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!

Semois Spirlin

I love the Semois river in the Ardennes on the Belgium France border. In May and early June the river is at its best, wearing her white wedding dress of water crow foot flowers. I than love canoeing through these sweet lime wood blossom smelling plants.

Between the folds of this wedding dress you can find (a lot) the Spirlin.
The Spirlin is a little (13 cm) bleak like coarse fish which inhabits fast flowing waters in the most southern part of Holland, Belgium, France, Germany & east wards.

The small black spots on each side of each lateral line are a good determination mark.

This one is caught this weekend in de Semois river. The Spirlin swim with shoals of chub and often get to your dry fly before the trout or grayling do....

Because this was my first Semois fly caught fish species, it has a special place.
This weekend I fooled them constantly with a #21 shuttlecock plume tip on a lovely Tiemco Euflex Infante #1.