Friday Fly Day - Opening Week Fly Patch

What a mixed bag for opening week. High flows, low water, frosts, 13 degree mornings and even a 17 degree day all featured, followed by heavy snow, and resultantly kept us on our toes. Many days fish just weren’t out or were holding close to cover and on others, mayfly had them chomping about the edgewaters. Flies this week ranged from tiny CDC emergers through to 5mm beaded ‘bling flies and as you’ll see, my fly patch by the end of the week was certainly a varied one.

Here’s the gist of it...

Weight

When fish are staying close to home then you need to visit them right through the front door. Deep soft weight, PT Jig Heads, Iron Maidens and Uglies were employed on many occasions either solo, or trailing a smaller natural.

Jig PT

Colour

If they’re not on the chew you need to be seen, and so bright green caddis, OTB hare and coppers, nosebleeds and flies tied with coloured accents stand out from the crowd.

Pink Nosebleed

Movement

Rubber legs were king in getting noticed in discoloured flows, and in getting often sullen fish to eat. Don’t forget to strip / twitch / jiggle / suspend your fly too if you need attention.

Kyles Stone Brown

Dries

CDC Thorax Duns and Para Dads Favourites are always kept handy on early season mayfly streams and most days a trickle of mid-afternoon duns were what it took to get fish moving.

Para Dads Favourite

Come Eat Me Flies

Some days you just gotta do what you gotta do. Jig Worms, Mr Glister Streamers and Sex Dungeons were all used to pull fish from cover and a highlight of the week was watching a large rainbow explode from nowhere to smash a Glister pulled through a pool we had just methodically nymphed.

Sex Dungeon Natural

So mix it up to the conditions if you’re not getting the results. The fish are there, you just gotta feed them.