The perfect may fly imitation has haunted fly fishers, probably since the dawn of fly fishing. At least we know that as modern dry fly fishing evolved on the chalk streams of southern England in the late 1800s (with Marryat, Halford et al.) the development has never seized.
It’s hook launch time – again! We’re come close to ending 2020 (I think most of us look forward to that), but we decided to just go ahead and throw a proper New Year’s Bomb(er) to you.
It’s fall and conditions are changing, but not (yet) for the worse, if you know what to look for and when and where to find the fish. Andreas Larsson sent us this piece on fall fishing for stillwater rainbows – and you don’t need to pack away the dries just yet, maybe just change them out. I’ll let Andreas give you the details.
Thank you, Andreas!
Continue reading “Dry fly fishing for stillwater fall rainbows”
You may have spotted these news on Facebook and Instagram already. If not – today is the official release of a new dry fly hook in the FW-series: the 504/505 Short Shank Dry Fly Hook.
Continue reading “Ahrex FW 504/504 Short Shank Dry Fly Hook”
If the fish are playing tricky, the best approach is sometimes to do something totally different (and often something that all the other flyfishers don’t do). And sometimes a big, high floating dry is the right way forward.
The ultimate game bird for fly tying? Maybe not, but the different feathers from a partridge are amongst the most versatile for nymphs, flymphs, wet flies, spiders and soft hackles. Soft pulsating hackles with an attractive marking that offers plenty of life and movement to the fly.
Brown Bodied Parachute tied by Jan de Haas.
We’re fly fishers and fly tiers – that’s why me make fly hooks. Being fly tiers we love quality fly tying materials (almost) as much as we love quality fly hooks. There are so many high quality materials available today that it’s hard to believe – natural materials, synthetics, furs, hairs, silicone products, rubber. But in some way the quintessential fly tying material is the feather. The simplest of modern dry flies – from the Halford-era consists on a tail of hackle fibres, a dubbed body and a front hackle. Even the very first fly in written sources mentions the use of feathers.
The trout season is coming to end end, at least if your’re a topwater/dry fly fisherman and many rivers and lakes close down for the winter. But it’s still September and although there are very few mayflies hatching now, there’s still some caddis, but also an abundance of terrestrials – or land insects. They are at their prime now.
Two words for the same insect – an insect that is quite important to the trout- and grayling fisherman. In fact probably even more important than the mayflies since there are so many more species of caddis than there are mayflies. Like the mayflies they are important both as nymphs, emergers and adults and imitations are plentyful.
YouTube, Instagram and the internet in general is a vast and frankly quite incredible source of information. It can help everyone move forward in a new hobby (like fly fishing) very quickly and new knowledge is shared and presented at lightning pace. I generally believe that is good and there’s no doubt that the sharing mentality is helped along greatly by outlets like YouTube (and of course, we believe that our own YouTube channel is a good source of information and inspiration).
