Girls, Midges & Brexit

My two girls (single & 1,5 years old) were very interested in the three new arrived kinky cocks! They were particularly interested in mr. Dun Grizzly. Thanks to the Brexit and the low British pound, I ordered three beautiful Whiting midge saddles at ‪#‎Lakelandflytying‬.

To be honest, I had to put some effort in this hackle science. Saddle or Cape etcetera. The Feather Imperium is very informative. And after a lot of websites & forums: I wanted a midge saddle in my cross hairs for the micro flies. The silver grade was recommended, but I'm very happy with the Bronze saddles.

Keep Em Wet!

I'm thrilled to notice a new step in the evolution of the Catch & Release department. Its about keeping the fish UNDER WATER while Catch & Release. This is promoted by Keep Em Wet (www.keepemwet.org). I gladly discovered this in the Eat Sleep Fish issue 54.

The keepemwet principles are a universal baseline of best practices that keep fish healthier and should always be used when releasing fish. 

I support this kind of fish friendly handling and like to share this philosophy in this blog. I think it is because fish research is one of my big obsessions passions. That is about Catching, Measuring & Releasing. Because of this, the catch & release with fly fishing is logical to me. I hope for you too!!

Special Project: Fly fishers spinner

Spinner fishing was my first love...till I got infected with the fly fishing religion. Although not as effective as a few 1,7 inch shads, I occasionally cast a few spinners to perch in summer time. Making spinners is almost as much fun as tying flies.

Both worlds come together in this spinner. It's a special project in this fly fishing blog.
The hook is for tying salmon flies, the bead is for nymphs & woolly buggers and the cone head is also a salmon fly item. They make lovely spinner parts. In this case a 2,7 grams spinner. My innovations in all my modern spinner designs:

• an incorporated swivel in the eye;
• a fast lock snap instead of a (nail ruining) ring;
• I hate treble hooks and normally use single hooks with a off set point. This double salmon hook is a beautiful compromise (barbs have to be crushed).
• There is no empirical evidence that a red tag (or any tag) on a spinner hook catches more fish. Keep fluffy stuff on the hook limited because is causes air resistance while casting and can restrict your casting distance.
• My first blade choice is a Colorado blade size 2 or 3. These really move the water. But Indiana blades like these are good too.
• Like the effective Mepps Black Fury: I almost always colour the back side of the blade black (not shown here). I think that the black back is the secret of this spinner.
• And of course my line is a Stroft GTM 0,16 mm (my standard leader brand).

With these ingredients you have a perfect spinner for perch and trout!
To tie a weedless hook, have a look at my older fly tie video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4blUDS1wZ4

Just add tippet and water: enjoy!

Fire Tiger PTN?

Rivers stay cloudy as the rain keeps pouring down. Visibility of our flies is a big issue. Its a game of contrasts I believe.

I think that dry flies can give the biggest contrast and are more visible than nymphs in stained water.

As a fly fisherman I thought about de right colour of nymphs while reading this Mepps article about effective colours in stained water. What can fly fishermen perhaps learn from the colours of spinners... I don't know but I won't go that far making fire tiger PTN's!

Have a look at: Learning from colours on http://www.mepps.com/…/color-technology-what-you-see-is-…/77

Peute (the wet fly that remained dry)

 

Fly fishing can have a very dark side. And I don't mean black woolly buggers. It is a climate change thing. The torrential rains are ravaging our lands and rivers. Rivers are high and brown right now. The discharge of the Semois is now about  30 m3/sec, which is five times the average base flow of 6 m3/sec....Perhaps this beauty is calmed down in September...

 

 

So this fly fishing weekend is cancelled AGAIN. Me and my mates are accepting some bad disappointment here... no fishing or snorkeling. All dreams about testing new uber flies in a beautiful landscape are washed away. Leaving me with fly boxes full of experiments. One of the experiments is the Peute. 

 

The Peute is a wet fly that imitates all sorts of up-winged flies en sedges. It's originator is the Frenchman Henri Bresson. My Peute versions are inspired by Leon Janssen's book Wondervliegen 2 (wonder flies). A brilliant book by the way. Because of his recommendations about this fly (and that of Erik de Noorman), I tied a few to fool the trout, grayling, chub and spirling in the Semois. From a few pictures I made this short video:

Just add water & enjoy!

Knotted umbrella fly [Disheolier Skoulmet]

A bigger contrast was almost not possible at the Dutch Flyfair yesterday. Yann Youenn Bouglouan from Brittany (NOT France) sat there at a fly tyers demonstration with minimalistic materials between two heavily equipped fly tyers. As a micro fly connoisseur I was immediately drown to his flies. Because his Dutch was as good as my French, we spoke in English about our passions about tying small flies, entomology and catching mullets with #16 nymph patterns. Without wasting words: a great guy!

