From the category archives:

Intermediate Lessons

The Black & Orange

Intermediate Lessons
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The Black & Orange. This fly is a favourite for night fishing for seatrout. Best used as a point fly with a smaller dropper, i.e. a mallard & claret. If you are lucky enough to be at the river during the day when it is running off and there is still some colour in the […]

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The Humungus

Intermediate Lessons
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This lure has been around now for several years and at the moment is having something of a comeback. It has always been a good early season lure for the ‘stockies’. It was one of the first flies to use chain beads for the head. Once you have tied a couple it gets easier and […]

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The Taser Bug

Intermediate Lessons
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This fly first came to my notice in an article in the Total Fly Fishing magazine written by Chris Reeves. The component giving the fly its name is the recycled wire from the Taser gun used by the Metropolitan police. It takes very little practice to produce a lifelike and durable buzzer or nymph. With […]

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The Vibrating Daddy

Intermediate Lessons
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This is not an accepted fly pattern (none of the experts have devised it yet). Over the years the use of vibrating rubber legs has become popular with some anglers. The early flies used flexi floss which did the job but were not as good as the modern materials. Their success on the stillwaters for […]

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The Prince Nymph

Intermediate Lessons
The Prince Nymph

This fly is a popular American pattern which is not tied to represent any particular nymph. It has found favour with quite a number of stillwater fly men here in the UK. The use of paired goose biots to represent the tail and wing is unusual but should not present a major obstacle in the […]

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The Yellow Dancer

Intermediate Lessons
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The Yellow Dancer is a relative newcomer on the fly fishing scene.  It is a ‘sport’ of the original Woolley Bugger devised by our friends north of the border. It has proved to be a ‘must have’ fly on most Scottish still water trout fisheries. As is always the case it has spawned the usual […]

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The Sedge Fly

Intermediate Lessons
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This pattern sits better in the water and either static or moving it does behave like a sedge. I even found that when it was gunged up with slime and sunk it still caught fish. I suggest you tie some up in 10s and 12s and and keep them ready in your fly box. I […]

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Daddy Longlegs (Crane Fly)

Intermediate Lessons
The Daddy Longlegs [Crane Fly]

The crane fly is a land based insect which features in the fly fisher’s armoury because it is an ungainly flier and regularly finds it’s way on to lakes and rivers by accident. They usually appear about August time and can be quite an abundant food source for the trout either on the surface or […]

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The Klinkhamer

Intermediate Lessons
The Klinkhamer

The Klinkhamer was originally designed by Hans Van Klinken to copy the fly emerging from its shuck as it made the change to a flying insect. There are ‘puritans’ among us who refuse to accept this fly as a true dry fly because the fly has not been airborne. To those of us who just […]

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The Booby

Intermediate Lessons
The Booby

The Booby is a relatively recent addition to the flyfishers arsenal.  The original patterns were tied using polystyrene balls tied together in the mesh from ladies tights and tied in at the eye of the hook.  The way they wobbled about was how the fly acquired its name.  Their other main disadvantage was that if […]

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