Last week I managed to fool a nice carp with an odd looking fly I found in the bottom of my fly box. The carp may have been pretty but the fly it fell for was ugly and scruffy. It looked as though it had been out for a night on the beer and had not shaved for a few days. I had no other fly quite like it and so decided to take a photo while out on the riverbank in case I should lose it. You never know – that kind of thing might be useful for the future. Continue reading
Category: Flies and fly tying
A tale of two flies
June 14, 2015
Fishing report of 8 June
June 8, 2015
This weekend was my first chance to get out on the river for a while and I managed to fish on the evenings of both Saturday and Sunday. The river was in pretty good shape and there were a few fish around.
The gypsy barbel seemed very spooky initially and I was forced to go down in size both in nymph and leader. Curiously the fish would often be frightened of the little splash created by the nymph as it landed. When they are “on” they can often be attracted to this and even swim over to investigate, often accepting the fly in the process. I found that it was better to offer the fly from slightly upstream and often give the nymph a little movement when it was close to the fish. Continue reading →
Fishing report of 17 January
January 18, 2015
The weather people said that on Sunday the rain would appear. That´s good news. The reservoirs are low for this time of the year and need some winter rain now to top them up before the long summer arrives. So Saturday seemed like a good time to take a look at the river before the change in weather shakes things up. If the rains are sustained and heavy it can knock the river out of kilter for a while.
There is a very nice stretch of water that my friend Norman Smith introduced me to and I thought it might be nice to take a look at it again. The last time I was there it seemed that it had been recently polluted and I was told a goat herder had seen a lot of dead fish during the week between my visits. I was curious to see if things had improved. Continue reading →
Little Pink Nymph
January 5, 2015
The barbel on the local river seem to like a little pink nymph and I tied one up recently which seems to have been given the nod of approval.
Until now I have been unable to show the flies in much detail but Santa brought me a new camera as a reward for being very good last year (I was!) and so now I can take good close up photos. How exciting is that! Continue reading →
Ants
April 15, 2014
A couple of weeks ago Harry Abbott caught a very nice barbel on a dry fly. When I asked him what pattern he used he told me it was a little floating ant.
I have relied almost exclusively on nymphs for the last few years when fishing for gipsy barbel on my local river although there was a time, a few years back, when I fished dries nearly all the time. Back in the day, the barbel were often attracted to the little splash created by the fly landing on the surface. Often they would turn to take a look at the source of the disturbance and, more often than not, they would take the fly. Harry´s success has prompted me to think about dries once again and so I tied up a few little ant patterns of my own.
Ants have a silhouette which is unmistakable. They show the typical insect body plan (a three part body) far more distinctly than most insects. The three body parts – head, thorax and abdomen, look as though they are held together only by a thread.
Their slim waists separate the components of a rather curvaceous figure. A woman shaped like an ant might be considered pretty desirable if you were happy to overlook her two extra pairs of legs! Continue reading →
Tying flies with Norman
February 18, 2014
On Sunday I met up with Norman Smith and showed him some of the rudiments of fly tying. Norman was introduced to fishing at the age of three and there is not much he doesn´t know about it, but fishing with a fly rod is a relatively new interest, and fly tying is newer still. Continue reading →
Annoying little bastards: Part 3 – Sandflies
February 5, 2014
If you have ever been fortunate enough to visit New Zealand and fish for the trout for which the country has become famous, you will know all about sandflies. Continue reading →
Annoying little bastards: Part 2 – midges
Filed under: Fish and fishing, Flies and fly tying, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
February 1, 2014
Midges don´t have many friends, particularly up in Scotland, where the little devils devour everyone in sight and can make a hell of a nuisance of themselves. The real villian is one of the biting midges, a nasty little son of a bitch known as the highland biting midge, Culicoides impunctatus. As with mosquitos,it is the female who sucks blood, and for the same reason, to be able to produce a batch of eggs. Continue reading →
Annoying little bastards: Part 1 – mosquitos
January 24, 2014
Are you scared of great white sharks? Or maybe grizzly bears, or saltwater crocs, or tigers?
If you are I can understand. I am too. But it turns out that what we should really be worried about are mosquitos which are, by a very large margin, the most dangerous animals on earth. Continue reading →
A nymph for barbel
Filed under: Flies and fly tying — Leave a comment
January 16, 2014
I have a nymph which has caught me a few barbel now and they seem to like the thing. The trouble is, I have only one of it, and so I thought it might be an idea to take a picture of it before I lose the damn thing or hang it up on the river bed or the branches of a tree. Continue reading →
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