Yann is the mastermind of the Disheolier Skoulmet fly. He explained that Disheolier Skoulmet means literally umbrella knotted. The "knotted" refers to knotting the hackle. This is just a overhand knot with one or two hackle feathers. Yann prefers the Grizzle hackle because it has a strong shaft (or ragis).

He demonstrated two versions of this minimalistic fly in a nymph and a dry fly.

•  The nymph version: This fly concept is used in shallow streams were nymphs float just under the surface in their emerging process. Tying: Take one (1!) hackle feather and tie a over hand knot. Put a drop of varnish on the hackle knot to keep it in place. Then strip all the barbs of the shaft from the knot to the desired length. The result is a thin thread like shaft. Then attach the shaft to the thorax of a nymph. The nymph a separately tied. All is shown in the picture above. Another picture of this fly can be found on this page of Fly tyer Ad Hoogenboezem.

•  The dry fly version: For the dry fly you tie the umbrella knot to the hook without the shaft (like on the nymph). For the umbrella you use two (2!) parallel hackle fibres to tie the overhand knot (also varnish!). This gives you more hackles to float and two wing like tips sticking out of the hackle. On the dry fly Yann first ties in the tail, body and rib of the fly. Then he ties in the knotted umbrella and a thorax with a little dubbing. See the picture below on a #16 hook. Yann noted that this fly will survive a few trout attacks, so it is more an innovative "fly-tiers fly" than a commercial long lasting pattern. Another tip from Yann came from an old (Brittanic?) man who did not use tying thread. He used to tie the hackle to the hook with only overhand knots of the debarbed feather shaft! That is really minimalistic. Perhaps useful in a survival situation when you only have a hook and a feather (and nylon and a high end rod reel etc :-)).

Yann at work, tying the dry fly as shown above:

Thanks Yann!!

An more comprehensive story and tying sequence of this fly can be read in the article "Vissen onder een parasol, Disheolier Skoulmet & umbrelle by Ad Hoogenboezem en Leon Links. This article can be found in issue 97 of magazine "De Nederlandse Vliegvisser".

Scientific evidence for the duo rig or "klink 'n dink"

To fine polish your stream crafts, it's recommendable that fly fishermen (while not standing in a stream) habitually visit the site of Troutnut.

Source: Troutnut.com

I just did and found this brilliant article about the Drift Model Project! This project is about a group of University of Georgia ecologists studying the drift-feeding behaviour of fish. "Drift feeding is a behaviour of fish in moving water that hold a steady position, facing upstream into the current, and dart back and forth to intercept passing items of food" (Drift Model Project). 

Fortunately the ecologists shared some key results on their Youtube channel, while still analysing all the data. The video shows a fish surrounded by dots. These dots are the food items the fish is likely to attack.

More specific: the project enhances the understanding in which area/region a drift-feeding fish detects its prey: OUR FLIES! Troutnut gives some preliminary thoughts about insights into fly fishing. Have a look at http://www.troutnut.com/fly-fishing-trip/on-2016_03_31/Some-animations-on-how-fish-react-to-prey.

Reading this (and Roger Smith's article in FF&FT june 2016) triggers me to use more micro fly duo rigs: a dry fly with a nymph on a dropper: a "kiwi klink 'n dink" setup.

The men who stare at midge !

"OMG! Dad is gonna wash his hair in the pond!" were my kids joking. This fly fisher was lying streched out on a pond dock. My face just a few cm from the fishless murky water surface. I was schizophrenically frustrated and happy at the same time. Frustrated because we found out that the pond in front of our holiday bungalow was fishless (besides one stickleback). And happy because I discovered -while staring at the water surface- a fascinating insect life just under my nose. This is a strange phenomenon. As a sort of mental escape, I start hunting for aquatic insects as soon as fishing seems hopeless. Paying attention to detail gives you always an opportunity to learn. So "every disadvantage has its advantage" (reversed quote from Johan Cruijff).

In this case I stared at the live hatching of chironomid midges, also known as buzzer, bugs, muggies (whatever). Initially my attention was drawn to some lazy khaki/light gray midges on the water surface. I thought that their arrogant demeanour had to do with the absence of fish. Staring a little longer I discovered some light khaki protruding periscopes growing out of the water.....turning into a midge. I ran for my camera! 

....more photo's and a video will follow soon.

