Flies and approaches

[Mike Connor]

I posted this elsewhere in reply to some questions, but I thought it might be of interest here as well.

Many people use fairly general flies and many also use general approaches. There is nothing wrong with this and it catches fish. However, more specific flies and approaches catch better, although it takes longer and more effort to find out how to dress and use a specific pattern it is invariably more successful, and consistently so in the right conditions, than any general pattern, although it may well be more or less useless in other conditions.

Also, the WAY a fly is dressed and fished affects the results considerably. A general fly fished in a general way may catch a few fish, or occasionally even a lot of fish if the method of fishing and the fly serendipitously emulate an insect which is extant and behaving like that in those conditions.

The same fly fished in some other general manner may not work at all or only poorly.

In time, as one learns how various insects behave and the best way to fish them, one learns enough specifics to suit a wide range of conditions, and one has only to learn when to use what and how, to give a range of very effective specific flies and tactics. This is not at all the same thing as using various generic flies in a general manner and very different indeed to using random flies in a general manner.

The differences are very great indeed, most especially in terms of fish caught.

People invariably imagine I am doing something "magical" or somehow "cheating" when they see me fishing and how many fish I catch. This of course is neither magical nor cheating, it is simply the result of a methodical and very specific approach. The results are actually a foregone conclusion of the approach.

This "tactical" approach is not everybody's idea of enjoyment, and there is no reason why it should be. Everybody should fish as they wish and enjoy it. However, many people would like to catch more fish and don't know how. Constantly repeating something that does not work very well at all, such as swinging winged wet flies downstream for instance, will not bring any better consistent results regardless of how long you do it. You may improve your skills in this area given time and application, which may better your average results somewhat over time, but they will still be lousy in total because the method itself and the flies involved ( in this case the winged wet flies), are not very good.

If you are doing something like this and you want better results then your only sensible option is to change what you are doing in some way.

That is the main reason I have spent a lot of time developing various flies and methods for myself. If I had not done so I would not catch even a fraction of what I now catch.

There are always ways to improve things, learn more, and hone or develop skills, but one has to start somewhere. If you enjoy swinging wet flies on a pleasant day out and don't mind whether you catch much or not, then that is fair enough and getting much deeper into specific flies and tactics is probably not for you. It doesn't matter as long as you enjoy what you do. It does however matter a lot if you are not satisfied with what you do, and the only way to change that is to change your approach.

I have been fishing and learning intensively now for half a century and I have always been "lucky" and had a "knack" for catching fish, even at the start when I knew very little about it. This fairly "formalised" approach has increased my "luck" and my "knack" to an extreme degree, indeed actually to the extent that others see it as verging on "magical".

Not everybody has the chance to do it all, there is a lot of time and effort involved, and even of those who do have the chance many will not want to. That's just how it is. Also, knowing how to do something does not equate to actually doing it successfully. You can learn a lot from books and other things but the only way to get good at these things is to apply what you have learned. People often ask " how can I catch big fish like that?" or "a lot of fish like that". The answer is to do it. The more you catch the better you become at it. With the right approach and a modicum of skill and intelligence, ( even more so if you are "lucky" or have a "knack" for it to start with), then the result is a foregone conclusion.

Just trying to explain why I do some of the things I do.

TL
MC

[michaelgmcgraw]

Well said. I am in agreement.