Tag Archives: fly tying

Fishing the river Usk

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Over the weekend me and my good mate sam went and had a little look at the river Usk in Mardy. It’s been a long time since I’ve fished the beat, I think it was the year before on the March browns and we caught it perfect if I can remember rightly!

We got to the river quite early and bumped into another angler walking off the beat but he was on the Wye and Usk passport, so after a little chat and saving the guy some cash in his future trips we headed up river scanning the river for anything moving! We did spot a fish but it only popped up the once. Time was around 10.30am and there were some Signs of fly activity!

Fly life this time of the year can be a right mix-and-match. Olives, small olives, brookduns, yellow mays, mayfly, black gnats and many more! It Can be a minefield for anglers matching the size and pattern that the trout lock onto!

While waiting on the trout to react to the flies, me and Sam done a little nymphing in the fast water and the deeper pools with good results. We both got busted up and was a little disappointed but that’s how it goes.

We did catch around half a dozen between us, nothing big but pure quality!

Finally moving out of the fast water, we made our way to the long tails hoping to find trout rising and there were a few taking olives and the odd bigger duns so we set up the dry rods. I was using my 10ft 3wt with a leader around 16/18ft for Presentation

But just before Stalking a trout rising on the far bank, I watched a guy for a while before going over to chat with him. His name was Glyn and he was quite new to it so I lent a hand changing his set up and helping him get better presentation. Was great chatting about fishing and we dropped onto the subject of the fishing blogs he reads. He said he reads a blog taff Diaries 🙂 made me smile because it was all good. I then Re-introduced myself as the writer. we both laughed for a bit after!

I love how fishing can bring people together from all walks of life on the river. It was great chatting away about flies and leaders and I hope I helped and explained it enough to understand

Sam getting ready to slip the net under yet another lovely river Usk wild brown trout on the dry!

These are the flies I fished throughout the day below. Simple but they do the job 🙂

Jig pattern for grayling

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Little pattern that I just tied up for the grayling on my local rivers!

I’m out tomorrow on the lower waters of the river taff near Cardiff so going to give them a dip down in the posh area of the taff 🙂

Ian Gillard at http://get-slotted.co.uk/ sent some trout line hybrid squirrel in rust colour for me to try so come up with this pattern below. Rust and a purple rib. Looks nice and sure it’s going to do the business for sure! I’ve added a little of the black pepper to the thorax also, it looks awesome wet!

Grayling jig pattern

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Nice simple jig nymph that I use for grayling!

It’s quite successful in the winter months for myself in the smaller sizes,16/14! 2.5/3m beads silver and copper.

Hook, Hanak h400bl

Size, 16

Bead, silver 2.5m

Body, black rabbit

Rib, Red wire

Tail, Bronze mallard

Coller, glo bright 7

Good little pattern in clear water! It’s a great little pattern fished on the French leader on its own, no dropper!

I like to fish it slowly at distance in around 2 to 3 foot of water where grayling Love to hang around when on the feed, it’s a great searching pattern!

New box of river nymphs complete!

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Been doing my best on completing this box of nymphs to get started on a smaller box ready for the future trips out!

I’m always looking at new patterns and trolling through fly images on good old uncle goggle looking for new ideas most nights. There are some real awesome people out there tying and always something new to give a go!

We all have our go-to nymphs and patterns that we have full faith in but we are always looking for that edge. Over the years of competing for wales in the river internationals and meeting some real awesome anglers, I’ve collected patterns from most and this is where I mix and match patterns for different rivers. Every little helps they say!

The next box will be more for grayling for the winter months so I’ll post some images after it’s complete. Tight lines guys and girls

Nice to be back tying after such a long time

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Well it’s been a long time since I’ve posted sorry guys and girls. Due to an eye condition it put everything on hold for over 9/10 months but I’m Back doing what I love, fly Fishing and fly tying.

I’ve started tying new boxes and sorting my gear ready for a day on the water. Well soon as we have water! What a crazy few months it’s been with this hot weather. Rivers are on there bones and fish are stressed. But tonight the heavens have opened:). Well here is what I’ve been tying the last few days ready for my trip!

Searching for the grayling with Paul Jenkins

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Sunday morning was a bit of a blessing with good cloud cover and no rain or wind but the weather report was saying it was changing for the worse in the afternoon so me and Paul Jenkins made the most of the good conditions and decided we would search out the grayling along the river Taff!

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Paul hasn’t done much fishing on the Taff for sometime due to fishing other water far and wide like the wye and other hidden little places so it was a change. We were on the water around 9.30 and checking out the fist pool of the day but someone already beat us to it so we moved up river to a long sweeping bend. Ideal place for the grayling to hide out. The far side was around 4ft deep with lovely pea gravel with the odd big rock around the place.

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Nothing much going on with any sort of fly hatch going on that early so the bugs were out. we both set up on the nymphs. Paul moved in above me fishing the shallow side and I went below fishing the deeper side with the heavy bugs dragging the bottom. Paul was fishing the lighter nymph in the shallower water just on the edge of the drop off. Grayling love that edge and the slope into the deeper water so always concentrate on them areas, they will produce fish! Paul was the first to hook up to a lovely grayling around the 1lb, fin perfect.

