History of the Buzzer

Buzzers (chironomidae) made their first appearance on the flyfishing scene in the 1920s. The first pattern I can find recorded was the Blagdon Buzzer devised by a Dr. Bell. It was devised for fishing Blagdon Reservoir. It  featured many of the elements which are similar to modern dressings in use today. It was tied on a small hook and had a black wool body with a flat silver rib with a tuft of white wool behind the eye of the hook.
 Little more was recorded about buzzers, possibly because little Stillwater flyfishing was available in England at the time. However the fly fishers on the rivers have been using wet fly spider patterns for a very long time and in all probability these were taken by the trout for the river versions of chironomidae.
 In the 1960s there was a revival of interest in buzzers, probably due to the upsurge in availability of trout fishing on reservoirs and some commercial fisheries. C.F. Walker with his passion for exact imitations was one of the first to write a book of imitative patterns in his book, LAKE FLIES AND THEIR IMITATIONS, published in the 1960s. About the same time Geoffrey Bucknall  devised his Footballer buzzer  which was an imitative pattern, using black and white horse hair and tied on hook sizes 14and 16    John Goddard devised some quite elaborate buzzer patterns in the same era. His patterns incorporated many of the features used in the modern patterns.
 Since the early days of the 1960s there has been an incredible availability of reservoir and Stillwater trout fisheries throughout the UK. In the early days the emphasis was on lure fishing with long shank patterns, up to size 6, with names like Baby Doll, Geronimo, Matukas and many, many more. The traditionalists fished with the seatrout patterns they had successfully used in the rivers.In the course of time nymphs became popular and proved to be just as effective without the hard work of thrashing the water endlessly with lures, It was just a question of time before the thinking flyfishers rediscovered the buzzer .
 The buzzer can be fished individually or in a team of two or three with a floating line. There is no hard and fast method of fishing your chosen buzzers. You can retrieve your line in long slow pulls, or figure of eight retrieve, short intermittent pulls or best of all let the wind do the work for you and just wait for the line to bow and wait for the line to tighten. You can speed up the drift by either taking one or two steps back or slow it down by stepping forward along the bank. All the fishing magazines regularly have articles by experts who extol the virtues of their preferences.
 Before we go down the avenue of tying buzzers I would like to emphasize that there is no chance of inventing a ‘new pattern’. At some stage someone will have tied something exactly the same or embellished the dressing with something exotic, given it a fancy name and one of the magazines will have given it a two page spread. Within two months no one will remember it. If you do come up with a ‘new’ pattern that works for you keep it to yourself, or share it with friends, but be aware that it is just a question of time before it loses its charm.

Dave Cammiss
Author