49 Year old Woolly Bugger

What else is there to say about Woolly Buggers? There is even a page on Wikipedia about this famous senior fly (since 1967)! So I take a bow and limit my contribution to just a few weblinks.

To make things easy for you I made a little Youtube library of my favourite Woolly Bugger flies. Have a look at this. To be honest, I like the Tightline video the best. Especially the suggestion about how to make a nice tail end.

Besides the video's, there are two nice articles to read:

1. Midcurrent by Gary Soucie
2. GinkandGasoline by Kent Klewein

About colour...Black and Olive are the most used colours. But if you like to see a trout contest between a black and a white Woolly Bugger, have a look at this video from Ireland under water! On a bright day...dark wins in shallow water. Tadpole effect? Does this make the slogan "Bright days, bright flies" completely superflouos? After 49 year, this fly leaves me baffled.

Micro lead head nymph

I engineered this little nymph & love it. This fly is one of my so called "omfiets-vliegen". It has loads of great features. Like the lead head design. This gives micro nymphs a better hook gap (than a bead). If fish are taking emergers....I simply clip the lead shot of. The hare line ice dub thorax and shucky diamond braid are for enhancing UV visibility.

The tying sequence is explained in this video: https://youtu.be/zwizieODbQU

For optimal movement: try tying your tippet as a open loop knot (like rapala knot).

Enjoy!

Chicken Carbon Fly Footprint

Since tying flies i cant normally look at chickens. It must be the same feeling as a dog walking in a childrens farm....it dont see nice chickens or partidges. It sees meet. In my case i see walking hackle  necks capes and cdc bums.....I need therapy.

Fabulous Freija Streamer

This new little 1 inch streamer is my biggest flagship of micro flies. I was looking for a small streamer pattern for Perch, Ide and Asp that "looks helpless and is save to eat". After a lot of trial and error, this bug rolled of my vise. The tank test proved promising.

I hope I now have a fly that can beat my apex Perch lure of 2015: the soft plastic 1,75 inch Lunker city Fin S Shad (duo rig on a spinning rod with 0.16mm Stroft GTM line).

I based this design on some proven fly pattern concepts like the lead head from Hans van Klinken. The lead head design build on a jig hook makes a nice balanced fly that shakes like a rattle snake. I like tying outside in spring and summer, so please enjoy the bird sounds and have a look at my (first) spring video: https://youtu.be/kZVfylhcrDA

Green caterpillar for Rudd (Tortrix worm)

The "worming up" video of Gink & Gasoline just reminded me of fishing Rudds last year (May) on a dry fly. While having success with the "Roger Hills stillborne midge", a battalion of bright green caterpillars were abseiling with thin wires out of big oak trees behind me. Those little Bear Grylls worms probably were European oak leafrollers (Tortrix viridana).

The Rudds loved them and uncontrollably took these soft 15-20 mm caterpillars from the surface. I did - obviously- did not have any green flies with me ....I observed that day that shoals of Rudd were only near/under the big oaks....it probably had something to do with the caterpillars. So find and follow the oaks this coming May month.

I forgot about this incident. To be prepared I just tied a few "green inch worms" from my green squirmy worms from a puffer ball. I call them for convenience's sake Tortrix worm. It has not a lot to do with fly tying. Just drive your hook point 1 or 2 mm through a thin squirmy worm (20 mm length) and tie to the hook shank. No legs no frills, just some happy plastic.


To enhance the segmented look on a squirmy, I figured out a cunning trick: partially snip (with a sharp pair of scissors) the diameter of the squirmy body in segments, leaving only 0,5-1 mm of material in tact. This weakens the short squirmy body resulting in more liveliness and a segmented look.  

Rubber with a great natural feel: .22 ACP (Alluring Caddis Pupae)

To be honest, a nymph is not the first thing most of us think about when reading "rubber with a great natural feel". But this is the case for Henk, my genius stone loach. Henk lives like a genuine oracle in a hollow cow bone in our fish tank. In this honey hole he helps me judging new flies (without a hook point of course). Most of the time he spits the hard nymphs out faster than Clint Eastwood can draw his .44. But Henk surprised me with the .22 ACP nymph. He sucked this nymph like a lolly pop! Over and over again. The magic ingredient was a small soft squirmy detached body.

And now for something completely different...

