on occasion. Well more than the occasion.
Tight Lines
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!!
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.
thanks robbie, thankfully I've pinched a few off here..sorted.!!
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:
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.
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 :)