Natural by design

[GlassJet]

I'm really convinced that "trout is trout" is not true.

Hi, yes, fair comment, that was simplistic - always been a bit of a sucker for a sound-bite! My fishing for wild brown trout in the river is completely different from fishing for stocked rainbows in my local reservoir. Thoughalso the same flies that often work on the brownies in the river often work well on the population of wild brown trout that inhabit the reservoir, great fun fishing for these on the fringes of a summer evening.

As for trout behaving differently, well obviously they are going to feed - behave - according to stage of life cycle and to the food available, which in turn will vary from season to season, hour to hour, place to place, and river to river. Obviously!

But I thought we were talking about a general approach to designing a pattern. Well I was anyway.

andrew.

[William Anderson]

Isn't there a moment when you're looking at a beautiful stretch, early in your time on the water and you suddenly feel overwhelmed with the thoughts that go into choosing the fly out of the box? It's nice to have the luxury of parsing out all those thoughts with others over days instead of the 5-10 seconds spent in choosing that fly. These conversations are invaluable.

There are a lot of theories hammered out here...and most of them are all true. Great reading. Great Thread.

w

[Otter]

This is the wrong forum for this as the example is about dries/emergers but here goes as I believe it may have relevance to how we fish spiders/wets/softwings.

When it comes to dries to match whats hatching and been taken (Olives) I "currently " believe IN GENERAL that after stealth (you, your flyline, your leader,your casting etc) , presentation (cast, angle of cast, drift of fly) that the next important bits are size & profile followed tentatively last by colour - though I know many anglers who strongly believe that colour in dries can be more critical more times than we might believe - i really do not currently have an opinion on this matter except to say I would err on matching colour but currently do not panic about it.

Up to 3 or 4 seasons ago for olive hatches I fished what were deemed by history and its experts to be dun imitations with very arbitrary success. Off course the reason was simple, they were taking emergers or bulging at nymphs just subsurface and the DUN imitation which like most so called DUN imitations was a poor Dun imitation and an even poorer emerger imitation. A couple of seasons fishing emergers both curved to cut thru film, and straight hook versions to sit on/in the meniscus it became very apparent that sometimes during a hatch that some trout did indeed show a preference for one or the other, and that you may need to change the profile of your fly during a hatch to take full advantage - assuming of course you are hell bent on fishing dries.

What this has to do with spiders and wets I am not sure except that during a hatch I suspect that if my top dropper were to delay a little longer in the meniscus it may be advantageous. Since olives are the bread and butter on my local I intend to tie a few of Mikes softwings with a little more hare dubbing by incorporating a few extra guard hairs at the butt of the wing and see if they can perform to my theorising. Off course I could put on a full dry emerger on the dropper but that would only confirm what I already know to work resonably well.

Thinking too much can do this to you

[Otter]

Hmm.....I don't think giving attention to colour is an error, or that it is unimportant. The problem is in discovering when it is important. ( This can be an even more serious problem with dry flies and the like, for various reasons).Some very very subtle colour differences ( and perhaps other things that one is unaware of), can cause fish to refuse flies which otherwise "seem" to be identical.


Mike

You will note that I did say "Currently" , a lot more stuff has to be sorted out first before i can worry about it in any detail

The first time I tied a softwing I was immediately drawn to the similarity to Websters flies and even to many of my own so called dries which are simple combinations of CDC winging not unlike websters in profile though not in constitution or possibly in behaviour. Websters ideas are in the main very difficult to ignore.

[daringduffer]

PS. ... There is, in my opinion, no substitute for experience....)

I agree wholeheartidly. I know a lot about flyfishing theory and have very little experience compared to this, resulting in that I have very little real knowledge. Unfortunately life is too short for me to catch up on this but it is not too short to strive for it. To learn from other people's experience is a good thing, but you've got to know who to listen to. One can easily drown in theories. I like the systematic approach in "first things first" like in without stealth the rest is pointless...

dd

[Otter]

Slow down Mike, you will wear out the keyboard

As always your insights are both stimulating and thought provoking.

One of the great enjoyments for me has been as a result of a major jump in understanding and hence catching more trout a few seasons ago. This has allowed me more freedom to choose how I fish on any particular day, and it may not necessarily be what seems the most appropiate method - the desire to be catching trout with reasonable regularity all day long is no longer paramount ( at least not everyday ). With that freedom comes much understanding as you are not impeded by the fear of not catching, and its amazing the little things that you will discover that will ultimately make massive improvements to both your abilty to catch trout and to the number of things that enhance your enjoyment.

