The Fishing Gene

Gadgets

March 23, 2026

I am not a gadget guy really, I try to keep my gear as simple as possible; minimalistic even, although I still carry too many flies and too many fly boxes. We all have our own vices. But I don’t grab every gadget that comes on the market. I try to carry items which enhance my on the water experience, focusing primarily on my needs and as importantly the needs of the fish. One of the factors which sorts out the men from the boys is efficiency. A selection of well thought out gadgets can seriously improve your efficiency on stream, aiding with tackle adjustments, fish netting and releasing, even changing rods. I recently tested out something new (more on that later) which got me to thinking about the bits and bobs that make up my stream fishing gear. To me, all the items listed below are pretty much essential, perhaps you find the same?

POLAROIDS

First off are my polaroid glasses, you can’t seriously fish without them. Yes, they definitely help you spot fish or even good lies in the river, and can definitely assist with wading, but perhaps more importantly they provide eye protection. A hook in the eye is seriously bad news. Most important to me is the colour or more perhaps the light transmission of the lenses. In South Africa with bright sunshine most of the time I used relatively dark lenses, those are useless here in the UK. The dense tree lined banks and frequent dull weather mean that there just isn’t sufficient light for the darker lenses to work. I like glass lenses because they are less prone to scratches but then I also like plastic ones because they are super light. Your choice, but don’t hit the water without them.

EZE LAP MODEL S HOOK SHARPENER

**To me a hook sharpener is essential and this one is the best I have used. Take note, it is worth modifying it so that you don’t lose it on the first outing..**

I don’t know how many of these things I sold when I had a fly shop, but it must have run into hundreds. If you don’t sharpen your hooks you are putting yourself at a serious disadvantage, and I am not just talking about touching them up half way through the day. Every new fly gets the treatment. The only annoying thing is that if my flies so much as touch my body or clothing they hook up. Good thing is that the same happens when you get a take from a fish. Fishing light rods (#2 or #3 most of the time) means that hook setting doesn’t apply a lot of force and just as well if I am fishing 8x tippet. So, a really sharp hook is essential to success. Stories of massive fish bending hooks open are a myth. The hook bends open when it doesn’t penetrate fully and that is a result of blunt (and barbed) hooks. Fish sharpened barbless hooks and your hook-up rate will improve tremendously. Just a note: you ideally want to modify the sharpener if you aren’t going to lose it on the first outing. See how HERE

Hers another post on the Fishing Gene Blog about sharp hooks that might interest you. Sharp Hooks are Happy Hooks

MONOMASTER WASTE NYLON HOLDER

I recall in my youth seeing an image of a blackbird, tangled in discarded nylon and dead as a door nail. I have always hated dealing with bits of nylon cut out of tippet and leaders. This is a tidy and efficient solution to the problem.

Yes, we are all supposedly conservationists at heart, but even with the best will in the world rolls of, fine wet tippet material, stuffed into a pocket, invariably falls out and pollutes the environment. It is dreadfully bad stuff to have lying about, particularly for birds which get caught up in it and die a slow and agonising death. Management of waste nylon is crucial if you are going to be responsible out on the water and the mono master is the very best system I have used. Just roll up your waste on the river and cut it into small sections and bin it when at home. Initially a guided client gave me my first one, and I have used one ever since. They can be a little hard to find but something that every serious angler should have on their lanyard or vest.

FORCEPS

Again, if you are going to be responsible out there you need to have some means of removing more deeply set hooks when releasing fish. Forceps offer, probably the best, solution. Although they are a must all of the time, they really become particularly important when for example fishing boobies on a lake where the majority of the fish will inhale the fly deep down almost all of the time. Or when fishing tiny flies which can be tricky to grab with fingers. Should I forget my forceps, which I have done in the past, I simply won’t fish those sorts of flies because of the likelihood of deep hook ups. Carry some sort of disgorger device, for me forceps offer the best option.

“PHOTOGRAPHIC” NET

I use that term as it is how they were described to me initially. It is a net which floats so that you can operate hands free. Leave the fish in the water whilst you sort yourself out, take off your polaroids and search out your camera. You can make your own by simply cutting some foam pool noodle or pipe lagging along its length and binding to the rim of the net with cable ties. Might not look pretty but tremendously useful and good for the fish. Just do note: some commercial versions don’t actually float that well. My version I can leave a fish in the net, in a back eddie, for ages to recover should I need to. More on this net modification HERE

LANYARD

I use a lanyard for all my tools when out on the water. I made mine, but you can of course buy them as well. On mine I have floatant, forceps, scissors (mostly for cutting indicator material), nippers (for trimming nylon tight to the knots), Monomaster for excess tippet material, degreaser (it doesn’t work that well but I do my best), tippet rings, a fish counter, and that all important hook sharpener. Using this set up, so long as I remember the lanyard, I know I have all my important bits and bobs at hand. Of course, if you forget it you are in trouble. An alternative is to have tools on zingers but I find that they fail all too often and one’s vest can become awfully cluttered, so I prefer the lanyard. Not to mention they cost next to nothing to make. You can find a small FREE publication on how to manufacture your own lanyard HERE

MAGNETIC NET RETAINER

I don’t know how we all managed without these things, but an easy quick means of releasing and replacing the landing net is a game changer. If you don’t use one I strongly recommend that you do. As an aside, DO NOT keep the elasticated cord that comes with most nets, it is DANGEROUS!. If your net catches up in the branches of a tree or a wire fence and then comes loose it is going to smack you on the back of the head or worst case scenario take out some teeth. I replace the elastic with fine prussic cord so that it retains the net but doesn’t bounce back if it comes loose.

SOMETHING NEW THE O PRO ROD HOLDER

**Often forced to carry two rods on a large river this new addition to my arsenal of gadgets is proving to be of great value.**

I have recently tried out the O Pro rod holder, which fits on your belt and offers you an extra hand. I was initially skeptical that this was a necessary addition to my tackle clutter. But where in my old stomping grounds fishing small streams there was always a rock or bankside to put down the rod, here on the Wye that isn’t the case. I have battled for a couple of seasons, frequently standing miles from the bank in fast water, struggling to unhook a fish with the net, rod, line and wriggling fish battling to have me loose something. Either the fish, my footing or the rod.

Only recently trying to help a fish untangle itself I lost grip on, and sight of, my rod and had to race downstream in a desperate attempt to locate it. Fortunately it popped up about 100m downstream and was retrieved but could have been a costly mistake on my part. This clip allows me to simply snap the rod to my belt leaving hands free for more urgent tasks, like looking after the fish and perhaps taking a snap shot.

The design allows one to pivot the rod and to have it stick out either behind or in front of you and at your chosen angle.
Initially I used it only as a third hand, but the last couple of trips I have used it to also carry an alternative rod set up so that I can fish either Euro style or fish a dry without having to wade back to the bank to swap over. Some experimentation showed that although my natural instinct was to put the spare rod on my left (as a right handed caster) it meant that net deployment was interfered with by the spare rod. I have switched to the right hand side now and that works better.

In fact I am so impressed that I am thinking of getting a second one so that I have both the extra rod and the extra hand when wading out far into what is a pretty large river.
These things are probably not very functional in small stream situations but on larger water or walking the banks of a reservoir with an additional rod they really provide a benefit. Right now my only concern about getting another one is that I can find what appears to be exactly the same thing for £30 or £8 depending on where I look. I paid the higher price for the one I have, but am not sure that wasn’t a bit costly.

As said at the start, I do try to minimise all the stuff I carry, but the above is a list of things that I consider pretty much essential to a successful, safe and responsible day on the water. There are of course all manner of gadgets out there, perhaps a lot of them are not really that essential or functional. But those listed above I would miss should I forget to take them on stream.

Thanks for taking the trouble to read, I hope that some of the information will prove helpful to you. Please do feel free to make a comment, always nice to hear that this stuff is reaching an audience.

Tags: Essential Flyfishing Gadgets, Floating landing net, Flyfishing lanyard, Flyfishing net magnet, Model S hook sharpener, Monomaster nylon storage, O Pro Rod Holder, Polarized Glasses, Tim Rolston
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Tackle Rigging, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The Secret

February 1, 2026

I’m not talking about Rhonda Byrne’s self-help tome, love it or hate it, but something that likely will actually, if not change your life, at least vastly improve your fly-fishing success.

If you have read anything much of my various blogs, you will already know, that I constantly bemoan the focus of fly anglers on the actual fly. The total preoccupation with obviously essential, but overly emphasised element of our tackle set up; what is tied on the end of your leader. Anyone who has ever shared a stream with me knows that I am far more likely to adjust my leader than change my fly.

Fly-fishing is a TOTAL package, if you are to rise above the average and find success. It encompasses tackle rigging, knot tying, casting technique, playing and landing fish, striking, presentation ( in all its guises) and I suppose I have to add, fly selection.

If you neglect the knots you are likely to lose fish to break-offs, if you don’t practice and hone your casting skills you will seriously limit your catch rate. If you cannot present a fly correctly you won’t even get to the point of snapping off a fish because you won’t hook many. In short you need to DO IT ALL to be truly competent.

One will frequently find lists of “The top ten flies” or hear anglers asked “What is your favourite fly pattern”? But it is rare to find discussion or instruction on other more important elements such as casting or playing fish. How about “top ten leader formulae”? That might be interesting.

But I am going to let you into a little secret; it isn’t a secret because I don’t tell anyone about it. More a secret because most anglers either imagine that it is impossible to do, don’t try or don’t even listen. It is a secret which I guarantee will do more to improve your catch rate on a trout stream than anything else I can think of. It likely won’t take you more than a few hours to master and doesn’t cost anything significant. It is a secret that I have forced upon almost every client I ever guided, no matter their claims that they wouldn’t be able to manage it. All to a man having mastered it by day’s end.

It will improve your fly presentation, improve accuracy, delay drag, add to leader protection, and VASTLY increase your catch rate. Although it is a benefit in various forms of fly fishing, it is especially useful in dry fly fishing on rivers. Wanna know what it is?

YOU ARE PROBABLY FISHING LEADERS FAR FAR TOO SHORT TO PROVIDE QUALITY PRESENTATION AND DRIFT!!

That’s it, longer leaders are THE easy solution to better presentation and better presentation leads to catching more fish, a LOT more fish. For most of my past guiding clients I would suggest it doubled the numbers of fish they caught compared to their previous attempts. It is no mistake that FIPS Mouche rules at World Fly Fishing competitions limit the leader to twice the rod length, because they know that longer leaders provide an advantage. It also isn’t a mistake that EVERY competitor pushes that limit to the millimetre.