Henk's divine lolly pop revelation made me reconsider fly design. The soft feel could perhaps result in less fly throw ups and more hookups. The soft feel of the detached body was a must have feature! The next step is to minimise the necessary hardware (steel hook shank, beads) as much as possible to keep the soft natural feel. A short grub hook size 22 (as a minimum) seemed adequate for further experimenting. A short shank is also important for not compromising movement of the body. Remember to use as little steel as possible for this chewing tobacco. The ACP is technically a detached body fly. In this concept the hook shank's only duty is to connect the body, thorax en legs. A size 22 hook (or little larger) fits that bill. But for a 15 mm caddis pupae a hook size 18 is perfect for a furry replica. A small hook keeps the steel as limited as possible and the weight to a minimum. This nymph floats because of the squirmy body and CDC. It’s an all round river and still water pattern, so a lead shot on the line is necessary to sink it. Otherwise fish it as a wet subsurface emerging caddis fly (without polluting floatants).

Henk judging a new ACP

Game of nods: movement is improvement

An accurate observation of the importance of movement is well written in "In the ring of the rise" by Vincent Marinaro. He writes in 1976 lively about a house fly ("a very interesting creature") and the behaviour of the un-catchable trout. In desperation he began to play the game of nods: this is tying a lot of flies with only slight differences in each of them. Each fly is cast and observations are made. A trout showing interest to a fly nods his head prior to a closer inspection. "At the end of the game all the highest rated variations are combined into one desirable en successful pattern". After lots of observations, house fly tyings and refusals, the only successful housefly had antennas that trembled while the trout was close by. Moving lures and flies get the attention of fish. But attention is just the first step in seduction. To trigger a strike, the movement of a micro part of a fly (antenna, legs, body) can perhaps make the difference! Movement is improvement.

Lessons from Lafontaine's Sparkling pupa

A good fly is not just a piece of a soft rubbery body (is it?). There are more triggers on body parts to consider. Unravelled thoughts about triggers on pupa's are found in Bob Wyatt's recommendable investigation of the well known Lafontaine's Sparkling pupa (Fly fishing & fly tying, July 2005) and a few months later by even recommendable Oliver Edwards article "Caddis contrasts and conundrums" (Fly fishing & fly tying, November 2005). Both concluded that the success of this fly was perhaps not because of the alleged "sparkle air bubble effect" and that more research was needed. Bob argued that the success of the fly had to do with translucency and flash (visibility & attention) among other things.

The article of Oliver Edwards showed some fine improved and inspiring versions of a pupae (Ascending caddis pupa/Swimming Rhyacophila Pupa). Also green bugs as the one rowing in my tank. And also on a more or less straight hook, because the abdomen of the swimming pupae is also straight. Two extra trigger features were emphasised: big swimming legs (like corixida) en wing buds. "But remember", Oliver writes, " they are only effective during an emergence when fish are switched on and eagerly intercepting the ascending pupae".

However, Kent Klewein writes something else about pupae. In his article (The Only Two Caddis Pupa Patterns I Really Need to Carry) on www.ginkandgasoline.com he maintained that "trout concentrate their efforts feeding on the pupa stage of the caddisfly the most, and pupa imitations can catch fish throughout the entire hatch. The reason for this is because the pupal stage is one of the most vulnerable and helpless stages of the caddisflies life-cylce and it’s one of the easiest times for trout to feed on them. Furthermore, their emergence period puts them in front of trout longer than any other stage in their life-cyle".

This leaves me confused. A (sparkling) pupae is probably once more no silver bullet, even on a .22 ACP! But fly fishermen don't need silver bullet flies or holy grail flies Malcolm Greenhalgh writes in his Fly Fisher's handbook: "Otherwise the fascination of inventing and testing new patterns will be gone for ever". So let’s toast to all bad flies.

Caddis colour sorcery 

But here is more confusion on the caddis scene, this time about colour. I found out from my fish tank experiments that a pure white caddis larvae (Limnephilus Flavicornis, a still water caddis species) can for instance transform in green or yellow pupae and flies. That's pure magic. It appeared that when caddis larvae pupate they can change colour and swim or crawl as a green of yellow (not white) protein snacks to the surface. To find out more about caddis flies, a must read is the article "Sedge Edges" from David Calvert and Stuart Croft in Fly tying & fly fishing, issue August 2003. And if you like to experiment with Dutch language, the book Wondervliegen 2 by Leon Janssen is also highly recommendable.

