A gradually increasing obsession with fly fishing…
The Pheasant Tail Nymph is one of the classic fly patterns that will do for a wide variety of situations and insects. This video describes the American version of the fly with legs coming off the side. It varies slightly from the classic Sawyer’s pattern but is great in it’s own right.
This video describes how to tie the nymph in smaller sizes. These are often useful for picky fish. Be sure to tie lots of the Pheasant Tail nymph pattern in lots of sizes for your fly box.
The Klinkhammer is to my mind the most versatile and easiest to tie of the emerger patterns. I regularly tie these up in a variety of colours and hook sizes to cover lots of situations.
This video shows how to tie a Parachute Adams which I feel is one of the most versatile of flies. The way the hackle is tied flat means that the fly almost always lands the correct way up and is very bouyant even in fast water. It is also very easy to tie. Typically we don’t tie these in sulphur colours like in the video. Choose colours that match your local hatches.
This video varies from the standard pattern in that it only uses one furnace hackle on the fly rather than the normal furnace and grizly hackle (2 in total). This is easier to tie on smaller flies and in my opinion on these smaller flies is quite adequate. This is the best way to tie smaller hook sizes (16, 18, 20’s and even 22’s), though I use it on larger ones as well.
The materials I use to tie the Parachute Adams are:
Tickling a trout may sound strange to a non-fisherman, but the technique or method of fishing was commonly practiced by poachers, working men and even boys in the 1930s (the Great Depression era) without using nets, rods or lines or any damaging fishing equipment. Although the image of tickling a trout may sound amusing, trout tickling is … Read more
One of the things that I found most confusing when I started fishing was which fly do I choose when and what on earth are they all supposed to represent? That is why I wrote this article, to give the beginner an overview of what the flies represent. I’ll give a description of the different … Read more
Types of fly fishing line. A fly fishing line doesn’t just come in different colors. As we have discussed in different articles it comes in different weights and well as different line shapes or tapers, each with their own particular characteristics and uses. Today we are going take that a step further and introduce another … Read more
A point that can be very confusing to someone who is just getting started in fly fishing is that lines come in different tapers. By this we mean that the line has a shape to it that means that it is not an even thickness or diameter along its length. The reason that this is … Read more
The fly fishing line, along with the fly, is one of the items of kit unique to fly fishing. It forms the basis of the ability to cast the fly using the casting techniques known in fly-fishing. Because the fly normally has little or no weight, it is the weight of the line that propels … Read more