The 9’ leader, a standard, likely the result of nine foot rods and a massive knot at the line/leader junction getting stuck in the tip top guide, has been around for decades. There are a number of manufacturers who now supply longer 12’ leaders but even then you are WAAAAY short of what you require for truly great presentation of the fly.

**9′ tapered leaders might be seen as “standard” but without serious modification they are to my mind near useless.**

What I am talking about are leaders from 14 – 22ft, and before you close your eyes and ignore the advice because “you couldn’t possibly manage to cast such a thing” bear with me. There are some caveats to this. It isn’t just a case of pulling off 20 odd feet of 5x tippet and hitting the water. You need to put in a little more effort than that.

But done correctly a longer leader will allow you to present your fly with delicacy and accuracy, be less affected by the breeze, get longer drag free drifts and cover more water in the same amount of time.

Hand tied or commercial leaders?

You can, and I do, use both commercial “knotless leaders” and self-manufactured “Hand-tied” leaders, at least as a base. But for the most part I stick with the commercial knotless ones for very good reason; the means of attachment to the line. The first limitation of longer leaders is that the line/leader junction is going to be pulled through the tip-top guide every time you move and every time you land a fish. If the junction isn’t silky smooth that is going to cause issues with both casting and landing fish. There is no knot, tied in the base of a commercial knotless leader that is going to be small enough to provide the required slick transfer through the rod rings. (You can forget about those lovingly manufactured loops on the fly line too, they have got to go).

The only leader connection that I have found to work well enough is a super glue splice and I attach a link here to show a video of how to make one. The link fixes the tapered leader snuggly inside the line, with no knot and is a LOT stronger than you might imagine. You can’t make this splice easily with a hand tied leader, because the knots get in the way, thus the reason I opt for commercial ones. Plus the taper of the commercial ones, helps seat the leader butt firmly inside the fly line. You can watch how to make one here or via the YouTube link provided. (Super Glue Splice Video). Do note that you can only make this link with a line with a braided core, it doesn’t work with mono-core lines.

What about changing leaders?

Replacing the leader doesn’t take long but it isn’t something I would generally attempt on the river. The point however is that because of my leader set up I only change the base leader once or twice a season. At home it is a matter of minutes to add a new leader if I find that I need to. The longevity of the base of the leader is a function of its design. The leader is far far stronger than my final tippet, so in effect the leader itself (the 9’ commercial one), never breaks whilst fishing. Novices tend to change to new leaders all the time, but that is mostly because they don’t add compound tippets (tippets made up of several lengths of decreasing diameter) to the base leader.
If you tie the fly directly to the leader, which you should never do, you will end up with thicker and thicker tippet with every fly change. If you add a length of tippet you will only eat into the leader every ten or so fly changes. If you add a two part compound leader you will only cut into the base leader every hundred fly changes or so. If you, as I am going to suggest, have a compound tippet of three or four sections you are looking at thousands of fly changes before you need to cut into the actual base leader. It is something of a pain to replace a glued in leader and they aren’t cheap either, so best if you can avoid doing it too often. You can obviate the problem by tying your tippet to a tippet ring attached to the leader but I find that this messes up the presentation and I don’t like it. If you are a complete novice it might work for you until you are more proficient. .

Below an illustration of what a compound tippet is, basically it is two or more additional sections of tippet added to the leader.

The basic principle of leader design.

To me the leader is the MOST important part of my tackle set up. Everything hinges on it working as I want it to. Which means that it should cast well, allow the use of considerable line speed but at the same time offer delicate fly presentation. (that old “fly landing like thistledown malarchy). It should assist in reducing or delaying the onset of drag (The dry fly anglers arch-enemy) and it would help if it cushioned the force of the strike when it comes. Done correctly it will also improve casting accuracy, which is odd because most anglers think that it will make it difficult to hit a barn door with the fly.

The basic leader set up that I use for most of my dry fly fishing is one with a base, knotless tapered leader around 3X heavier than I want my final tippet to be. If you aren’t familiar with the “X” system take a look at this post on The Fishing Gene Blog. Say a 9’ 4x leader (that means the thin end is 4X). To that I will add about 3ft of 5X, then 3ft of 6X, then 3ft of 7X and perhaps in most cases 3-5ft of 8X tippet. That’s a total of about 21ft. If that sounds a little insane to you right at the moment, as it says on the cover of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” DON’T PANICK!

Now that leader isn’t going to work with every fly choice, with every casting ability or with various amounts of wind in your face. But it’s a start. Bigger less aerodynamic flies will require that it is tied shorter. A strong downwind breeze might require the same. A strong upstream wind might see me lengthen it further, but it is a baseline. In the worst conditions with the largest flies my leader is rarely less than 14’ total. On the best days it might be 22’.
The point is that should you need to modify things you want to change the lengths of all the tippet pieces or at least a few of them, not just add on or subtract from the last bit, that won’t work.

Further it usually needs a bit of fine tuning on the river, more on that later.

Better drifts.

This type of leader (and the casting style associated with it) will present the fly gently even with the fastest line delivery, avoiding the need to modify your casting stroke all the time. The built in slack will delay the onset of drag and provide better and longer drifts. Those longer drifts will also mean that you cover more water with each cast and without lining the fish, making your angling more efficient. Once mastered the combination of a downward casting stroke (see more later) and high line speed will offer far greater accuracy and allow you to present the fly under bankside trees and bushes. Basically, this set up provides lots of solutions to numbers of problems in terms of getting better presentation. The only disadvantage is that it can seem a tad unruly when you start out and will require a bit of dedication to master.

Fine Tuning on stream.

Once manufactured I always start my day on the water fine tuning based on the conditions of the day and the fly of choice. What I am aiming for is a leader which I can cast at my very best casting velocity and have it fail to turn over completely. That isn’t to say, land in a pile, but to result in some slack close to the fly, enough to delay the onset of drag. In casting, the fly should whizz out and die just before it touches down. I am talking about a presentation speed that with a nine foot leader will punch the dry fly into the water and under the surface! I rarely if ever back off the cast to be more gentle, presentation isn’t MY JOB, presentation is the job of the leader and I will manufacture it so that I don’t need to change my casting style throughout the day. In tuning things, if the leader collapses too much take a little out of the middle of the compound tippet. If it goes out dead straight lengthen the last section or even the last two sections.
The entire point is to be able to cast with maximum speed and thus improved accuracy whilst maintaining great presentation. It doesn’t hurt that with such a set up the line rarely goes anywhere near the fish. Landing line near or on fish is a sure way of scaring them into the next county.

Casting angles
If you are casting leaders of this sort of length, you can’t be lobbing the thing up into the air with a wide loop and hoping for success. You need to be a LOT more focused, which mostly means aiming your cast down at the water, not up in the air. (if you do this with a nine foot leader you will make a helluva splash). The idea is that you are aiming to turn over the fly only inches from the surface of the water. That way there is no time for it to blow off course. This downward forward casting stroke is THE ONLY way to get serious accuracy. Equally, following the 180° rule, which states that in a good fly cast the back cast should unroll directly opposite to where you want the forward cast to go. That is EXACTLY OPPOSITE in all dimensions. You need to make your back cast at an upward reciprocal angle to where you want your final delivery to go. There is a blog post on this Fishing Gene Blog covering this aspect of accurate casting THE LINK IS HERE.

Casting a long leader in the above fashion actually provides the opportunity to avoid the fish seeing the line in the air, at least some of the time. Another post on this blog covers this and THE LINK IS HERE.

Don’t simply assume that this is impossible for you.

I know that if you are used to nine foot leaders, what I am suggesting you try seems seriously well off left field. Impossible even. But I assure you that you can manage to make it work. Perhaps if you are not that accomplished a caster you might need to start off with perhaps only a 14’ leader or so, and of course practice or get some qualified instruction. Learning to cast well is the greatest investment you can make. So make up a similar leader to that mentioned above and get out on the lawn and play with it. The MOST important thing is to generate line speed,casting with tight loops, you will virtually never be trying to cast gently again. Fire the fly in relying on the leader to do the presentation for you. It will take a bit of getting used to if you haven’t done it before, but I assure you that once mastered you will never look back.

A few tips to help you get started.

When you first start off with this, make the initial casts whilst holding the fly in your hand and let out fly line until there is enough to flex the rod more effectively. I don’t do this any more but it can help you get going. Once the rod is flexing a bit you can let go the fly and make normal casts.

Make roll cast pick ups to set yourself up for the next cast, this helps get the system going and lifts the long leader cleanly off the water.

**Using a “roll cast pick up” makes handling a long leader far more manageable.**

Start any new casting stroke with a smooth and slow lift of the rod until the fly starts moving. This will provide a clean pick up and equally avoid that noisy “slurp” from ripping the fly from the water with too much force.

This is all much harder to do with “fast action rods”, one of the many reasons why I don’t like them and don’t fish with them.

Below is a video by fellow FFI master casting instructor Peter Morse demonstrating some variations of the roll cast. For our purposes focus on the second cast demonstrated “The Roll Cast Pickup”. Peter is demo’ing from a boat but I like his explanation and clarity of demo. The roll cast pick up is super useful in making your fishing more efficient, particularly fishing upstream and particularly with long leaders.

For my money, of all the potential adaptations you might make to your gear, casting style or your fly box fishing much longer leaders is the most likely to improve your catch rate. I strongly recommend that you give it a go and persevere a little, because the rewards will be worth it. And if to start with 22’ is a bit beyond reach aim for 14 or 15’. Basically on any given day I fish the longest leader I can manage under the conditions. That’s a good place for you to start. You will quickly realise as the presentation improves and your catch rate soars, that 9’ simply doesn’t cut the mustard!

Tags: Compound tippet, Fishing long leaders, Fly Casting, Fly Fishing Efficiently, Knotless leaders, Long Leaders, Roll cast pick up, Tim Rolston
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Casting, Tackle Rigging, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Tippet Diameter

January 30, 2026

The difference between breaking strain and the “X” system.

Yes it is mid-winter here in Wales, freezing cold and the prospects for any fishing, even Euro-nymphing for grayling, are severely limited. We have had nothing but rain for weeks and the rivers are in spate. But with no fishing expeditions to write about, I have been searching for something and a recent post on social media got my attention. After all this time it seems that some anglers still don’t know the difference between various means of measuring nylon, if you are a fly fisherman, let’s call it tippet.

What should you be more interested in? The diameter or the strength (Breaking Strain)?