 

Caddis trio: transition from larvae (left) to pupae to adult (right) (L. Flavicornis)

So yellow-green can be a good colour for imitating vulnerable hatching caddis nymphs (and some case less larvae). Pupae colour is still a riddle to me. Along the stream we can observe (cased) caddis larvae en adult flies, but see almost never pupae. Most caddis pupae are seen from spooned trout. But another clue for pupae body colour is perhaps the colour of the body of the adult caddis fly. I found out that green-ish bodies from adult flies matched with bright green caddis pupae. That seems logical. To crack the caddis code: there could perhaps be a relation between body colour of an adult and the body colour of a pupae, but not the colour of a larvae. So check the body colour of your favourite caddis adult and use it for a bright pupae nymph. But there is also enough empirical evidence about (hot) orange or red bodies.....so that is perhaps also an option for a pupae pattern. I use green for my .18 ACP but have to test it for effectiveness. That is the big problem for fly ideas in the closed fly fish season: you can only try and test them a few months later. In my fish tank the red ACP (not the green one) triggered an instant attack from Henk’s neighbour Han Solo Stickleback…so I tied a few reds too.

Nymph gynaecology

Besides colour triggers, Vincent Marinaro’s house fly research taught us that minimal motion can be an important trigger too. So why not use that and try to make a squirmy body livelier like a young Elvis on stage? Completely superfluous you might think because squirmy is flexible enough. Perhaps as a 50 mm worm tied on a canon ball, but not at the scale of a 15 mm free floating small caddis pupae!

I figured out a cunning trick and partially snip (with a sharp pair of scissors) the diameter of the squirmy body in segments, leaving only 0,5-1 mm of material in tact. Do this at several places with such an accuracy that makes a gynaecologist jealous. This weakens the short squirmy body resulting in more liveliness and a segmented look. The segmented effect can be enhanced by colouring the cuts with a dark marker pen (see pictures).

 

Cutting and colouring the squirmy tail

Remember that in a drag free drift (a fly fishers Walhalla), nothing is pulling on your fly, so nothing is moving. Even CDC is motionless under water. I cut the squirmy body up because I want maximum possible fly action by the tiniest movement of a dorsal fin or belch from an inspecting suspicious fish. This is especially the case in still water were Rudd or Ide can inspect flies. The squirmy cutting won't make your fly less durable. This stuff is so strong and elastic that this bit will hold the body intact while giving it the maximum lively appearance. The body is now ready and is the main component of the ACP concept (Alluring Caddis Pupae). For the name: a hook size 22 makes a ".22 ACP", a hook size 14 a ".14 ACP" and so on.

To attach the squirmy stuff to the hook shank is actually quite simple. But please stop turning squirmy stuff around hook shanks like it is chenille. Just drive the hook through the squirmy stuff like a worm or a plastic shad on a hook and tie in. For nymphs e.g. caddis larvae that are curved (not like straight swimming caddis pupae) you can try to make the body in an angle by experimenting with stringing the squirmy on the hook. Ideally the body is following the hook bend. This causes the hook point pointing upwards, resulting in less bottom snags. I found out that with a little flame one can easily shape the squirmy in the right shape.

Key contemplations for ACP fly engineering

The highlighted soft natural feel (very slowly pronounced) in this article is a neglected component in our thinking of fly triggers. This is perhaps also the case for “micro-movement” (Vince his house fly antennas). But because there are no more letters to add to our known GISS mnemonic (General Impression, Size, Shape), we have to remember these. My schedule of requirements for engineering the ACP fly contains the following requirements for the body, wing buds, swimming legs and antennas:

• General design: extended body with a small short shank hook and no bead (use a shot on the tippet).

•  Soft feel & micro movement: a body made of segmented squirmy worm, wing buds made of nylon lady stockings (my friends insists using parts from old crotch sections…I don’t care) and legs/antennas made of thin rubbery legs (no stiff feathers). I found out that soft fly parts result in better hook ups because fish can suck flies more easily and deeper (unhooking is a little more difficult: barbless hooks by default!).

•  Translucent colour: a squirmy worm body and a CDC thorax (mainly for trapping shiny air bubbles and also for movement).

• Knotting: I consider the first 30 cm on a tippet as a part of the fly. So please use a flexible tippet and a loop knot for maximum micro movement. Not a standard clinch knot which is impeding action. And if you use leader/tippet rings: also use the loop knot there! I sometimes develop a sudden Tourette's syndrome while tying small flies to a leader in the middle of a stream. I can prevent this with my favourite loop knot: the easy “perfection loop”. It is explained on the web in an excellent Tightline video. Last important thing about nylon: take any nylon you find home!

Bug sampling

Paint strainer = verf zeef

http://www.ginkandgasoline.com/fly-fishing-tips-technique/easy-bug-sampling-for-trout-fishermen-video/

Wat is een paint strainer? https://www.google.nl/search?q=paint+strainer&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjn15yV9vnJAhWJvRoKHdkYCZUQsAQIIw&biw=1366&bih=631#imgrc=NXNrxATJr070MM%3A 

Bug sampling net: