I.D. insects- A general question

[Mike Connor]

QUOTE
New arrival takes off his/her hat, swipes it across the tops of the vegatition...
inspects the contents and sez ... about a size 14 or 16, medium brownish tan.
UNQUOTE
That works sometimes. The point being that there may well be lots of insects flying around, but what you want to use imitations of are those that the fish are actually taking. Also, you wont find many nymphs or scuds etc in the bushes!

You do need some basic knowledge of what you can expect and when you can expect it. A "hatch chart" for the water can be very useful indeed.

The main difficulty in all of this, ( apart from dressing good imitations in the first place!), is actually discovering what the fish are taking. This is less important when using various generic patterns as these will usually be good imitations of various things and will nearly always work more or less well depending on circumstances. When using specific patterns it is often essential to use the right one. It is also less important under various circumstances such as fairly "barren" waters where fish will often take more or less anything at any time, or on fertile waters when the fish are not concentrating on some particular hatch.

You need to consider all these factors when choosing flies. You should ALWAYS have a GOOD reason or reasons for using particular flies, not just use whatever is handy or because it worked last time you were out. You also need to learn when to persevere with a fly because you know it should work, and when to change when it is not working. Whether you know the latin names of various flies is largely irrelevant and only really of use when discussing this with others, or when trying to match various patterns etc. Random choice of flies will not be consistently successful. The more good reasons you have for choosing a particular fly the more likely you are to be successful.

TL
MC

[Otter]

The point being that there may well be lots of insects flying around, but what you want to use imitations of are those that the fish are actually taking. Also, you wont find many nymphs or scuds etc in the bushes!

You do need some basic knowledge of what you can expect and when you can expect it. A "hatch chart" for the water can be very useful indeed.

The main difficulty in all of this, ( apart from dressing good imitations in the first place!), is actually discovering what the fish are taking. This is less important when using various generic patterns as these will usually be good imitations of various things and will nearly always work more or less well depending on circumstances. When using specific patterns it is often essential to use the right one. It is also less important under various circumstances such as fairly "barren" waters where fish will often take more or less anything at any time, or on fertile waters when the fish are not concentrating on some particular hatch.

TL
MC

Looking at the the bushes and whats buzzing around is a good idea, it tells you what HAS hatched and what spinners/egg layers may return to the water sometime soon. But I cannot rely on this info anymore than I would leave home without a coat because the weather forecast said it would be dry in Ireland to-morrow - would rather know if it us going to be dry in the area I was going to to-morrow.

If I had a fiver for the number of people I have seen fishing adult caddis during a BWO hatch I would be a wealthy man - plenty of caddis on the wing. We have all fallen into this trap, even experienced anglers do, especially at the start of a days fishing, but generally cop on quite quickly.

Size, Colour, Profile , get those reasonably right and present correctly and you will be quite successful - this is about all most anglers can expect to achieve - to move beyond this you need to be on the river for at least 20-30 hours a week, fine tuning patterns to be more specific for the CURRENT CONDITIONS, honing in on how the trout are behaving at various parts of the day. Over the last few years I have more or less come to a conclusion that at any moment there are so many influences at play , such as height of water, tempeature of water, density of hatches, number of different hatches that have been occuring , angling pressure, light and weather conditions - all these will/may influence the behaviour of the trout and hence have a bearing on each anglers ability to catch according to the anglers skills. Flies that worked a dream first two weeks of may last year may do so again this year or may prove simply average because conditions are in some way different. For that reason, if you cannot be on the river for that 20+ hours a week then you have no real choice but to generally rely on a core group of generic patterns, fine tuning over many many seasons.

Good anglers have good flies, understand the hatches and have good presentation skills - but thats only the ground work, not beyond the wit of most - the real distinction is they are also usually tenacious, calm, stealthy, observant and flexible and have a sixth sense ( or a nose for it, as they say = natural ability) and have the time on the water to build up a database of experience.

[gingerdun]

I don't have much of my own to offer to this excellent discussion of the flyfisher's eternal question. I did ask myself, however, what would Pete Hidy have to say?

The following information contains some speculation, but it is based on having watched Pete's career over a lifetime, and upon examination of the flies and dubbed bodies he created at different stages of his life. I think he would say that the air bubbles in the fur dubbing and soft hackle trumped some, or even most, of the other fly qualities when matching the hatch. The bubbles, he believed, and this was later confirmed by others, are suggestive of a fresh, full-bodied insect going through metamorphosis. He thought the fish could see the light reflecting on the bubbles better than some of the other attributes of a fly. The bubbles signaled food, and got the trout excited.

In 1973, in AN OPEN LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF FLYMPH FISHERMEN, Pete published a photograph of a flymph underwater with the bubbles in its dubbed body and hackle—the first such photograph and description that I have been able to find in fly-fishing literature (Let me know if you can cite earlier examples). After that, Pete mostly gave up tying flies with thread or quill bodies. Not only that, he began using longer wool and mohair bodies, sometimes mixing them in with the traditional furs from Hare, Mole, etc. He started dubbing more bodies that were far more shaggy and wild than anything that Leisenring would have tolerated. He was trying to maximize the ability of the fly to retain the bubbles longer under water. He carried Kleenex in his vest, and would squeeze the water out of a sodden fly—which would then be full of bubbles on the next cast to the water.

All of this experimentation led Pete toward simpler flies, that were more generic for size and color, with less concern for the details of the fly's anatomy. And he never bothered to learn the Latin names. Leisenring scolded him about it in at least one letter, saying basically that he thought learning the Latin was a waste of time. Pete evidently agreed, which probably led some of the more biology-minded angling writers to question his seriousness. But Pete was deadly serious about this. As is often said of the best anglers, the only critics Pete paid attention to were the trout.

[gingerdun]

To illustrate my previous post, here is one of Pete's later flymphs, with the wild dubbing.

[daringduffer]

http://www.fishing.net.nz/index.cfm/pag ... rialID/137

(Who was... )?

the legendary Alan Pye

dd

[gingerdun]

DD, Can't tell you anything about New Zealander Alan Pye. He and Leisenring probably were looking at the same sources. Leisenring's fly pattern notebook contains recipes copied from a number of important fly-tying books published in England in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Pritt. Leisenring was much more faithful to the British tying tradition than Pete was. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

BTW, This writer got one important fact wrong. Leisenring never heard the word flymph. He died in 1951, and Pete coined the word in 1963.

[daringduffer]

Donald Nicolson has brought this to our attention. I wonder if these men ever read it:http://donaldnicolson.webplus.net/page15.html

Sorry for diversion on this thread.

dd

[gingerdun]

This is a welcome diversion. I didn't know about Lowrie. Many thanks to both you and Donald!

[flyfishwithme]

Here is a Lawrie nymph tied with blue cats fur on the top:

[Otter]

Thats about as simple as it can get , nice photos Philip.

Often in such conversations the idea of a trouts prey image is discussed, Mike may have mentioned it above, an interesting item to discuss in its own right.

Could there be a case to be answered that many anglers / fly tiers have an equivalent fly image based on the types of flys they prefer to use or have been brought up using and so end up with a box where often one size fits all for various families of flies.

Take spiders for example, many have an image that a spider should be skinny silk body, one and a half or two turns of concentric hackle - throw in a little bit of dubbing behind the hackle or use three or four turns of hackle and it looks wrong because of the preconcieved image.

While the one size fits all, works in many instances, is it a calculated thing that has many anglers going this route or is it a case of the preconcieved fly image dictates what an individual will fish with any confidence.

Just a thought !!!