Generally in Europe they use the actual diameter of the nylon as a measure, “I am using 0.10 tippet” they will say, whilst the American or South African angler will tell you they are using the same stuff but call it 7X tippet. In the UK they are likely to say that they are using 3.5lb nylon. ( The German fly fisher will tell you they are fishing 0.1023765mm tippet, but we can ignore that 😊)

The first question is “are they all correct?” and the answer to that is NO!.
The English angler might well be using 3.5lb breaking strain nylon, but that doesn’t mean that it is 7X ,the others are at least being precise, assuming that the manufacturer of the nylon wasn’t telling porky pies.

Particularly in clear water tippet diameter can be crucial for success. But it isn’t only about visibility, flexing with the current delaying drag and providing for gentle presentation is also important.

The “X” system is ONLY a measure of diameter and nothing else, you could, theoretically have 7X tippet with a breaking strain of anything from 1lb to 100lb, but it would still be 7X which is 0.10mm in diameter or .004”. (The formula for this in inches is (11-X) x 0.001)

Effectively then the “X” system and the BS system (not bullshit but breaking strain) are two entirely different measurements. The X system tells you nothing about the strength of the nylon, the breaking strain doesn’t tell you anything about the diameter.

So, what is it that you actually need to know? For anglers slinging a lead weight and targeting fish of a particular size and power, perhaps the breaking strain is more important than the diameter. (Of course there are still issues of line drag in the current and such but the diameter is seen as less important that the breaking strain of the line). In general for almost all applications a thinner diameter is preferable to a thicker one, part of the reason that the use of braid, in some scenarios has taken off.

Because of the nature of fly-casting and the desire to slow down the leader as it extends, having a taper in the fly line and the leader is crucial to good presentation, which is likely why fly anglers tend to focus on nylon diameter in the first place.

**Having faith in one’s tippet is critical, Stroft GTM is my preferred choice for almost all applications on the river.**

For the fly angler diameter is king, it is what allows for controlled taper of the leader, the breaking strain is of far less importance in terms of presentation. If you accept that diameter is the key then you have a choice, you can say “my compound tippet is made up of 3ft of 0.15mm , 3ft of 0.13mm, 3ft of 0.10mm and 5ft of 0.08mm nylon. OR you can say, describing the same thing, my compound tippet is 3ft 5x, 3ft 6x, 3ft 7x and 5ft 8x.

Both of the above are the same tippet, it is just that the latter, to my mind, is a lot easier to roll off the tongue. ( I note that it is odd that I use inches to measure the length and mm to measure the diameter, the inside my head is obviously something of a strange space).

The British angler is in more trouble; to him, the above would read 3ft 6lb, 3ft 4.5lb, 3ft 3.5lb and 5ft of 2lb. The problem is that whilst both the previous examples would be accurate, the British angler’s specifications would ONLY be true if using the same nylon throughout. If he mixed up various brands the leader would likely not work properly because the diameters are NOT specified. It would be entirely possible that a later section in the tippet was actually thicker than the previous section. This isn’t said to denigrate UK fishermen, just that for some reason many, but not all, tend to talk in terms of breaking strains instead of diameters. It is an oddity, much as the fact that MOST UK anglers fish with the reel handle on their non-rod hand, (As do I), where in the US there is a mix and in South Africa the norm is the exact opposite.

Both nylon measurement systems are reasonable, but if your focus is on diameter then the X system works really well, it is simple, easily understood and conveyed to others. It is unaffected by brand or even if the material is copolymer, nylon, string, gut, fluorocarbon or graphine.

Because of this, most American brands of tippet have a “X” rating written on the spool, European brands such as Stroft GTM (my personal favourite) have the diameter written on the spool in mm and I have copied my old hometown tackle shop in writing the X factor on the spools with a Sharpie pen so I don’t make a mistake on-stream.

Although the X system doesn’t tell you anything about the Breaking Strain of the line, most fly anglers fish far heavier tippet than they need to, often at the expense of fooling fish. This Lesotho Yellowfish was taken on 8X tippet in a fast flowing river. Technique is more important that leader strength for the most part.

I think in X’s; just as, illogically, I think of fish and babies in pounds and ounces and fish lengths in inches, I simply cannot picture a fish that someone tells me was 35cms, it means nothing to me. Actually tippet of 0.10mm means little to me either, if you say 7X I know what the hell you are talking about.

I suppose a lot of it is simply what one is used to, such that in my own conflicted brain, I travel in miles, drink beer in pints, buy Whisky in millilitres, weigh fish and babies in pounds, state my height in feet and inches whilst doing all my woodwork in millimetres. But if you are a flyfisher, you are well advised to get used to thinking in tippet diameter and using the X system makes that pretty simple to do.

Actually the “X” system came about as a result of the number of times silk gut was pulled through a die to make it thinner. Although not technically accurate , the way I think about it in my own head is to imagine pulling a silk work gut to twice it’s length (2X) or seven times it’s original length (7X). Obviously , that isn’t quite how it works, but it makes or a useful way of thinking about the system.

Anyway, you can think of nylon in any number of ways and measure it with a variety of parameters, but in fly fishing diameter is king. Breaking strain a lot less so. If you are of European heritage and wish to refer to nylon as 0.10mm that’s fine. If you want a simpler system that is quicker to message your mates about 7X will do just nicely. If you feel compelled to suggest that your terminal tackle is 3.5lb that’s fine too, but just realise that it has nothing to do with the diameter.

For the record this chart shows various tippet measurements, the breaking strain is approximate and will vary with brand and materials.

Tippet size “X”	Diameter Inches	Diameter mm	Breaking Strain
	11-X x 0.001		Approximately
0 X	0.011	0.28	16lb
1 X	0.010	0.25	14lb
2 X	0.009	0.23	11lb
3 X	0.008	0.20	9lb
4 X	0.007	0.18	7lb
5 X	0.006	0.15	5lb
6X	0.005	0.13	4lb
7X	0.004	0.10	3lb
8X	0.003	0.08	2lb
9X	0.002	0.05	1.5lb

Frequently such tables also include fly sizes to “match” the tippet, suggesting that 8X is for flies from 22 to 28 or 6X tippet should be matched to flies from 16 to 22. There is even a supposed “formula” for this, suggesting that you multiply the X rating by three to get the ideal fly size. I haven’t included that information because I think that it is rubbish. I happily fish flies from size 10 to 20 on 8x tippet without concern. I think this notion comes from flies spinning up finer tippet. Some larger traditionally hackled dry flies for example will spin in the air on finer tippet and the thicker stuff will help prevent that. Which is one of the reasons I rarely fish any standard hackle flies anymore. I prefer to set up my leader and tippet at the river and once it is working stick with it through all manner of fly changes. Sometimes if I switch to a much larger and less aerodynamic fly I might need to shorten the tippet, but I rarely change the terminal diameter. Changing tippet along with every fly change would waste a lot of time and even more tippet, so I don’t do it.

Hopefully this might help you in setting up your terminal tackle or understanding posts and videos using the “X” system of tippet diameter.

Tags: Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing Tippet, Leader construction, Stroft GTM, The X system, The X system of tippet diameter, Tim Rolston, Tippet Diameter
Posted in Fishing, Tackle Rigging | 7 Comments »

What Trout Want

October 7, 2025

I have been fly fishing for over 50 years, but I would have to admit to being a bit of a slow starter. For much of my “career” I have been a one man band, not necessarily out of choice but because in my youth I didn’t have anyone to confer with. I read everything that was available to me in the local library. But didn’t really have any “fishing buddies” or “mentors” who knew anything more about fly fishing than I did. I certainly didn’t have access to a dedicated flyshop, or a plethora of fly tying materials.

These weren’t the days of YouTube video instruction or websites, podcasts and such, you either knew someone who was better at things than you and was prepared to take you out on the water or you didn’t. Pretty much I didn’t, and so I made my own choices, my own experiments and more to the point, in spades, my own mistakes.

If there is a mistake you can make in terms of fly fishing then I assure you I have made it. I have tied poor knots, cast badly, used tippet far too heavy, flies too large, waded poorly and rushed when I should have been more circumspect. Worst of all I have spent far too much time focusing on looking for more realistic fly patterns, mostly because all the evidence about me suggested that this was what was required.

However out of experimentation and error is born conviction. When I suggest that in my opinion this is a better way of doing something, it isn’t out of ego, or blind faith. It is born out of the crucible of failure, of mistakes, of foolish adherence to the rules of the time, basically naivety.

Take fly casting as a case in point. I grew up with the standard UK stiff upper lip and stiffer wrist school, promulgated in EVERY library book I read, and I read all of them. The ‘ol’ Ten O’clock to Two O’clock rubbish which I still hear and see on a regular basis. It is garbage of course and has held back far too many anglers from reaching anything like their potential, but still today there are supposed tutors who use this as a casting style, or at least purport to. Even now, in some circles, you take your life in your hands should you suggest “The Clock System” is rubbish, only to become branded as a heretic and outcast from angling society, labelled as a trouble maker. See A Load of ‘ol Clock on this blog.

Perhaps the issue has been that, from the outset, fly fishing has been dictated from on high with specific rules and conventions which stifle innovation. “The Masters of the Art” dictated from their lofty perches, all manner of foolish convention, from regulation that one should only cast a dry fly upstream to a rising trout, to specific measurements of wing or hackle size on a fly. There is no real basis for any of these “rules” but they have been universally accepted and passed down through generations to the point that they have taken on the apparent authenticity of fact.

***These “Standard” dry fly proportions only really work to try to make a particular style of dry fly float correctly. In reality they have nothing to do with imitation.***

All of that means that it is extremely difficult to avoid such notions and to genuinely “think outside of the box”.

Much as this applies to issues such as fly casting it equally, and perhaps more pervasively, applies to fly tying and fly design. Even apparent innovations tend to stay within the lines of commonly held belief.

***Even today the vast majority of dry flies are tied in the traditional “Catskill” or “Halfordian” style, despite ample evidence that they are not the most effective.***

I didn’t really notice it to start with, but my fly tying was limited, not by lack of enthusiasm, or manual dexterity, but simply by materials. I grew up in rural South West England with limited access to fly shops or fly tying retailers and even more limited funds. Such that the flies that I tied were manufactured out of materials from my mother’s sewing kit. Until my late twenties I hadn’t heard of a “Genetic Hackle” and when I did it finally opened up the reason why my dry flies didn’t look like those in the books.

That bothered me, and continued to bother me for decades. My flies never looked like the perfect Catskill ties in the tomes from the local library. They didn’t seem to float the way described in the angling literature which I was still absorbing like a sponge.

Over time, changes in circumstances and additional financial freedom meant that I could manage (Just) to include some premium materials, genetic hackles and such into my fly tying. I was happier with the patterns, they looked more like those featured in books, articles and now YouTube videos.

