Buzzer is a common name given to the larval stage of the midge which spends the greatest part of its life in the water. To a great extent this stage was ignored by the early fly fishers. They tended to concentrate their efforts on fishing the dry fly, probably unaware of the existence of the larval stage of the flies they were fishing.
Frank Sawyer, the renowned river keeper on the River Itchen was one of the first to break with tradition. His Sawyer Nymph tied with copper wire and wool was the first to be deliberately fished sub surface to stalk trout and grayling. This practice was frowned upon by the traditionalists of the day and was banned, and still is, on some waters.
Oliver Kite became famous for his upstream nymphing with the weighted Pheasant Tail Nymph with a copper wire rib and was probably responsible for the practice being generally accepted in the south country rivers.
I can remember the opening season at Chew Valley Reservoir in the early 1960s. Prior to that I had only fly fished rivers and streams with wet flies. In my first two days there I had stumbled on buzzer fishing, without realising it, and did not appreciate it until several years later.
My first visit to Chew was a blank and the locals were having a field day. After trying to match their casting distance with my 10ft. Hardy Palakona split cane rod and a badly cracked level fly line I was absolutely shattered and demoralised. The following day I tried again and initially had no success. One of the locals took pity on me and asked to have a look at my tackle and flies. He had a look in my fly box and picked out a size 10 Teal and Red wet fly. He took out his scissors and cut off the teal wing. He handed me my mutilated fly and told me to give it a try on the point.
It was with little confidence that I cast that fly into the wind, but after a couple of takes that nearly took the rod out of my hand, I did eventually net a brown trout well over 2lbs. It was the biggest brownie I had ever caught. When I got home I checked the stomach contents. It was full of reddish wriggling larvae up to half an inch long plus an odd earthworm.
I was hooked on Stillwater trout fishing and it was time for a tackle change. I went into Bristol and bought a ‘state of the art’ glass fibre rod and a Cortland double taper fly line. The flies were a different issue. I had already decided that I would try to copy some of the larvae. I took a size 8 wet fly hook and wound claret wool well round the bend with about a quarter of an inch hanging over as the tail and ribbed it with silver wire.
After years of tying traditional wet flies I felt guilty for using this monstrosity. I dread to think what my old mentor, Wilf. Proud, would have said. In the following weeks I caught a fair few fish but never dared show anyone the ’fly’ in case I got banned. Compared to the lures and other ‘flies’, which suddenly appeared with the opening of the Midland Reservoirs, my ‘Claret Buzzer’ was positively mundane.
Dave Cammiss
Author
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Dave,
I would like to take you up on a couple of things:
1: “Buzzers” (so called because they don’t buzz), are not generally known as the larval stage of the chronomid. They are the pupal stage which swim from the bed of the lake to emerge on the water’s surface. The larval stage is more commonly termed a bloodworm.
2: Tom Ivens’ Jersey Herd was most likely invented in the late 40s, not the early 70s as you have stated. I was certainly using the dressing in the early 60s. The pattern is fully described in Tom’s groundbreaking book: “Still Water Fly Fishing” which was published in 1952 if I remember right.
Oh and my mate Steve says he will show you how to tie a whip finish when you are next in the Long Eaton area!