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Slowly we moved around the river searching all the likely looking areas and we did fish the slower deeper waters with the klink and dink and was rewarded with a few grayling but they just didn’t seem to be in that water in numbers! We targeted the heads of the pools with a little faster water due to seeing a few flies hatching. Fish did start rising but only for a short time and not really worth changing over, the wind started to pick up into the afternoon and the leaves stared to fall making things interesting and becoming a pain so we set off again up river to more open water and much slower.

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French leader twirly style!

We changed over to long leaders and light nymphs and this seemed to do the trick. We started to pick off grayling in good numbers by working down river very slowly pitching the nymphs upstream and letting the leader go past you and down river with lots of upstream mends to keep the dead drift going. The slower the better and the takes were coming in thick and fast. We were having so much fun we didn’t realise the time and with that we decided to call it a day.

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It was a great day out with Paul and the fishing was brilliant. Till the next trip and I can’t wait, ive got that grayling bug big time!

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First session on the grayling.

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The trout season has just passed so the grayling are the next target.  Thymallus Thymallus, the lady of the stream!

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Waking up nice and early with a zing in my step I was soon out the door and down the river setting up the 10ft 3wt. due to being so early and cold the nymphs were what I started on!

The  point fly was a size 16 squirrel and partridge jig with a 2.5m bead and the dropper fly was an olive caddis pattern also with a 2.5m bead. These two nymphs are great all year around!I

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I headed for the slower waters around 3/4ft of where the grayling like to hang around this time of the year, I opted for the two nymph setup with the French leader. I slowly fished up river casting a long line covering a lot of water with not much disturbance.  It wasn’t long and the leader slipping up river to a fine grayling around the 1lb mark! First of the session and in perfect condition.

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As the afternoon went on a few small olives started to hatch and it wasn’t long and the grayling started to rise. Problem was there were so many small grayling it was quite impossible to hook a better size grayling due to the fast little buggers taking the fly or dragging it under, so  I changed back to the nymphs and fished hard on the bottom and it worked quite well.  I still caught many smaller grayling but there were many more bigger fish than small so result!

click on the images below to enlarge

 

 

 

 

Liquid Glass UV Cure Resin

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Cold, damp spring days aren’t favoured by many but for the fisherman, they can offer superb fishing. Inverterbrates seem to favour these dour days and hatch en masse. None more so than the dimunitive Iron Blue Dun which can often save the day when you might have second thoughts about going fishing. Today was one of those days and my good friend, Nicholas Steedman, and I experienced a hatch of Iron Blue Duns of biblical proportions. The river was covered with duns! These rare occasions can prove frustrating – with more food available than even the greediest trout can feed on, they become selective and tricky to fool. Surprisingly today the stand out fly was a Large Brook Dun ’emerger’ which is generic enough to pass as a general olive emerger pattern. Large Brook Duns are frequently claimed to be of no interest to the fisherman but these large upwings often get blown onto the water or hatch mid-river (despite only being meant to hatch by crawling up stones on the side of the river). With thousands of Iron Blue Duns and a smattering of Large Brook Duns plus a few other species the trout were spoilt for choice today but the larger imitation certainly proved the most effective at fooling some tricky trout:-)

I’ve included a few photos of the fly below (previously posted on an earlier post). The body is natural stripped peacock quill which is protected by Harvey Angling’s Liquid Glass UV Cure Resin which dries clear and tack free – exactly what you want from a UV resin! Give the fly a try, you won’t be disappointed;-)

Dressing:
Hook Tiemco TMC 200R #14
Tail: Coq de Leon
Abdomen: Stripped quill (natural) and liquid glass uv resin
Thorax: Fox squirrel
Wing: cdc
Hackle: Metz Honey Dun

The Liquid Glass UV Resin is available from Harvey Angling

march brown

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Pheasant Tail Emerger Pattern

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It’s great to have the dry-fly setup once again and my go to pattern early season is the pheasant tail emerger. Fishing is still slow but I enjoy just creeping around the river when the hatches start. At the moment the large dark olives are coming on around 11am to about 2pm and then they tend to peter off, but in this time you can have a little fun, they don’t turn their noses up to this pattern and It have accounted for many of my big fish that I’ve managed to catch over the years on my local waters!

 I tie this fly in size16/14/12s

  • SONY DSCHook. Kamasan B100.
  • Thread, Black UTC 170.
  • Body. 4 pheasant tail fibers
  • Rib. 2lb mono.
  • Hackle. Blue dun.

I like to tie this pattern on the kamasan due to the quality of the hooks and the strength. It’s Very important to have full confidence in the hooks when you hook into that fish of a lifetime! These have the thumbs up from me! Here is a link for the hooks so please check it out they won’t let you down! ..https://www.cliff-harvey-angling.co.uk/search_prod_list.asp?maingroup=HOOKS&thirdgroup=Kamasan&cha_product_category=8

 

 

 

Crystal clear compact dubbing box, 12 compartments

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Just bought myself a few of these crystal clear compact dubbing boxes, ideal for storing all sorts of dubbing and you would be surprised how much you can put in each slot! Instead of having your dubbing in bags or in a draw  taking up space at your fly tying station use one of these, cheap as chips!!! click here to check them out http://www.cliff-harvey-angling.co.uk/prod_show.asp?id=6259

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