I became caught up in the “Match the Hatch”, “Close copy” rhetoric of the time. Briefly, enamored with Goddard and Clarke’s USD paradun, because it seemed to be eminently sensible to remove the bend of the hook from the equation, what insight! What inventiveness! What rubbish. (To be fair, Goddard and Clarke’s book “The Trout and the Fly, a New Approach” was highly advanced for its time, but again the authors, as did so many of us, fell down the rabbit hole of imagining that one could make more and more imitative patterns and thus become more and more successful.)

Fly tying has been filled with “fools errands” for generations, Dunne fiddled with mixed coloured silk swatches, determined that the colour was the big issue. Halford and Gordon pontificated over split wings, cock hackle fibres, and an entirely imaginary dry fly floating on “hackle points” well above the surface. (Something that is all but impossible to achieve, and certainly impossible to recreate cast for cast).

Don’t get me wrong, this is part of fly fishing history, Halford, Gordon, Skues, Dunne were all innovators of their time and innovation generally leads to as much failure as it does success. The point really is that one should be able to move on. It is likely, as I write this, that in the future someone, somewhere, will come up with better understanding and new and improved concepts in terms of fly design. That is progress.

***The majority of the flies I tie and use these days are about as simple as I can make them.***

Effectively my fly tying has gone full circle, from scruffy patterns forced upon me for lack of materials or even a decent vice. To scruffy patterns specifically designed to be scruffy. Unkempt straggly flies that don’t in all fairness look very much like anything. It has taken five decades to turn full circle, to recognise that much as it might be fun, (and it still is fun), to lovingly manufacture close (in our eyes) copies of specific insects, the reality is that you don’t need to and more than likely are limiting yourself if you do. Tying and fishing flies which allow for the fish to see what they want to see, rather than imposing my views of what should be a more imitative pattern, seems to work exceptionally well. See Fly Tying and the Man on the Moon on this blog.

So it was with great interest that I came across Bob Wyatt’s book “What trout want” – The educated Trout and other myths. (Stackpole Books ISBN 9780811711791). I am not entirely sure how this tome eluded me for a long as it did. It was originally published in 2013 so I have been a bit slow on the uptake. (What I will say upfront if that if you haven’t read it then you really should)

***If you are happy to question conventional wisdom and learn a lot about tying more effective flies you would do well to read this.***

But as I commenced reading through Wyatt’s engaging chapters I more and more realised that we were very much on the same page. It is something of a revelation, simply because the overwhelming background noise in fly fishing and fly tying circles continues to be based on “finding a better fly” and in general “better” implies a closer copy of the real thing.

Conventions are so pervasive that even innovators tend to revert to type, so caught up are all in the common “wisdom” of our sport.

Fly Fishing Outside the Box, by Peter Hayes (Coch-y-Bonddu Books, 2013, ISBN9781904784562) is one of my favoured publications, not because I agree with everything that Peter Hayes suggests, but simply because I love that he is prepared to publicly challenge common wisdom in exactly the same way that Wyatt does in his book. The trouble is that for all that innovative thinking Hayes falls into the imitative fly trap with a focus on fly patterns and a chapter “Imitation’s Last Frontier”. This isn’t to criticise Hayes, but to rather demonstrate how incredibly difficult it is to escape the long held conventions of various aspects of our sport.

***Another thought provoking book well worth your attention.***

It is perhaps worth noting that Peter has a second book, written together with Don Stazicker, equally well worth the read and equally in many ways as innovative and questioning as the first. It is called “Trout and Flies Getting Closer” (Kindle Edition available on Amazon as an eBook), and for all the innovation there is the focus on imitative fly patterns all over again. It is a tricky monkey to get off one’s back.

I belong to a WhatsApp group dedicated to fly tying which sees literally hundreds of posts every week and most of those, images of the latest creation from one of the participants. In all honestly none vary considerably from the other hundreds of patterns. Few, if any, represent a step forward in terms of fish fooling ability. They are all nice, they represent a level of artistry that can’t be downplayed but do they make any difference out on the water? Personally I don’t think so and now I have “found” a like thinking angler in Bob Wyatt who equally believes that we fly fishers tend to overemphasize the fly pattern and underestimate the importance of almost everything else.

Go to the British Fly Fair, ( A wonderful event to be sure) and there will be rooms full of fly tying materials, fly tying tools, international “stars” demonstrating fly tying techniques. Not that there is anything wrong with any of that, not that I don’t personally enjoy exploring and trying out new things. BUT, and it is a big BUT, what is it that we are trying to achieve? To me I am trying to achieve a result in terms of consistently catching fish. Yes it is nice if the patterns I manufacture look pretty to my eyes, that brings confidence. Yes it is fun to fiddle about with new materials and I have to admit that my patterns tend to evolve a little bit year on year, such that the fly boxes never look exactly the way they did six months back. But I have almost entirely given up on trying to “copy” nature. To my eyes and to Wyatt’s it is a thankless and likely impossible task.

Of course the fly pattern is of critical importance, at least insomuch that without one you are not going to catch many fish. The question really then becomes what makes an effective one? And therein lies the rub. For decades we have been taught to focus on close copies. There are endless book titles pontificating about fly design, thousands of images of upright and delicately fashioned patterns. Dozens of tomes suggesting how to “Match the Hatch” but to my mind there is ample evidence all about us that this view is seriously flawed.

Simple, “scruffy” flies, which could represent any number of bugs are to my mind generally more effective. They don’t imitate anything, or they imitate everything, it’s a matter of perspective.

For starters the most famous flies or those in greatest general use are both simple in design and universal in appeal. The Adams, the Hare’s Ear, the Pheasant Tail, the Elk Hair Caddis and others don’t even in their names suggest the imitation of a specific insect. In fact one of the best known “Upwing” imitations The Adams actually started life as a caddis fly imitation apparently and its popularity likely has as much to do with visability as it does imitation.

There have been a number of key innovations since the days of Halford and the standard dry fly, but almost all of those are advances are more in terms of engineering and fishability than considerations of imitation.

There have been innovations, the G & H sedge a new look of using spun deer hair, although still sporting the standard perpendicular hackle. The Comparadun, really something away from the accepted dry fly style. The parachute, mechanically far superior to the Catskill ties and Fran Betters’ interesting use of snow shoe hare.

The advent of parachute styles, Cauci and Nastasi’s Comparadun, Hans van Klinken’s superb “Klinkhamer” and of course one of the more recent advances The Perdigon. None of these flies claim to be more imitative, at least in terms of their looks. They might well be more imitative in the manner in which they are presented, not least because they are all effectively “emergers”, but that is another matter entirely.

So when you are considering loading up your fly boxes over the winter months I would strongly suggest that you read Bob Wyatt’s “What Trout Want”, Hans Van Klinken’s “Klink”, Peter Hayes’ “Fly Fishing Outside the Box” and MOST importantly, start to think of your fly designs not in terms of close copy imitation but rather in terms of presentability and fishability.

To my mind fly fishing is ALWAYS about presentation and having flies that aid in that presentation is a far better bet than trying for an impossible EXACT copy of any given bug.

Tags: Bob Wyatt, Comparadun, Educated Trout, Fly Tying, Klinkhammer, Matching the hatch, Peter Hayes, Simple Trout Flies, Tim Rolston
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Tying, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Right Fly

August 19, 2025

Fly Fishing is NOT about the fly; but what if it is?

I have written extensively about my view; that fly fishing really isn’t about the fly; despite so many anglers, writers, influencers and others all becoming besotted with flies and fly tying.

It isn’t that I am immune to the allure of a nicely fashioned imitation; I have even been known to lash together the occasional artistic and well-proportioned Catskill pattern of my own, but these days I don’t tend to fuss too much about such things.

I remain convinced that the closer you get to a “perfect imitation” the further you get away from catching fish. It is a difficult pill to swallow, because decades of angling writers have convinced us that “if only I had the right fly…. Blah Blah Blah”.

**The idea that one has to “Match the Hatch” is so ingrained it is difficult to escape.**

If one doesn’t get a take then it must be the fly, if one doesn’t catch a fish, even in spate conditions and freezing winds, it must be the fly. If one casts over an actively feeding fish and it doesn’t take, then, it must be the fly. I totally reject that notion for any number of reasons. Not least because, when you have that viewpoint, you have painted yourself into a corner before you even start. You have limited your thinking to focus on one aspect of your game, frequently resulting in ignoring a heap of other important and likely more important aspects. You figure that you don’t have the right fly so you might as well go home. Or, perhaps worse still, you keep working your way through a stuffed fly box, tying and retying different patterns and using up your precious tippet in a frenzy of misguided hope.

Reasons for a fish not eating your fly are myriad, drag, leader flash, poor presentation (in multiple guises), even simply fish that are not feeding, it’s rarely the pattern, at least not the specific pattern.

But what if it is?

After slightly more than two years, fishing the Wye River in my “new” home in Wales, I have been successful using only four, or maybe six flies most of the time. I had visions, after my move, of having to learn Latin names, study new bugs. I even invested in a little net from the local post office. It is designed to allow small children to abuse minnows, but serves me adequately when I wish to catch the prevailing insects to better identify them. It has proven interesting, but I can’t say it has made any difference to my catch rate. Most of the rising fish will take a small neutrally coloured Klinkhammer, a CDC midge, a floating nymph/emerger or going deep a 2mm bead black thread perdigon. Honestly, 99% of my fish, have taken one of those even amidst some notable hatches.

**Most of the flies I use are simple, relying on suggestion more than imitation.**

After moving home and with that feeling insecure on new waters, I studied Pat O’Reily’s “Matching the Hatch” (Swan Hill Press: ISBN 1 85310 822 7”.) An excellent tome, it proves to be, a great resource for me to find out what bug it is that I have in the mesh of my child’s minnow net.

However: in a book, dedicated to matching the hatch of all the various bugs, aquatic and other, that might be ingested by a fish, O’Reily suggests paradoxically that there are SEVEN patterns which cover most of the bases. What he refers to as “The Magnificent Seven”. Had he been less of a fan of Yul Brynner and more focused on Enid Blyton it could have been the “Famous Five” instead. The point is, and I agree, that you don’t need an exact copy of every bug for success. In fact I suspect that even were that possible it might prove counter productive.

Much as “matching the hatch” has become the accepted norm; even cursory examination of on stream experience shows that we all catch fish without carrying a million specific imitations. If it wasn’t for the fact that we can get away with less than perfect imitations, I doubt that any of us would catch much at all.

Selecting a key “few” patterns which work for you is probably the baseline of almost all anglers. I personally wouldn’t choose the flies that O’Reily has, but I do go along with the concept that you don’t need too many different imitations to cover most of the bases.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking the author, the book was first published in 1997, things were a bit different back then, fly designs and materials have moved on a long way since. The images of various insects alone are worth the price of a copy. Without it I wouldn’t have a cooking clue as to what bug I had captured and, as mentioned above, it has proven interesting to study a few insects on the water and determine what they are.

