A bigger fly...

A common theme in the flies I tie is a segmented body. The neatest way to achieve this is the use of biot, the inner filaments on goose and turkey quills. Goose biots are easy to source, but they tend to be short and a little brittle. They are easier to work with if soaked in water for 10mins before use. In terms of handling, a small hackle plier makes life easier.

Turkey biots are longer and wider, so ideal for larger patterns. I've only just received a pack (from Cookshill Fly Tying), so experimentation is at an early stage. More to follow...

Hook: Partridge Klinkhammer #16 (other curved shank patterns work well too)
Thread: Uni 6/0 in claret
Body: Natural turkey biot, tied with "notch" facing in, nut brown artist's ink added to colour fringe.
Wing-post: TMC Dry Aero Wing
Throax: Peacock glister dubbing
Hackle: Grizzly from #2 Metz saddle

The thread is taken just beyond the start of the body and a couple of mm's added before the wing-post starts. This adds all-important triggers to the design.

Well dressed

There is very little point starting out tying flies with quality materials. A good vice and tools, certainly. But those first few attempts may well be disastrous and it would be a shame to waste expensive materials in the process. It's worth investing in decent thread, the tension applied during tying is key to success.

Among the most expensive of materials is good quality hackle, especially if tying dries. But quality here, once the basic skills are aquired is imperative.

I started out tying with a #2 Metz neck, which has small but short and webby feathers and is now used for tying wets. Then a #2 Metz cape was added ideally for #16 - #22 dries. The feather quality is OK but most of the hackles are in the #10 - #14 range. I managed about 35 hackles of a suitable size, so not a good return on £19.

In the absence of a big budget, I have just picked up a Whiting "100's" pack. This is just that, individual saddle feathers, graded and selected in a specific size, #18 in this case. Wow, what a difference good quality materials make! The feathers have dense, stiff, pristine barbs with consistent length throughout the feather. This quality immediately elevates the fly, particularly smaller patterns.


Hook: TMC200R
Thread: 8/0 black
Body: Natural goose biot
Wing: TMA Areo Dry Wing fl. pink
Thorax: Sperfine poly dub, black
Hackle: see above, black

No going back, I'll report on how they fish as soon as water levels return to "status - fishable"...

CDC Sedge

During a recent morning on the burn with Roy Christie and his partner Julie, I was shown the myriad fauna that live in this tiny water. While my standard biot-bodied parachutes and emerger patterns are proven fish takers, it was fascinating to observe the broader range of patterns I could be fishing with the potential for equal, maybe greater success.

There are numerous approaches to tying sedge (caddis) patterns. Deer hair is great in #10 - #14 sizes, but less so when you go small - too much bulk. A good approach seems to be CDC feathers. The pattern shown below has yet to be fished, heavy rain for a week has left waters high and coloured. But I am hopeful this should take a few trout on the burn when conditions improve.

Hook: Kamasan B100 #16
Thread: Brown 8/0
Body: 3 pheasant tail fibres
Rib: Brown thread
Wing: 2 brown, 1 white & 1 pink CDC feathers
Antennae: Pheasant tail fibres


The pink and white feathers top-side are more for visibility on the water, with the brown providing a more natural underside.

And here's the inspiration, the shrimp will follow shortly...

Small flies

The explosion in small fly fishing Stateside has been in response to the increasingly picky feeding behaviour of trout on heavily fished water. And yet this approach is taking off in the UK, possibly in the absence of absolute necessity. If you ever tied and/or fished small flies (say, #18 and smaller) it isn't hard to understand why. There is a magical charm when fishing at this scale.

On most typical days, a decent presentation of a #14 or #12 and possibly a #10 Adams parachute will catch trout on the waters I fish. Flies of this size are easy to tie, easy to tie to tippet and a lot easier to see on the water. And yet, I only ever fish #18 and smaller, with all the extra hassle that goes with scaling down.

The following are this season's fish fetchers, each with a track record of success...


Flashback PTN on #20 Fulling Mill Super Midge can be fished alone or trailing a surface dry NZ-style.


Foam beetle on #19 TMC 102Y, deadly fished in high summer under overgrown bankside vegetation. Gink the peacock herl underside and this will float all day, aided by closed-cell foam body. Krystalflash legs provide an additional trigger point.


Biot-bodies parachute on #21 TMC 102Y. The variations of this pattern are almost infinite by changing body, thorax, hackle and wingpost. I have tied a few all white with grey thorax to imitate small moths at sundown. Watch out for airborn bats at dusk.


Biot-bodied tiny knlinkhammer on #22 TMC 200R, this seasons go-to fly.

What we did on our holidays

(see also Fairport Convention's second album released 1969 on A&M Records)

April 2008, and the five of us head to Lagrasse in S. France for our first family holiday abroad together. Leaving home at 04:00 to catch a bus from Belfast to Dublin, we stop via Newry and stare at the Newry Canal. In recent years, this waterway has attracted a new breed of fly fishers - those after pike on the fly. Traditional streamers and lures are known pike catchers, increasingly they are taken on the dry fly. Whatever the method, this sounds like thrilling sport. Lean, predatory and athletic, I can only try to imagine the buzz of taking a pike on the fly.

