Of course nothing in Nature is "useless". So these flies are not really useless. However, the fly tier could waste a lot of time and materials imitating them exactly with a view to using them for Dry Fly Fishing.
Here are a few snaps of flies that can lure the angler into a blind alley. They were all photographed in my garden...
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| Large Dark Olive Male Spinner |
Copy his wife by all means but this fellow is rarely seen on the water. You are more likely to find his corpse, first thing in the morning, in a spider's web on a gate to the river.
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| Caenis Dun |
Of course you could tie a tiny dry fly on a size 22 hook and cast it to the fish during a rise to these little flies, in the faint hope that they might choose your attempt at a fake in preference to the thousands of real Caenis littering the surface... But you'd be better off adopting the strategy we looked at with the
Double Badger!
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| Iron Blue Dun Male Spinner "The Jenny Spinner" |
I've been told these do come back to the water but have never witnessed this myself. They are beautiful but another candidate for the spider's web on the field gate rather than a dry fly "must have"! The Sport with the
Iron Blue Dun is to be had when the flies are duns and have put in one of their "bad weather" appearances that you must take advantage of immediately you see them, for their appearances are fleeting as well as furious.
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| Large Brook Dun Male Dun |
What a whopper! The sight of these splendid flies is enough to get any of us reaching for the fly tying kit, but hold on a moment! To eclode from their nymphal shucks these creatures climb up the stalks of plants, or up the sides of emerging stones and then come out as flies, very rarely ever touching the water as duns, the sub-imago stage. It's a different story when they are female adults, at the imago stage. They DO come back to the water as the "Large Red Spinner" and lay their eggs by dipping down to the surface and scraping off little batches of eggs until they are gone. They are big and a welcome meal to the trout when they are spent. So make your patterns bright orangey red spinners with spent wings to lie flat on the surface and eschew the duns as the trout are unlikely to be seeing them. A size 12 hook or even a 10 will be about right for the spinners.
Regular Rod
I'm not much on insect identification. But you flies look to be good imitations.
ReplyDeleteThank you Brk Trt. I am a believer in the caricature rather than the exact replica. Old style flies worked when anglers had quite poor end tackle by today's standards so it is to be expected that they probably work even better these days with modern line and modern floatant.
DeleteRegular Rod
I'd agree with all that RR, well put.
ReplyDeleteMatthew Eastham
Thank you Matthew, that is a feather in my cap and no mistake!
DeleteRegular Rod
I guess it doesn't help that everything I tie comes out looking the same as fly #1. We find them mostly in trees which is why I lose so many flies.
ReplyDeleteThe only IBD hatch I've witnessed was on the Wye during the rains a few weeks ago, unfortunately the trout weren't interested on that night, just my wrotten luck but I suppose thats fishing, nothings set in stone in this game.
ReplyDeleteThe large brook duns have hatched in enormous numbers on the Taff this year and at times were literally covering the stones on the banks. Whether or not it was due to the simple numbers or a peculiarity of the river there were a good number of duns floating mid river. These were being readily taken by the trout and offered the first good dry fly day of the year.
ReplyDeleteDan
That's very interesting Dan. What did you use to "match the hatch"?
DeleteThe Taff must have conditions that suit it well. The Large Brook Dun is not a very common fly. I'd love to see them in the numbers you experienced.
Regular Rod
Firstly RR sorry it has taken me so long to reply to this but i did not see your response. My fly of choice was a size 10 or 12 jingler, pretty much a March Brown pattern. If the hatch is as impressive again this year I will be sure to take some pictures of the stones covered in emerging duns. There was one stretch of river where every time I sat down there were atleast a dozen emerging duns within grasping range. They could ofcourse be Late March Browns, but I am nowhere near good enough to distinguish between the two species and their behaviour sounds more LBDish to me. on "Useless" Flies!
Deletein response to The large brook duns have hatched in enormous numbers on the Taff this year and at times were literally covering the stones on the banks. Whether or not it was due to the simple numbers or a peculiarity of the river there were a good number of duns floating mid river. These were being readily taken by the trout and offered the first good dry fly day of the year. Dan,
by Dan Price at 11:56
Dan aren't we lucky that we don't have to be as precise as entomologists must be when we "identify" our flies...
Delete:-)
RR