FOR THE RECORD:

O’Reilly suggests his “Magnificent Seven” are:
Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear Nymph (Covering most nymph forms)
Greenwell’s Glory (Covering Upwings)
Tup’s Indispensable (Covering pale upwings)
Silver Sedge (Covering all the sedges/caddis flies)
Damsel Nymph (Present throughout the year and an essential stillwater pattern)
Coch-y-bonddu (covering beetles)
Olive Suspender Buzzer (Covering all the midge pupae)

Given that the book considers both rivers and still waters, the Damsel and Suspender Buzzer are almost exclusively stillwater flies, that leaves only FIVE to fish moving water.
O’Reilly’s selections are obviously somewhat dated, but that is to be expected and this is by no means a criticism, although the fact that they are all tied on barbed hooks is.

My current “modern” selection for rivers would be:
CDC Parachute Klinkhammer (Covering Upwings and emergers)
CDC Midge (Covering midges and small upwings)
Spun Dun (Covering Upwings and emergers)
F Fly (Covering upwings and caddis flies)
Perdigon (Covering nymphs)
In fairness, I haven’t specified colours, so I am cheating a bit compared to O’Reilly’s rigid pattern choice.

The actual patterns don’t matter that much, so long as you can cover the bases, if you want to include a parachute Adams or a Walt’s Worm, that’s all fine. In the end confidence in the flies is probably about as crucial as the actual pattern itself. (See https://paracaddis.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/the-c-word/ on this blog)

The concept of “Matching the Hatch”, close or exact copy imitation has been the mainstay of fly angling literature for decades. The fact that it is rubbish doesn’t seem to make a dent. There are undoubtedly elements in an effective fly which are required. BUT, exact, or even close copy imitations are certainly not.

I have to say that I am a dyed in the wool, vociferous advocate of presentation. A PRESENTATIONIST above all else, the skill in fly fishing is presentation, not having the most extensive fly box, not learning Latin, not identifying ephemerids by their wing veination under a microscope. Learn to present your flies effectively and you will catch fish. That is my mantra, that is what I believe, study, and teach. Presentation, presentation, presentation.

**A quality Brown Trout taken on a non-descript midge pattern**

So what about the other evening?

I headed out late onto a section of the Wye River; a favoured spot for evening fishing. The tailout will often erupt with moving fish in the last hour of a summer’s evening, it is easily wadeable, if a tad slippery. If things go to plan you can catch dozens of fish without moving twenty feet.

There were a few fish moving on the top when I arrived. Not a lot but something to target at least. I took my first fish on about the third cast and then little for a while. A rising fish, a cast, a take and a miss. Nothing to worry about. Another rise, another cast, another take and another miss. This happened four times in a row and that is, to be fair to me, unusual.

I checked that the fly wasn’t tangled, perhaps being pulled in reverse, but nothing was amiss.

I caught some fish, even a LOT of fish for that matter, but it seemed to me that something was “off”. Usually an accurate cast over a moving fish will result in a take, perhaps require a second cast. Here I was making four or five casts and not always getting a response. Could it be the fly? It really felt as though the fish were not fully committing. What the English would refer to as “taking short”. I am not sure that I buy that, but for whatever reason the fish didn’t seem totally convinced by either my imitation or presentation.

The leader was my standard 20’, tapered down to 8x, my casting was working well, once the wind had dropped, and I was, in my view, covering rises with considerable accuracy and quality presentation. Usually that’s enough.

The Klinkhammer worked, but not well enough in my opinion, the CDC midge worked, but again, too many drifts to get a result, and eventually as the light faded into the last half hour of fishable conditions I changed pattern. I had captured some “Welshman’s Button” Sedges earlier on in the evening, in my kiddies fishing net, more out of interest than what I considered necessity. They certainly seemed to be the prevailing hatch. So the fly I selected was a black parachute goose biot caddis.

The goose biot caddis is a pattern I designed to imitate micro caddis on the streams of the Limietberg Reserve in South Africa and it had proven very effective there. To be frank, I hadn’t cast that pattern in two years. But it did the business; from two, three, four casts over a rising fish, to get a response, now it was one or two.

In the fading light I probably made less than eight casts to catch the final four fish. I quit after that, the darkness increasing the possibility of injuring the fish unnecessarily. The takes were now so confident that I frequently had to use forceps to remove the barbless hook. I can’t be sure that it wasn’t the dim light more than the pattern that made the difference. And more to the point I am pretty sure that any dark caddis shaped pattern would have done the trick. But it was interesting.

None of that really changes my view that it isn’t about the fly. Yes the caddis pattern seemed to be more effective, but then again any small dark caddis-shaped fly likely would have done. Caddis flies are a distinctive profile, and I hadn’t been casting anything particularly caddis like.

Although I firmly believe that it isn’t about the fly, it does pay to be “in the ball-park” in terms of size and shape.

Where I believe I was in error, (and bear in mind that I still caught a considerable number of fish on the “wrong fly”) was that I wasn’t covering the shape of the ongoing hatch. (Welshman’s Button in this instance).

It isn’t easy to know, there are always midges on this river, the sedges (Caddis) are fairly small, and mixed hatches are the norm. But I definitely felt that my other patterns weren’t producing the results that I expected and the change made a significant difference.

Even then you don’t need a specific pattern, a small F fly, a dark Elk Hair Caddis, perhaps even a larger version of the CDC midge would likely have done the business.

So, despite this apparent anomaly , I still hold to the idea that in reality you don’t need a specific imitation. The “Magnificent Seven” concept, although I wouldn’t choose any of those particular flies, holds true. Close enough is good enough much of the time. Clear differences in size and shape however do matter. Clearly different “prey images” require some adaptation, although even then, much of the time the fish are focused on damaged, semi submerged insects trapped in the film and really looking a bit of mess.

I suspect that on this evening, I wasn’t quite right in terms of the shape/profile of the prevailing food source. I still caught some fish, but it was more of a struggle than it should have been, until I switched patterns.

I still hold to the following:

You will catch fish with the right fly
You will catch fish with the wrong fly
But you will catch most of your fish with the right presentation.
Fly fishing is ALWAYS about presentation.
I would far rather fish the “wrong fly” on the right leader than the other way around.
Sometimes, a change of fly will make a difference, but it doesn’t need to be an exact copy.

The trouble is that the “Match the Hatch” mantra is so ingrained, so pervasive, so frequently repeated that it is difficult to get it entirely out of one’s system. I still carry far too many flies “just in case”.. I need to work on that a bit I think.

Tags: Fishing the River Wye, Fly Fishing Presentation, Fly Patterns, Fly Tying, Matching the hatch, The Magnificent Seven, The Right Fly, Tim Rolston
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Tying, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

What do you think?

August 11, 2025

I recently “hosted” an old friend from South Africa who was visiting the UK and cleverly arranged to get in some fishing in Mid Wales. Best I understand it, he managed to convince a considerable family entourage to camp out in the nearby hills, just so that he could go fishing for a few days. That provides some indication of the commitment of both himself and the extended family for that matter. Nobody else in the party has much, if any, interest in fishing.

I tell you this because; although having a visiting angler come to your home waters is always something of a pressure event, one hopes that the fish will put their best fins forward as it were. With this extended number of people intimately invested in the outing, the pressure was more than somewhat on.

**Visiting angler John targets some of the few rising fish we found, late in the day.**

As it turned out, after bright weather and pretty much drought conditions for weeks, the day in question dawned bleak, chill, and cloudy and there had been a good down-pouring of rain in the hills over night. I dropped Lennie off at work and returned home to find an excited John on the doorstep, all ready to tackle the Wye, and hopefully catch, what would be, his first brown trout and / or first grayling. So you will see that the outing was important in more ways that one.

We headed out onto the club section in Newbridge on Wye, walking along the road and across fields to reach a favoured section, which receives little fishing pressure other than from me. The water is exclusive in the sense that you have to live in Newbridge to become a member. Exclusivity via geography rather than financial stature. (If I had known in advance, I could have been persuaded to pay more for my humble cottage).

**The Upper Wye holds some great fish, both Brown Trout and Grayling. The hope for the day was for John to tick off at least one and perhaps two new species. He managed that in the end.**

Crossing at a convenient spot it was obvious that the water was up and a little bit discoloured, something rather unusual on this stretch. That had me thinking that we were in for a hard time of it. The previous few outings had clear water and fish willing to come up for a dry fly even with little or no surface activity.

I set John up with a dry fly, fishing a lovely run with a distinct bubble line, screaming fish at us, but to no avail. We added a nymph in a duo rig and continued without success. Then I re-rigged my rod for Euro-nymphing and fished through a very good slightly deeper run. I was showing John the ropes as we went along, him being unfamiliar with Euro-nymphing techniques. I fully expected a result but got none. The river holds both native wild brown trout and grayling, surely one of them could be lured by a deeply presented nymph? But no, not a sniff.

Whilst John persevered with a nymph rig, hopes slightly buoyed by a fish attacking the indicator, I returned to the original run and re-rigged back to a duo outfit with a small perdigon on the point and a favoured small Klinkhammer on the dropper. I was really spinning my wheels and waiting for John, thinking that we might have to move to a completely different venue with clearer water. There would be other rivers flowing out of dams which weren’t coloured up by the rains, should it come to that.

**A change in tactics worked out well, but why were the fish in the shallows?**

But then; this is where things got interesting. The water was definitely discoloured, but a fish rose not feet from my legs. (I suppose that might be some indication of the stealth of my wading, but in reality why was it there? ), then another fish rose under the rod tip. There had been no surface activity, and generally in this run the fish are further out in the obvious bubble line. Could they have moved in close because they could better find food? Or perhaps they felt safer in the murky flows, to move closer into the shallows.

I didn’t know, but changed tack and cast up against the bank into water not a foot deep, immediately getting a take on the dry fly. A really nice brown trout which threw the hook on the second jump. Disappointing but encouraging too.

So, reassessing the situation I waded back to the bank and started fishing where on any normal day I would be standing. Three more casts and a grayling intercepted the dry fly and again threw the hook, then another which was was landed. Not five minutes later a fish rose so close under my rod tip that I could barely cast to it, almost dapping the dry fly onto the rings of the rise and eliciting another take and another feisty grayling in the net.

In something like 15 minutes, I rose four fish, although I dropped two of them for whatever reason, this on a morning when hours or focused toil had produced nothing.