It's a well travelled road that we wander and the thoughts and aspirations of anglers or the challenges facing them are not much different to-day than they were a hundred years ago no matter what advances have been in equipment etc.. (apart from the gout that is)

And as to a hundred or so years ago, what did Webster mean by hackled flies ? - from the plates his hackles seem closer to your pulled down hares ear on the softwings and are most of his dries for the upwings clever little emergers that linger as Duns momentarily. The idea of fishing flys that kill two or three birds with the one stone , if I am reading the design of these patterns correctly, is a very clever way of going about your business once you master the fishing of them correctly.

[hankaye]

Mike;
I have been following this thread closely and have been enjoying some of your thoughts, specificaly;

"Webster is the ONLY author with whom I find myself in almost 100% agreement on
many things."

Is the book still available and what is the title?

"If you want to cast well, then you have to learn how to do it properly, and then practice it. It's no good learning a lot of other stuff if you can't cast, because it wont work well if at all. For the other stuff to function well, you HAVE to be able to cast."

I still call it 'beating the air into submission'. It's a work in progress at this time. Am seeking help.

"The same goes for stealth, and indeed for catching fish. The more fish you catch, the better you become at doing it. It doesn't actually matter much how you actually do it either, you just get better with the experience and practice. Or at least you do if you go about it sensibly and you have learned the right things to begin with."

No problem there...

"Finally, you don't have to be the absolute master of something in order to enjoy it. If you enjoy your fishing, then that should really be enough. If you are dissatisfied, then by all means try to improve, but don't make that a "condition" of your enjoyment, or you will simply end up being frustrated, and lessen your enjoyment. If you do decide to improve, then you need to follow some sensible method of doing so, or that too will simply result in frustration."

Have long been of the opinion that 'poo occurs' for a reason... deal with it and move on. Life is to short.

"There is no "final destination" in angling, or certain "level of competence" you "HAVE" to reach, ( something that pisses me off quite a lot with various angling "authorities" and the like, who presume to examine others and declare them "fit for purpose" or otherwise). it's entirely up to you. Just how it goes................"

nuff said...
hank

[hankaye]

Mike ;

Thanks for the links, the cd that you mentioned would be truly a nice thing to peruse, especially when the snows fly an I can’t get out for a day or 2.

"If you want a list of those I think might be suitable, then just let me know what you are hoping to do, ( I.E. mainly soft hackles etc, or other types and methods of fishing, target fish, etc) and I will do my best to give you a short list."

I'm most interested in the soft-hackles at the moment. As I'm in Utah I have access (although now limited due to a NEW law that was passed this past March), to trout of the cutthroat, rainbow, brown and tigers varieties. The warm water fish I'll use my 'other' gear for, in the mean time. Unless they 'volunteer'

As far as the 'casting' goes... have made a few local (within 100 miles), contacts and some have offered to help with the, however I not one to ignore the advise of one 'in the know'.

Sincere thanks,
hank

[Otter]

.....
As to other "advances", who is to say they were all "advances"? Looking at some stuff I am often bound to wonder!

Mike

Thats the influence of the Life of Brian , Mike

"What did the Romans ever give us....

Anyways a bad dys fishing is indeed better than crucifiction, though I often wonder is the latter on my wife's mind when I return from river..

Back to mr webster and his fleas, and you and yours a friend of mine showed me a pattern he had developed that worked well for him towards the end of last spring. Body: Claret Silk, Silver Rib, Wing: a half dozen or so fibres of waterhen and a touch of greyish muskrat dubbing at the thorax. And I had never showed him your softwings, as i had seen no point doing so until I had proved their worth to myself. This was purely as a result of trial and error on his part and simply dicovering that a flittered full hackled version fished much better with just a few fibres left - in fact when he gave one to another friend he was asked did he have any that had not had the hackle ripped to shreds.

You may have missed my wee question previously, I am curious as to what Webster meant by "hackled " in the construction of his fleas. The plates seem to suggest that the hackled ones only have the hackle underneath the wing ?

[hankaye]

Mike ,

Sorry about the cd reference.
This is what I was referring to;

Mike wrote;
"It all seems a bit much at the beginning I know. Unfortunately there is no way around that. You can save a great deal of time and frustration, and get better a lot faster, if you follow a few relatively simple guidelines. Also, you can go fishing as often as you please! If you want the guidelines just say so. I made up such a set a long time ago when I first started teaching people. I have them on disk somewhere."

That's all.
I do however appericate the time you take to answer me questions. Means alot to me.
Thanks,
hank