Work in Progress?

It's still early in the season.  The cream of the dry fly fishing is yet to come.  Our evening rises at present remain perfunctory and the Sherry Spinner is definitely not the cause of any festivities by trout, or angler, just yet.  Nevertheless, this year has been remarkable in that, at certain places on your correspondent's Mother river, there have been very busy evening rises!

The flies being taken with alacrity by the trout are definitely midges, creamy bodied midges...

No problem!  Surely just put on a suitably coloured Aphid pattern or a traditional midge like a Sturdy's Fancy of appropriate size?  Maybe and then again, maybe not.

That pink thing is your faithful blogger's little finger nail to give you some idea of the fly's size

The label on the net is 1⅞ inches wide

This evening the American expression "skunked" sprang to mind.  Not a complete disaster, five fish, like the beauty above, were tricked into eating the tiny Sturdy's Fancy but hundreds refused it!

Some years ago similar happenings used to occur with returns of Sherry Spinners.  Yes some would fall for the well known spinner patterns but hundreds would NOT!  Over time a pattern was devised that turned the tables and is now virtually infallible during any spinner return involving small spinners (14 down to 18).  This is the PPS and the improved variant of it.

It looks like a fresh pattern is needed for these early season evenings after midge eating trout.

So, work will be soon be in progress as a fresh attempt is made to arrive at a midge pattern that will turn the tables again and make evenings like this evening less of a lottery where luck is more important than any other attribute.




Regular Rod