Could it be that for some reason the fish moved into shallower water? I have fished this run numerous times and the fish are ALWAYS out on the bubble line on the seam between the deeper water and a shallow rock shelf. What was the thinking in moving into the shallows on the opposite side to where they normally feed?

**John’s second ever Brown Trout and a mission half completed.**

It was interesting, and something of a success on the one hand, but I am still not sure as to the reason for the effectiveness of the change of tactics. I suppose I could chalk it up to a good “educated guess” and let’s face it there are a lot of those in effective fly fishing. But at the same time it bothers me that I don’t really know the reason behind it.

We spent a few more hours, fishing the shallows in various spots with little success, other than John landing his first ever Brown Trout, all of four inches long. A milestone, albeit a diminutive one, and then we packed up for lunch.

**John finally adds another new species, a grayling on a dry fly.. Well done.**

Returning to the water in the evening the river had fined down and cleared considerably. We fished a different section and John got a larger brown trout and a decent grayling, two new species for him which was wonderful.

All in all a good result, dragged kicking and screaming out of a poor start to the day. A victory of sorts, ripped from the jaws of impending defeat.

I will still wonder about those fish in the shallows, but will file it away, because no doubt at some point in the future I might find myself in a similar situation and that tiny bit of knowledge could spell the difference between success and failure once again.

**Out on his own the following day John picked up some more fish including this gorgeous Brown Trout. He must have learned something the day before, even if I didn’t.**

But what do you think? Did the fish move into the shallows for better visibility to feed? Or, did they perhaps simply feel more secure in the slightly murky water to come close?

Perhaps there is another scenario which I haven’t considered, I would be interested in your thoughts.

There is little doubt in my mind something was happening, and I was fortunate enough to adapt and make the most of it, but I am not sure what “IT” was. Some thoughts?

Please do feel free to leave a comment, it was an interesting morning, but you may well have further insights which have escaped me. Thanks.

Tags: Dry Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing coloured water, John Elverson, Tim Rolston, Wye River
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Drumming ‘Em Up.

August 3, 2025

On those chill winter evenings, perhaps glass in hand, we might conjure up images of fishing, either in the past or potential future. But those images rarely include struggling to cast into a frigid gale, slinging tungsten on a tight line rig, or stumbling on slippery boulders and heading for an unanticipated swim.

**The last few outings it seems that the grayling are more susceptible to a well presented dry than the brown trout.**

No, optimists that we are, and anglers have to be optimists to survive, we see the bright side. The languid flow of a crystal clear stream. The dimpled rises of active fish under the far bank vegetation, perhaps the regular interception of mayfly duns in a slick tail-out. The neon blue flash of a kingfisher headed home, or perhaps even a squeaking otter family as the day turns slowly into night.

For most of us, the ring of a rise is worth more than gold, the opportunity to know that you have a fish in your sights, a fish whose location has been revealed and all importantly a fish which is feeding on the surface. We can eschew the nymph, ditch the tungsten, and focus on the purest of pure presentation of a drag free dry fly. I am not sure why it matters so much, but it simply does.

**Somehow a fish on a dry fly counts for more, I am not sure why that should be, but to me it is simply the case.**

A fish taken on a dry fly is just magical, it was magical the first time it happened to me on a local canal at the age of 12, well over fifty years ago, and it remains so. To watch a fish, rise up from its aquatic realm, briefly entering our world of air and light, to intercept a tiny twist of fur and feather is, to me, a magic trick. It is like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It never fails to amaze me, not after half a century of playing the same game. I will persevere beyond reason with a dry fly if I have any hope of success. Yes I will fling tungsten, perhaps even enjoy doing so when the chips are down, and the river up. BUT, I really do like to take fish on a dry fly (Emergers included).

**With grayling in particular, you never quite know what you are going to get. The largest of fish can make the smallest of dimples. This fish of modest dimensions, but the next one? Who knows.**

Back on my old “home waters” drumming them up, was pretty much the norm, if they were rising then all good and fine, but if they weren’t, most of the time you could persuade the fish to oblige with a well presented dry fly. The rivers were crystal clear, which might have helped things along, and the bug life wasn’t particularly robust; the fish had to eat what was available to them when opportunity arose. That’s not to say the fishing was easy, it wasn’t, and some days the fish just “weren’t on”. But most of the time you could find someone willing if you put in the effort.

Here on the Wye in Mid Wales, things seem a little different. If the fish aren’t on the go they simply aren’t. Perhaps it is linked to the considerable fly life on the river; turn over a rock and there are caddis cases in their hundreds, Heptageniid Nymphs in abundance and of course in mid-summer 18 hours of daylight for fish to gorge themselves. Truth is that the fish really don’t need to feed all the time, and it isn’t any surprise that they simply don’t. They don’t give a hoot for my sport, and if they decide not to play there is little to be done about it.

**Scruffy dries are more my thing these days, most of them emerger or Klinkammer styles of some description.**

So it was a trifle unusual to me, that a few days ago I headed out onto the Wye, fairly early in the morning and with little to no surface activity on offer. I was determined, for no reason other than obstinacy, to cast a dry fly over some likely looking runs. To me, the drift of a well presented dry fly, even uninterrupted by a fish, is still a pleasure. I never quite get the same feeling from flinging a nymph. Yes the tungsten can be effective and YES I will pursue that when required, even enjoy it to a point. But to me it isn’t REAL fishing. I can happily cast a dry fly for hours, mending line, aiming for the perfect drift, watching the post of my parachute lazily follow the bubbles on the water, and never waver from my commitment.

It rarely seems to be the case that blind fishing and “drumming them up” works on the Wye; the abundance of food and the extended daylight hours might well be a factor here. BUT, on this occasion it worked. Perhaps the fifth drift down the bubble line of a delicious looking run resulted in a take from a moderate grayling. A few casts more and another rose up from the bottom to intercept the mini-klinkhammer I was fishing.

**Sometimes are just what I call “Grayling Days”, next time out you won’t find a Lady of the Stream and it will all be native brownies. It doesn’t matter, I love to catch them both.**

I continued to explore various runs without so much as a rise in sight, but pulled up fish in almost every spot I tried. Interestingly, only one of the fish taken on that day, some twenty fish in total was a native brownie. ALL of the fish were grayling, and not a few of decent proportions. It seems a little odd that bottom focused fish, with sub-terminal mouths, like grayling, would respond to the dry fly more aggressively than the native browns. But then again, that is what happened.

**Flies orientated to have a submerged abdomen seem to illicit more of a response.**

I enjoyed a lovely morning on the river, saw a kingfisher, and caught something in the region of twenty fish, all but one were grayling, and all on a dry fly. I haven’t previously had much success with drumming them up when they are not on the move. Perhaps the low and clear water had something to do with things. I suppose that is the point really, you never actually know what is going on. I should likely have fished a duo rig with a nymph as some sort of insurance, but I am old and grumpy, it was a nice day and I just wanted to fish a dry fly. This time it worked, next time it likely won’t. Who knows?

What does seem to make a difference, particularly to the Grayling is to fish some sort of emerger style fly, a floating nymph or Klinkhammer style with the abdomen below the surface. I an growing increasingly confident in the idea that this orientation of the fly can trigger more takes, even if the fish aren’t “up on the top”.

I continue to experiment, but haven’t really fished a true full hackled dry fly in months. I still carry a small net to investigate the hatches, because I am not familiar with them, but last evening, with long horn sedges the predominant species I was still successful with a small Klink’ style pattern.

It is all good fun, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes rewarding and it seems that if a fish is moving on the top, it is, for the most part takeable, with a well placed and drag free cast. When they are not up, things are more tricky. But again, it seems that there are times when they can be tempted and the pleasure of fishing a single dry fly somehow makes the extra effort all the more worthwhile.

**Casting a dry fly over glorious water is a pleasure in itself, sometimes you get lucky and the fish oblige.**

There was a chill wind on the river last night, once the sun went down. A harbinger of winter on its way, and when the time comes, I will be forced to sling tungsten and wade frigid flows. For now I will enjoy fishing on the top, perhaps limiting my potential to a point, but not my enjoyment.

There will be plenty of time for nymphing in the coming months, so for now I will try to focus on the surface feeders, even if I have to persuade them to become such.

Tags: Dry Fly Fishing, Flyfishing, Klinkhammer, The River Wye, Tim Rolston
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Tying, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Enquiring Minds

June 22, 2025

I have been asked more than once, by anglers and non-anglers alike; “What makes a good fly fisherman?”. It can be interesting to ponder, because at first glance one could suggest that it would be the guy who casts the best, or ties the neatest flies, perhaps simply the one who spends the most time on the water? (We will come back to that later).

However to my mind, things like casting and fly tying can be learned by anyone willing to put in the time, so they cannot, of themselves, be indicators of future success. What I do believe is a MASSIVE indicator of future competence, even in the angler who is still struggling with the basic mechanics of the sport, is having an inquiring mind.

Anyone who is serious about fly fishing and has spent a few seasons on the water, quickly gets to realise that fly fishing is far more of an intellectual pursuit than a mechanical one. The very best anglers are those questioning things all the time. Why is that fish over there? Why is that rise form like that? Why did the fish not take my fly? Why did that fish take my fly? And myriad other subtle queries, many of which might well be subconscious.

Having an inquiring mind, questioning everything, pondering what Brian Clarke in his excellent book “In Pursuit of Stillwater Trout” terms “The Piscatorial Navel”..

**Time on the water is valuable, but all the more so if you question everything, become an observer and experiment**.

Which brings us back to “Time on the water”; an essential part of becoming more effective is to spend time fishing, there is little substitute for that. One can read as many books as you like, and very valuable that can be. But there is no real alternative for your personal growth but to get out and fish. Take the good with the bad, have success and failure, blank or not. The rub however is that time spend on the water teaches one little if not accompanied by a considerable amount of reflection.

If you are simply doing the same old same old, casting the same flies on the same leader, fishing the same stretch of water, standing glued to the spot, never noting the insects in the air or the rise forms of the fish, then you are not learning much.

There are many anglers who will tell you that they have fished for twenty years or something similar, and all to often what they mean is that they have fished the same year twenty times. The very best anglers modify their approach, scheme, experiment and learn something new almost every time they are out and about, rod in hand. They also constantly question what is considered to be accepted wisdom from the past.

**This was the Standard Dry Fly of my youth. I don’t own a single fly pattern that looks like this anymore.**

Effectively, every outing is to some degree an experiment, as it is unlikely that the fish are doing exactly the same thing each time you wet a line. It is up to the angler to try to come up with an effective strategy.

To my mind, one of the most limiting aspects for many anglers is that their first port of call in terms of a new strategy is to change flies. This near religious belief that if they only had that magic pattern their fortunes would change. All the worse when combined with the age old and undoubtedly incorrect assertion that you need a close copy of the food that the fish are currently feeding on.

