Spring time fly fishing tactics in the UK

By | Published February 9, 2010

Spring time in the UK always gets me thinking about the lessons I learned while fly fishing for trout the previous season. In my area the river fly fishing season starts early March although there are variations so, if you are planning to fish, please check local regulations. This can be done through the Environment Agency.

So, what fly fishing lessons did I learn last year?

Well, one of my favourite techniques for fly fishing early season is to fish North Country spiders known as soft hackles to any American readers. My normal set up when fishing this style is to use a leader of around ten foot (3 mtrs) with three flies, two on droppers set around eighteen inches (45 cm) apart and a point fly. I will usually use a small bead headed nymph as the point fly just to help the spiders get down to the depth where the fish are feeding. One of things you need to remember with this method is the deeper the fish are, the heavier the point fly needs to be.

Last season, while fly fishing on one of my local rivers using the method outlined above, I spotted a fish rising right at the head of the pool. I changed my point fly to an emerger pattern to match the Large Dark Olives (Baëtis Rhodani) that were hatching at the time. When I clipped off the bead head nymph to tie on the emerger, I decided to leave the two droppers with the spider/ soft hackle patterns still attached to my leader rather than snip them off, dropper and all, as I usually would. I was still a few casts away from the head of the pool. I started to cast my way upstream towards the rising fish at the head of the pool. This is when I discovered the genius of this set up. Before I even got close to the rising fish, I had brought three good trout of around the 1 lb (500 g) mark and a couple of smaller fish to the net. All of these trout had come to one or other of the North Country Spiders. The emerger pattern was helping to keep the two spider patterns high enough in the water so they sat just below the surface. To me it was obvious the trout liked the way they were presented with the artificial flies when using this set up.

Now I was approaching the head of the pool, I could still see the fish rising and I also noticed that it was indeed feeding just below the surface rather than right on the very top. You could tell this as its head never broke the surface as it was feeding, just its dorsal fin and tail.

I cast upstream of the trout careful to land my leader so that the top dropper was a couple of feet in front of the trout and the tip of my fly line was behind it. Now for the moment of truth! The spider pattern on my top dropper was ignored completely, but as the fly on the middle dropper was just in front of where I had spotted the fish, there was a slash and a swirl and I could see the emerger on my leader point disappearing as it was pulled underwater by the force of the fish swallowing down the submerged spider pattern on the middle dropper. I lifted the rod to find that the fish was hooked. After a quick tussle I brought the trout to hand. It was around 17 inches (39 cm) long and weighed in at around 1 ½ lb. I am now looking forward to seeing, once again, if this really is an effective early season tactic for catching brown trout.

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Fly Fishing Lessons – Fishing Tips

By | Published January 22, 2010

When fly fishing, some days, no matter how well you are casting or how good an imitation of the natural insect you are using, the fish just don’t seem to be biting. I know we all have days like these but what can we do about them? Well, here are a couple of tips that really help me out in situations like this. Welcome to the induced take.

  • When fly fishing dry flies, if the fish are refusing your imitation even though you can see it’s a good match, try giving it a wiggle (technical term). What I mean by wiggle is to try twitching your fly to imitate a real fly struggling to break free of the surface tension. This can be especially effective if it is done just as the fly passes over either a likely spot or the place where you have seen a fish rising but have had your offering refused already.

  • When you are fly fishing nymphs and are covering all the likely runs and seams and you are still not catching fish even though you know that your nymphs are deep enough to get to them, gently lift the rod tip during the drift causing the fly to rise in the water column. This imitates the insect rising up as if it is going to hatch. If the rod is lowered again allowing the insect to fall back to the bottom of the stream, this process can be repeated as the nymph passes another likely spot.

  • When I am fishing the Duo (a nymph suspended under a dry fly from the bend of the hook on a length of leader approx. 60cm long), also known as NZ style, I find that a large sedge pattern makes the best indicator dry fly. To induce a take I wait until the dry is just about to pass a likely lie or a rising fish then I lift the rod tip slightly to cause the sedge pattern to skate over the spot. I then lower the rod retrieving the slack line created by skittering the dry fly, and then lift the rod again this time a little higher to cause the suspended nymph to rise in the water column, again imitating a nymph ascending to hatch.

More great fly fishing lessons and tips to follow!

Posted in Fly Fishing | Tagged , | 166 Comments