Post Birthday Fishing.

I spent the day at Garnffrwd  with my good friend Clive Wednesday, the conditions were perfect overcast and not to hot superb hatches throughout the day. Olives ,Caenis , Sedges and Damsels all featured in the days action. The first hour or two was a little hard but the action soon exploded after a hardy breakfast in the lodge, fishing the section of the lake known as the medow presenting a size 14 yellow owl shuttlecock  on a 9ft tapered leader with 2ft of riverge 0.14 tippet and my hew hardy shadow 9ft 5#, ( Many thanks mum & dad for the birthday present). The fish started smashing the cdc and it wasn’t  long before I had six fish to the net, including some of the nicest fin perfect brown trout I have seen in a while .

A move along the bank a few yards I stitched to a midge tip and blue flash damsel fished along  the reeds where the naturals were crawling up the foliage to hatch saw more furious action two more fish before stopping for lunch.

After a short break I moved to the second finger where the hatching caenis proved challenging to say the least, on with a size 20 Grey duster soon put me amongst the quality fish with three more netted before moving to the first finger to finish of the day.

One more fell to the duster before all went quiet the naturals stopped hatching and the fish stopped rising.
Switching to two claret buzzers on the midge tip took my final fish of the day a fisty rainbow on the top dropper.

Fishing the evening rise at Garnffrwd

Managed to get down to the lake this evening, recent hatches throughout the day have been some of the most prolific  olive hatches I have seen in recent years. The evening hatch did not disappoint the lake was alive with hatching olives sedge and caenis, not to mention the ravenous hoards of trout gorging themselves. All that was needed was a small grey duster in a size 20 or 22.

A few Damsel patterns just of the vice

Had a bit of spare time this week decided to re  stock my Damsel box .

Short morning at Garnffrwd

Had a few hours at  Garnffrwd  Friday morning  with Morgan buzzers and olives hatching really well.

Kingfisher blue Damsel step by step .

The hooks used are the FM 35005 size 10.

Place the hook in the vice with a 3mm blue tungsten bead.

Wind the thread down to just passed the point . ( thread is Danville’s  6/0 in dark olive ).

Choose about an inch of olive marabou for the tail one and a half times the length of the shank .

Tie in the marabu and trim by pinching the material .

Tye in two strands of kingfisher blue krinkle  flash either side of the tail .

Catch in a length of kingfisher hographic tinsel as your rib .

The dubbing used for the body Is gold green and pearl lite bright .

Form a tight dubbing rope.

Now wind the dubbing up the shank stopping behind the bead .

Select the appropriate sized hackle the Cape pictured is a yellow olive metz grizzle cape .

Prepare the hackle and catch in just behind the bead.

Take two turns behind the bead before Palmering  the hackle down the body to the tail.

Use the rib to hold the hackle in place.

Wind the rib opposite direction to the hackle and tie of behind the bead .

Apply varnish to the thread and whip finish .

Use a velcro brush to bring out the dubbing in to the hackles and coax the hackles to slant back wards and your fly is finished.

Dever Springs

Dever springs is  a world renowned big fish water drawing people from all over the country with the promise of the oportunity to land a 20lb plus brown or rainbowtrout. During the early part of April the oportunity arose to to make the two and a half hour journey to Dever where I shared a father and son ticket with my son Morgan and our good friend Neil Matson, the few days before the trip were spent in the tying room frantickly filling boxes with barbed patterns go cover all eventualities. A little bit out of the norm for me as I dont use barbed hooks but being a catch and kill water only with no C&R it seemed a viable option to create some dedicated boxes for making these infrequent trips to Dever,Lechlade and the like.

If you haven’t been fortunate enough to visit this stunning and picturesque Hampshire stillwater ,I can only urge you to make the most of the first oportunity you get.
Spring lake is at the top of the complex the smaller of the two and gin clear holding rainbow and brown trout to the mid twenties. Willow lake being the larger lake holding rainbows only and carrying a little more colour really is one of the nicest lakes I have fished.
         Setting up tenft 7# outfits all three of us started out on willow lake fishing our way around the lake as we went, stopping to have a look in the stock pools on our way. Some of the fish browns especially are some of the biggest trout I have ever seen, there were lots of fish rising but we didn’t manage to tempt any to the dries the most productive fly of the day was the lime head Humungus and the cut throat damzel. Although no real big fish were taken the fish we caught fought like steam trains and kept us busy throughout the day.

We will deffinately be making the trip again a superb day out .