Questioning that belief in close copy imitations is viewed a heretical in some circles even now. To suggest that perhaps a dry fly doesn’t need a hackle could see you burned at the stake, but the evidence against close copy imitation is glaring.

Firstly there are thousands if not millions of fly patterns and one can safely assume that if you have heard of one of them it has caught at least a few fish. Which to me suggests that almost any pattern will catch a fish at some point.

Secondly, the bigger problem for the angler is that if you assume that your lack of success is a result of not having the “Right Fly”, then you absolve yourself of responsibility for all the other adjustments you could be making. Getting better presentation in all of it’s guises would be a great place to start. The very best place to start on that front would be to learn to cast better, be able to mend the line to delay the onset of drag and to fish much longer leaders than most anglers do.

Thirdly, at least here on the Wye in Mid-Wales, the hatches are nearly always complex mixtures of midges, sedges, up wings and more. Even if you needed close copy patterns and were able to carry them all, you would still battle to know which one to try given the multitude of potential prey items on the water.

**Could it be, that the simpler and more generic the pattern, the more food items it potentially imitates**. **Can flies be “All things to all fish?”**

It is one of the reasons that I have, over time, moved more and more towards the most generalist patterns, ones which could be “This or That” to the fish. I try to make them as non-specific as possible in the hope that the fish will see in them what the fish want to see. See “Fly Tying and the Man on the Moon.

The strategy seems to work pretty well. Yes I will change sizes, sometimes colours too (as much for my own amusement as any effect on the fish).
I am far more likely to change my leader set up than the fly pattern, which usually means making it longer and finer, although my standard dry fly rig these days is universally 20’ plus tapered down to 8x.

But as far as effective flies go I don’t think that close copies are for the most part remotely necessary. What I do believe is that one can increase the effectiveness of the patterns in a number of ways.

Improve their presentation, that is, in the case of dry flies to present them with slack so they don’t drag immediately. It is FAR more effective to fish the “Wrong Fly” well, than the “Right Fly” poorly.

Secondly to provide a reasonable facsimile of a food item, although it seems that this can be pretty generic. The vast majority of the time fish feed on what is available to them, perhaps targeting the vulnerable more than the specific insect. True “selectivity” or perhaps more logically “specific focus” is rare. Most of the time fish cannot afford to be overly picky about eating only one food form. To my mind they will eat what is available to them, all the more so if it can’t easily escape.

Personally I like the idea of having “micro-movement” in the fly, the illusion of a struggling life. Something that previously has been covered by “old fashioned” soft hackles and spider patterns, but which for me, these days, basically involves using CDC fibres in almost all of my flies.

See Micromovement on this blog.

I have equally come to believe that apparent vulnerability (See: “Is Vulnerability a Super Stimulus” on this blog ) is a trigger for a predatory fish, perhaps getting them to consume a fly even when they are not actively feeding. In his exceptional book “What Trout Want”, Bob Wyatt tells that effectively ALL of his dry flies are emergers, and I realised that to be pretty much true of my fly boxes too. Aquatic flies are at their most vulnerable in the process of hatching out, and you can bet your socks that the fish know about it.

It is no surprise that most popular and effective modern dry flies such as the Klinkhammer, Comparadun, Spun Dun and others are low floating, trapped in the film, styles rather than the supposedly upright dry flies of Halford and the Catskill schools. To my mind they are again imitating that struggle to emerge, that vulnerability at the moment of eclosion. (It is no mistake that NONE of these patterns adhere to previously held norms of fly tying. Their creators questioned long held beliefs, experimented and came up with something new!)

Almost all of the fly patterns described in my eBook “Guide Flies” are simple, not least because I would rather be fishing than tying flies. And as a guide one doesn’t wish to invest hours on patterns that likely as not will end up in a tree on the client’s first back cast. Equally those flies need to be effective, clients like to catch fish.. See: Guide Flies

But I am really beginning to wonder if the simpler they are the more effective they become. Is it really possible that the simplest and most generic patterns could be more effective than the lovingly fashioned patterns with their Wally Wings, Coq de Leon tails, and genetic cape hackles?

Well it is beginning to look as though that might very well be true. Having “discovered” some emerger style flies that had been languishing in my fly box for over a year without being tested and having had some success with them a few days back. See Emergers on this blog.

I thought to tie up some more, only to realise that I couldn’t remember how I had manufactured them. My first attempts to recreate the flies just didn’t look the same. Eventually I “reverse engineered them” , that is that I cut them up and unwound the thread to try to work out what I had done. Then I remembered that I had, on little more than a whim, used up some offcuts of CDC left over from tying F flies.

I had mixed the CDC fibres with some sparkle dubbing and effectively created an emerger or floating nymph style fly, in which I had previously had very little confidence. But they had worked and I figured to test them some more. Oddly, I have never actually tied or fished a floating nymph pattern in all the years I have been fly fishing. I think that I might have missed out on some opportunities there.

**This stupendously simple pattern proved spectacularly successful when cast at rising fish, and even drumming up some which weren’t showing.** **Even to me it doesn’t look like a dry fly, but it is!**

Heading out late, (it was the longest day of the year) I sat and waited from some activity, but in the end impatience got the better of me and I started fishing up a lovely long gravel bedded glide. There were no fish moving on the top, but I stuck to my guns with a single emerger pattern on fine tippet. Covering the most likely lies and bubble line and rose a small grayling on the second cast.

It is generally quite unusual on the Wye to be able to drum up fish if there is no obvious surface activity, so a surprise, but a most welcome one. A few minutes later and I rose another grayling which put up a decent struggle before being netted and released. This went on, picking up six fish out of the run despite the lack of obvious activity.

On the next run a fish rose, I presented the emerger and it was taken immediately. Another rise, another cast and another fish. Once the fish was released I decided to move upstream and closer to my exit as it was already getting quite dark. There is a gorgeous shallow run just where I would cross the stream on the way home and I decided this would be my “last stand” for the day. By the time I had arrived there was a good amount of surface action, mostly small subtle dimples along an obvious current seam. After a few seasons now fishing the Wye I know not to assume that small dimple rises mean small fish.

**Another nice brownie to the nondescript emerger.**

My first cast over a rising fish and a take, another and quite decent grayling, after drying the fly out I cast over the next rising fish and landed a spirited and reasonably sized brown trout. Drying the fly again and casting over another rise and.. .bang, another decent trout. I repeated this with five casts to five rises, each resulting in a take and a fish. At this point I had to quit, it was getting too dark to safely unhook the fish without damage and the fly seemed to be so effective that most of the hook ups required the forceps to extract the fly.

Of course it is early days, it isn’t statistically likely that any fly, even this one, will work all of the time. But over the past few evenings it has proven lethal, with fish taking it on the first or second drift almost all of the time. By quitting time I had landed close to twenty fish, both trout and grayling, all to two flies, because somewhere in the dark I snapped off one and had to replace it.

**A lovely brownie from an equally gorgeous shallow run, late in the evening. Again to the nondescript emerger pattern.**

The fly is spectacularly simple, with no standard hackle and a hot spot just so that one can follow it on the drift. The tails are “micro-fibbets” from a nylon paint brush, the body either stripped peacock quill (the original) or hare’s ear ribbed with stretched pearl mylar. The thorax a loosely dubbed mix of chopped CDC fibres and hare/antron mix and the hot spot is a tiny dimple of fluorescent orange nylon. It doesn’t imitate any specific insect, although I am sure does a pretty good job of imitating a stage of insect life in general. To my surprise it floats a lot better than one might imagine and the hot spot makes it easy to follow, even in fading light. Despite years of questioning the wisdom of the “close copy fly” and simplifying my own patterns more and more, this one surprised me. Even now I can’t quite get my head around how totally nondescript it is, and yet so effective. Again it makes me think that the more one tries to close copy something the further away you are from imitating something else. Almost all the standard flies, found in every angler’s fly boxes are similarly generic. The Adams, the Elk Hair Caddis, the Hare’s Ear etc, none are “close copies” of anything. The more I experiment the more convinced I become, that “close copy flies” are not only an affectation, but an ineffective one at that.

Next time out I will keep experimenting, but I certainly feel that I have a real “Go To” pattern to add to the fly box.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment.

Comments are most welcome, they provide valuable feedback that I am producing something of value that hopefully educates and stimulates thought. Given that I am suggesting you question everything, disagreement is fine too. Your most valuable weapon as a fly angler is your enquiring mind, so if you wish to question the assertions herein, that’s all good.

The author, is a past World Fly Fishing Championship competitor, Author and Flyfishing Guide, coach to the South African Fly fishing team and certified Fly Fishers International “Master Casting Instructor”.

Tags: Emergers, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Guide Flies, River Wye, Tim Rolston, What Trout Want
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Casting, Fly Tying, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Dimples

June 14, 2025

Dimples on the far bank.

I have had a LOT of adjusting to do since moving to Wales; a gorgeous place with gorgeous people, lovely scenery and pretty good fishing. BUT, the fishing is quite different to what I was used to in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Where I used to be picking pockets in small crystal clear streams, for often visible trout, these days I find myself on larger waters, the clarity not quite good enough to spot fish much of the time, and a mixture of species including grayling, to both consider and potentially target.

Grayling are just one of my favourite fish, pretty as a picture, ladies of the stream, dressed up for a party, with gorgeous orange tinged dorsal fins and more importantly to me, a love of flies. Be they subsurface nymphs or surface floating dry patterns.

**Grayling are simply such pretty fish, but make no mistake, that dorsal fin can catch the current and make the ladies tricky to get to the net.**

Now, things have been tricky of late, the rivers have been on their knees, with drought forecast and hosepipe bans a likely consequence. I have been out on the water here and there, even slotting in an evening or two after work, despite exhaustion from the day’s activities and the stress of a less than supportive workplace.

After close to three years here and fishing these waters, I have already worked out that it is best to spend at least as much time sitting and watching as it is to be casting and wading about. It isn’t something that well fits my psyche. Back in the Cape we would hunt all day, forging ever upstream looking for a takable fish. Now things need to slow down, the fish will come up when they are good and ready and time spend sitting on the bank with a keen eye for a disturbance of the water isn’t wasted, frustrating as that may sometimes be.

So it was on the latest evening outing, nothing much happening, as the usual mixed hatch started to get going. Gradually the air filled with the ubiquitous midges, some yellow mays, some brook duns and unidentified fluttering sedges (caddis), recognisable only by their erratic flight.

