Fly change fever

When you start flyfishing, the fly you have on is a huge part of how confident you feel… or not. I remember one evening decades ago on the Mitta below Dartmouth, where brother Mark was out-fishing Lindsay and me. “What are you getting them on?” I shouted above the roar of the river, as Mark, knee-deep in the next run upstream, brought what looked like another nice fish to the net. “Brown nymph!” came the short reply. Lindsay and I wasted no time changing our flies accordingly, and immediately began catching our share of trout.

Later, back at the car, three very satisfied anglers were comparing notes, when Lindsay, out of idle curiosity, decided to compare his brown nymph to Mark’s. “That’s not brown, it’s green!” chuckled Lindsay. Now, we immediately knew Mark hadn’t tried to mislead us. Like me, he has a degree of red-green colour blindness, and in the half light, he’d made an honest mistake. But no harm done – once we changed to the ‘brown nymph’, Lindsay and I believed we had the right fly, fished with the extra intent, effort and focus that belief created, and therefore caught plenty of trout.

Back to the present, and I’ve seen an extraordinary amount of hatch-driven fishing lately, both during big evening rises on rivers, and prolific dun hatches and spinner falls on the local lakes. I’m assuming this is due to spring 2021 being preceded by 18 months of generous water conditions brought about by high rainfall and mild summer temperatures.

Termite falls can cause a case of fly change fever in anyone!

In any case, one thing that’s really stood out during these hatches and falls, is how much effort a lot of anglers put in to trying to find the perfect fly. In fact, during some sessions, every time I look around, all my fellow fishers are doing is changing flies!

Now, given that all hatches have a finite life – from bare minutes through to maybe a couple hours at best – is changing flies the most sensible use of fishing time? Granted, selective feeding during a rise requires a fly which is a good match in form and behaviour to the real thing. However, the ‘right’ fly is only a part of the fish-catching equation. Precise, well-timed and often repetitive presentation is every bit as important. Your fly is competing with an awful lot of real food, and the trout are temporarily very short-sighted: simply focused on snaring the next tit-bit, not scanning far and wide for it.

Dun pattern or spent spinner? By all means give plenty of thought to selecting a fly that suggests what the trout are actually rising to in a hatch/ fall. But once you’ve made your choice, back your judgement and give that fly a fair go.

The angler’s mentality needs to be, how can I make the trout eat my fly from amongst all the naturals? The answer is certainly not to hurl that fly out on the water somewhere and hope for the best. No matter how ‘perfect’ your pattern is (and let’s face it, no artificial fly actually achieves perfection) it still needs to be in the right place, at the right moment… and looking its finest. For example:

  • Has the trout seen your fly first, rather than line or leader then fly?
  • Is your fly sitting upright, or on its side?
  • Is the trout in the desired hard-feeding mode? Beat feeders often have a non-feeding leg when they circle around or drift back in the current, before they get down to business again. A trout that’s just eaten three duns is much more likely to eat your fly, than one which hasn’t fed for 30 seconds.
  • How about drift? Of course you’re going to adapt your leader, your position, and mend your heart out to get a drag-free drift on a stream. But are you making the same effort on a lake?
  • Are you spending too much time on that contrary fish; the one which maybe clocked you early, or which senses something is NQR, or which is just a bastard? Find another!

Dan persisted with a well-chosen Paradun and his best possible presentation efforts – despite several apparent ‘refusals’. The result was an eat from this PB rainbow.

The list goes on, but you get the idea. Yes, give careful consideration to selecting an acceptable fly pattern. But having done that, put heaps of thought and effort into how that fly is fished. All fly change fever achieves is keeping you off the water for much longer than you should be.