Dry fly sport in March

Today I made the short journey from my home to Garnffrwd fishery, I’m fortunate to have this superb fishery almost on my doorstep which has made this stunning lake my home water. Arriving at the water around 9am with my trusty side kick  Ian Thomas tackling up with an aqualux intermediate and a 6wt floating line a cats whisker and team of buzzers to start. Fishing for an hour saw ian taking 2 fish on the pull with his white bead chain lure, and no trout to the net  for me we retired to the warmth of the cafe for a chat to Jamie and a breakfast at the cafe. 

After fulling up on fuel and coffee it was back out to the lake which was warming up nicely, I decided to switch to dry flies after watching lots of fish sipping down small grey midges, I chose my ever faithfull pheasant tail emerger which takes dozens of fish during the course of the year. A few casts later and my first fish was in the net, the fishing wasn’t easy and we had to work hard I took one on an apps bloodworm before changing to a size 14 grey duster.

All the remaining fish we took fell to the grey duster a superb pattern that can be used  to imitate a multitude of patterns we finished on 10 fish for Ian and 12 for me a brilliant early season session on the dry fly .

A cold day at Ravens Nest

I haven’t been fishing very much  over the last few months due to illness, most of the time has been at the vice tying orders of flies for customers and filling my own fly boxes. Today was one of the first trips of the year the two previous had been to lechlade plenty of fish around the 8lb mark had been caught but today was to be a little quieter and a far shorter journey.
        Arriving at the fishery I could see the top pool has silted up quite badly so armed with two 10 ft 6w fly rods a floating and aqualux  intermediate we started  on the bottom pool . Morgan was in to a fish first cast on a flexi floss cat bug and I followed suit quickly with a caddis pupa. The fish were quite deep hardly surprising with the temperature  being 3° C and a cold wind blowing. The morning saw a steady stream of fish to around 3lb falling to sunburst blobs chamois  worms bugs and caddis patterns, this afternoon we moved to the middle pool and the intermediate line with a black cheaper or tricolour cat put my total number of fish at 12 and Morgan’s at 10 before we beat a hasty retreat to the warmth the car for a warm up and a coffee .

Fishing ,flies and shopping .

An eventfull week this week first of all a rather nice trip to my local fishery Garnffrwd in west wales , lovely weather good company and 11 chunky hard fighting rainbow trout and one brown taken on a mix of sunburst and chartruce blobs and my dawsons dancer pattern . The water at Garnffrwd remains gin Clear and the water quality is superb Jamie stocked with some more hard fighting rainbows added to the already settled in resident brown and rainbow population im sure a good winter is ahead if the  weatger gods are kind to us

Meanwhile the daughter of a good friend of mine has had a tough time and has had some nasty surgery so I decided to apeal to my friends within the fly tying community to donate some flies and colate a fly box that I could auction and all the proceeds go towards helping the special 15 year olds recovery . The response has been stagering to say the least a fellow disabled angler Andy Watson supplied a large compet ion style box which i’m in the process of filling with donations . I would like to give abig thank you to my team mates Ed ford, Ali Hutchins and Greame Kerr for being so supportive  and my many personal friends and facebook friends for donations . Lucy came home from hospital yesterday and I wish her all the best .

Fly tying has been busy this week at the vice with orders and filling my fly boxes with fry patterns and buzzers . An order below for my good friend Stuart Mears .

Some damzels and sparklers to top up my own boxes .

This weeken we are fishing Lechslade and on our way to the hotel this afrernoon we stopped of at orvis in Bath for a nose well needless to say I had to come home with something incase the fishing doesnt go my way tomorrow so a selection of indicators and mcfly foam to stock up on egg patterns for the winter will do nicely !

Hopefully the fish gods will be nice tommorrow i have toasted their health with several pints of Guinness tonight tight lines .

Liquid Glass UV Cure Resin

Over the last five years of fly tying I have used many of the uv cure resins Bug Bond , Deer Creek, Bug off and clear Goo. Much has been discussed on social media and through the various fishing forums about uv resins, the main bug bear seems to be the fact that after curing they have a tacky finish. My personal preference over the last 12 months or so is for the bug bond lite and even with the bug bond pro torch there is a slight tack to the finish and I have always given a top coat of clear varnish hard as nails or similar. So when Gareth at Harvey angling told me ha has a new uv resin coming out I was quite excited as hopefully this would be one I could finally hit with the torch and put the fly in my box. I have to say liquid glass is exceptional giving a rock hard finish with a clear glass look with no tack after a few seconds with the Harvey Angling torch , the consistency of the resin is very workable and gives you plenty of time to work the resin on the fly without being to runny.

A mention about the torch the main drawback with the Venyards torch is the cost At around £35 the Harvey’s torch costs £18.99 and is twice a bright and the Venyards one so this is also worth a look. For me the me this new resin will be my choice from now on and Gareth informs me there is a lite version on the way as well.

Liquid Glass UV Cure Resin