I targeted the first consistent riser in a shallow run, and rose the fish on a small parachute pattern but missed the take. Switching flies I rose the fish again on an emerger pattern that has served me well on these spring/summer evenings and again missed. I was thinking that the likelihood was that this was a grayling, pushing perhaps, the fly out of the way as it rose. Switching to a small Klinkhammer style emerger I elicited a compound rise from the fish. Clearly watching it come off the bottom, turn downstream and follow the pattern for perhaps a metre before taking. This time I had her on and landed a nice, if not overly large grayling. At least the net was wet and the evening not a blank.

**A long slow flat, not ideal perhaps, but that is where the fish were moving on the top**.

I walked the bank looking for new opportunities and blind fished a little; temptation to cast overcoming discretion to a degree. But then again, when fishing one’s focus is better tuned and spotting the occasional dimple is more likely out on the water than sitting on the bank.

I spotted the tiniest of dimples in the surface on the far bank. These rivers tend to have a metre or so of slack water up against the far bank. A buffer zone if you will, where the interference of the riverside slows the flow and creates a near slack. I have learned over time that the trout like this, and equally that it is a very tricky spot to cast a fly. The main flow is significantly faster than this far-bank eddy, and getting a good drift is really tricky. On top of throwing upstream mends, wiggle casts and reach mends the best option is simply to throw a near uncontrollable leader. Slack in the tippet might, JUST, buy enough time to get a drift that the fish will accept.

So with over 20’ of leader and perhaps 4’ of 8x tippet I threw my emerger towards the bank, just upstream of the previous dimple and hoped that drag wouldn’t set in too soon.

An insignificant dimple of the surface and I tightened into a good brown trout, not a monster but perhaps better than average. I was pleased simply to have made the cast and obtained a positive result.

**This scruffy emerger has continued to “do the business” when the chips are down.**

Moments later another dimple not a short span upstream, and repeating the process hooked into another brown trout which went ballistic, running through the bankside weed growth before flinging itself airborne snapping the fine nylon still trapped in the silk weed. To be honest, although disappointed to a degree, I was well pleased to have elicited a take in such tricky surrounds. The hooks are barbless and the fish will jettison that fly in short order.

There were few more fish on the move and eventually I made a tricky and deep wade down the length of a long flat to get into position to cover the ones that I could spot.

It wouldn’t be my ideal choice of location, the water not moving fast enough to hide poor presentations, the fish with plenty of time to review the offerings, but they were at least feeding.

I opted again for the emerger patterns that have done so well for me of late. The fish definitely hone in on this vulnerable stage of the insect’s development. In his excellent book “ What Trout Want”, Bob Wyatt states, something along the lines of: “All my dry flies are effectively emergers” and I like that. It makes sense. In fact, there is a great deal in that book with which I find myself in agreement. Not least that the idea of close copy imitation of high floating dry flies is an affectation based on little related to actually deceiving fish.

The wild brown trout continue to amaze with their lavish spots and dogged resistance.

I have become a “scruffy fly fisher” and I am not talking about my personal (although questionable) attire. The longer I fish the more impressionistic my flies, but the proof is in the pudding and over the course of the evening I realised that I had to take out the forceps to retrieve the flies in over half of the taken fish. To me that suggests a level of confidence on the part of the fish, that the presentation and fly were on point.

Standing in the same spot, bellybutton deep in the flow, and flooding the fly boxes in my lower pockets, I picked off half a dozen trout and grayling. I didn’t move, mostly because locomotion was fraught with risk, but equally because fish kept moving within casting range.

None of the fish was especially large, or for that matter, particularly small. But it was a rewarding session, where I managed to target and catch most of the fish foolish enough to show themselves. I suppose a victory of sorts.

As the evening progressed, it became obvious that I might battle to safely release deeply hooked fish in the fading light, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The fish deserved for me to stop now and I was happy to do so.

I am yet to have an evening where all the fish are “on the top” and I can “hammer them” with well presented dry flies. But these evenings where you choose your battles, make your best casts, mend lines to get a good drift and entice those bankside feeders to make a mistake. Well that really is priceless.

I don’t know how many fish I landed, more than six and perhaps less than a dozen, but each one was targeted specifically and to me that is a win. A win, on a gorgeous section of the River Wye, with the birdsong in the background, the bright neon flash of a kingfisher heading home, the bleating of newly shorn sheep and the shrill of an overhead red kite to round off the evening.

The only real problem is that I shall be tired tomorrow, and work beckons. Summer evenings can be as rewarding as they are exhausting, but I suppose that is what makes life worth living.

Plus, you need to take your chances, the drought is now broken, courtesy of a wave of thunderstorms which have dumped gallons of water into the valleys, coloured the water and put the Wye into full blown spate.

The river will wink at me again sometime soon, and I shall hopefully respond, even if it means staying out late. A red letter evening is on the cards, I just need to keep heading out; but then again, success so far has been more than sufficient to keep me hooked.

It is nice to note that some of these posts reach a global audience, that is greatly appreciated, but don’t be shy to make a comment. It is lovely to know that people read this stuff and perhaps gain from it. Some posts are perhaps more “educational” than others, but comments are always welcomed. If you have read this far then my appreciation goes out to you.

I try to produce content which is both entertaining and potentially of value to you and your own personal fishing journey. So don’t be afraid to drop us a line, make a comment or perhaps subscribe so that you don’t miss anything important..

Kindest regards.

Tags: Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly fishing emergers, Fly fishing for trout, Fy fishing the Wye, outdoors, Tim Rolston, travel, Trout
Posted in Fishing, Fishing in Wales, Fly Casting, Fly Tying, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Life is like a box of chocolates

June 1, 2025

As Forrest Gump famously noted “you never know what you are going to get”, and so it was with my most recent foray onto a section of the Upper Wye River.

I had been out the day before and drummed up a few grayling and the occasional trout on an emerger pattern, but there wasn’t much in the way of actual surface activity from either species.

I loitered, watched, waited and hoped for a rising fish to target. Rising fish give you two crucial bits of information entirely lacking when looking at undisturbed water. First you know where there is a fish and secondly you know that it is feeding. Finding a rising fish no only buoys the spirit, but provides realistic hope of success. Sadly those rising fish were for the most part absent and I was left to drumming them up. It worked OK for a while but the final two hours were fruitless and fishless in equal measure.

So this morning I headed out once again, this time to a different stretch, which I know quite well. Again I was hoping for some surface activity, but the chill downstream gale didn’t bode well and after fruitlessly targeting a couple of fish which rose once or twice only under the trees on the far bank, I sat and watched. Nothing, not in half an hour and that horrible wind would come and go, ranging from unpleasant to seriously offputting, the occasional rain squall adding insult to injury and I was about ready to pack it in.

With the river accessible within minutes of our cottage, there is little point in flogging a dead horse, better to wait for improved conditions perhaps.

As I walked back upstream I became aware of a considerable disturbance over the gravel beds on the side of the river, very large fish splashing about in the shallows, undoubtedly spawning behaviour, recognisable, even from a distance. At first I was expecting Thwaite Shad, they should be in the river about now, although their migration might well have been hampered by the drought conditions and low water in the river over spring.

**This guy was feeding in amongst the spawning barbel, perhaps eating eggs or dislodged invertibrates from the stream bed.**

But then I could see that these fish were considerably larger than most of the Shad I have seen and recognised them as Barbel (Barbus barbus) (Not the sharp-tooth catfish my South African friends thing of as Barbel).

The wind was howling downstream but I am, after all, an angler and I couldn’t resist the temptation to make a cast with my dry dropper (duo) rig. The first cast resulted in a take and a decent brown trout, likely mixed in with the barbel and having a great time eating perhaps eggs or invertebrates churned up by the spawning process.

After hours of little to no success I thought that perhaps I was onto something of a winner and after a few more casts picked up a half decent grayling too.

With that I thought it worth persevering despite the horrible conditions, and eventually got another “take”. I lifted the rod to be met with solid resistance, as though I had hooked into an angry concrete block. Pressure on the line resulted in near no movement from the fish and I realised that I had hooked into one of the barbel. I was hoping that I had persuaded it to eat a fly, favouring nymph over nookie, but the likelihood was that it had been foul hooked by accident.

Battle ensued, and I don’t think that I have ever played a fish that was so resistant to being manipulated, dogged and heavyweight, it look a long time to start to gain any sort of control over the situation.

Occasionally the fish would roll in the water, flashing its silver underside before heading off on another brutish run. It seemed ever more likely that the fish had been inadvertently hooked in a pectoral fin, but with that, I didn’t wish to snap off and leave a hook in the fish unnecessarily and it equally became a challenge to see if it could be landed on the 7x tippet I was fishing.

**Apologies for the beaching, I had no option, it wouldn’t fit in the net and I needed to remove the hook. The fish was in this position for only seconds and swam away unharmed in the end.**

It has become something of a mission of mine to convince anglers that they don’t need ultra-heavy tackle and thick nylon to catch fish effectively and efficiently. A foul hooked barbel might not be the most sporting measure, but it would surely reveal what is possible with the correct rod and line control.

Eventually I managed to get the fish into the net, (Well a quarter in perhaps) before it flopped out again and I had little option but to beach it so as to remove the hook.

A quick picture and I set about releasing my massive captive, far larger than anything I had been expecting to hook. Earlier in the season, in pretty much the same spot, I had landed a 5.5lb cock salmon on 7x tippet, but this fish was considerably larger and stronger than that. I am guessing a conservative 10lb and quite possibly more.

So not the day I was hoping for, or the fish that I was expecting. I can’t say I take great pleasure in landing a foul hooked fish, even if it is an accident. But at the same time there is some measure of accomplishment in being able to land the fish on light gear at all. If someone was asking how I felt about my morning I think I would have to suggest that I am somewhat conflicted. Nice to have some success with the trout and grayling. Encouraging to be able to further demonstrate what can be achieved in light tippet, given the correct techniques. But had that barbel been hooked in the mouth I would have been singing from the rooftops; as things are, I am not really celebrating.

It’s an odd thing this fishing lark. One generally starts out wanting to catch a fish, any fish. Then to catch lots of fish. Then to catch large fish, then to catch specific species of fish and at some point, when one nears the end of your very own personal piscatorial Cul de Sac. You want to catch a specific species of fish in a specific manner.

That was what I was aiming to do this morning, catch a wild brown trout on a dry fly, but I ended up playing a foul hooked barbel in excess of 10lb on 2lb nylon and succeeding. It feels like a bit of a win, but then at the same time a bit of a failure.

As Forrest Gump says “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never quite know what you are going to get”.

Perhaps the fish will be feeding on the surface, next time I get on the water, one can only hope.

Tags: Barbel, Dry Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing, Tim Rolston, Upper Wye
Posted in Fishing in Wales, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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