The main objective of the holiday is to relax, eat and drink well and get out and about a bit together. But also to fish a little.

I had the opportunity, well the pleasure to meet up with Marc "La Mouche"Fauvet, a local fly fisher, fly tyer and casting guru. He'll blush when he reads this, but hey, I was impressed.

The day started with some coffee at the house, well, we were in France. There was croissants too... We then headed out of town towards the mountains, parking up and heading to the waterside. This was a welcome sight, small water and brushy. I was keen to pass Marc my 7' 2wt rod to see what it could do in experienced hands. I had always assumed such ultra-light gear was limited in terms of casting. Marc was in the water, behind him a narrow slither between branches and brush as he expertly aerialised 30' of line with fast and tight loops. No snagging going on here, just total line control and the ability to alight a dry fly on to the water's surface with complete finesse.

Dude on the stream...

Yeah, I was real impressed....

No wonder then that Marc completed and passed the FFFCCI exam in Germany a couple of weeks later.

We saw a few trout, I spooked them and didn't catch any. Strangely, the day was more about fishing, the landscape and the company than fish, if you get my drift. The conversation was amusing and intelligent, the company warm and thoroughly enjoyable.


Next time, we'll get serious about the fish. Marc knows this water well and would make a first class guide if you find yourself in the Aude/Lagrasse/Carcassonne area in need of some fly fishing or casting tuition. Untill then, I'll keep playing my Fairport Convention album and remember what we did on our holidays...


Marc's details are:

Marc Fauvet

Federation of Fly Fishers-Certified Casting Instructor
Comision National de Lanzado (Spain) -Master de Lanzado

Based in the French Pyrenees, south of Carcassonne, I offer casting courses for beginners, intermediate and advanced fly fishers in English or French.
Guiding services on local waters are possible as well.

Contact:
marcfauvet at yahoo dot com
phone- (33) 468 69 62 83

Back In Ireland

from "The Longest Silence - a life in fishing"
Thomas McGuane

'The fish I caught were all around two pounds apiece. I don't remember ever catching stronger, wilder, more violent or wanton fighters than these fish. They were vividly leopard-marked with short, hard bodies. They wore me out with their valour.'

Scale down

Waters remain low. Unless there is rain in the next week or so, levels will be very low and the nature of the fishing will change dramatically. Fish will retreat to wherever there is sufficient depth, gloomy pools and undercut banks. Such habitat is usually patrolled by larger trout, but more fish are likely to take refuge as conditions change.

I welcome whatever conditions I find. Things are getting more challenging though, and the bumper month of May is now over, so the season moves in to a different phase; time to get technical.

This is what ultra-light fishing is all about. Where a couple of weeks ago, trout were lining up to strike at modest size, flashy flies, now a more technical approach is required. And by technical, I mean smaller flies, presented on lighter tippet with greater finesse.

Sunday evening and a couple of hours on the water. It had been a hot day, with occasional, gusty breezes. As evening approached, temperatures dropped a couple of degrees and there is cloud cover. There is limited insect life on the water, and the flows are weaker with low, clear water. For almost an hour, searching pockets, runs and riffles with the flies that had brought so much sport the week before, there is little action. Half a dozen strikes, and these are not as determined or committed as before. And yet there are trout in the usual places.

I understand hard conditions. Learning to fish the canals of the English Midlands in the early eighties has served me well. These waters had suffered industry for decades, and fish populations, mainly roach, gudgeon, dace and the odd skimmer, were small. Matches were won and lost by the dram and total catches were often measured in ounces rather than pounds. Such conditions demand a light approach to tackle, feeding and presentation. This has always been my comfort zone, and also my sweet spot - where my fishing is executed most naturally and intuitively.

I'd promised to be home "in less than a couple of hours", and so it was time to tune in to the conditions and fish properly. After an hour of flogging the water, a rethink would also rest the stream. It was time to scale down.

First up, the existing 6x tippet was clipped at 6" and 30" of 7x tippet added to give an overall leader length of nearly 10', longer than practical on most of the brushy streams and burns I fish, but in low water, things have opened up and I can back-cast maybe 25-30 feet.

Next I added a #22 quill bodied klinkhammer. The key here is the hook, a TMC 200R, which is closer to a standard size 22 hook, unlike the greatly oversized Patridge Klinkhammer Extreme range of hooks.


Conventional Klinkhammer theory relies on this oversized fly to shock trout in to opportunistic feeding, providing an obvious differential to natural food prey. The TMC hooks enable the all-important scale-down, even with emergent, parachute style dressings. Similarly, the flash of mylar ribbed, tri-banded dubbing is replaced with a quill bodied dressing to convincingly represent a natural, segmented body. It's not that these fish are particularly spooky, more they are feeding less voraciously and with added caution in low water. The 7x tippet is degreased, the new fly ginked, scale-down complete...


Success in fishing relies as much on one's confidence in approach as any other variable, and making the first cast post scale-down just feels so right.

The first cast in to a jostling riffle, between rocks and weed brings a trout up. He misses, as the fly accelerates away in the current. Next cast, slightly further upstream and a positive strike leads to a hook-up and a 9" wild brown trout.


And I stop fishing right there, as if to make a point.