Shrek – Chatto’s viva
It seems that these days the term ‘VIVA’ has been given to the very popular and successful colour combination of light green or chartreuse and black.
My ‘trout’ lake wet fly box
Tantangara Reservoir
Tantangara is one of my favourite lakes not only because its fishes well most of the time but also because it is harder than most of the lakes in the scheme to access and consequently it doesn’t get as much fishing or boat pressure as some of the other lakes.
Squirmy caddis
Somewhat of a fusion of a traditional caddis pupa emerger and a squirmy wormy this fly has earned a place in my fly box as a great middle or top dropper fly for both a loch style team and a river team.
Claret caddis
Any time there are caddis on the wing this fly is worth a swim in the middle position of a team of three loch flies.
One of the most important things to remember when tying this fly is not to overdress it … make sure you can see a gap between the two wings even when the rabbit fur is dry and fluffed out.
Epoxy midge – black with hot butt & UV cheeks
When Chironomids are around they tend to be around in large numbers and trout become quickly switched on and gorge on them. There are number of techniques to target chironomid feeders and one of my favourite is to fish three chironomid imitations with the heaviest on the point with a long leader on a floating line and fish relatively static. You will be surprised how many fish find your flies.
Booby blob
Both boobies and blobs are each tremendous search flies in their own right particularly for stocked rainbow trout. This fly presents the best of both of those worlds and has the head an tail of a booby and the body of a blob. With a little flash in the tail it’s one screamer of an attractor pattern.
Red TBH damsel
I first used this fly in Canada in 2016 at the Commonwealth Fly Fishing Championships. Tied by Josh Flowers from Tasmania I doubt that a session on the lakes passed without every team member tying this fly on for at lease some of the time. I have since learned that it’s a very successful fly in Central Tasmania at any time when damsels are around.
Bibio blob
One of my favourite flies for waters where there is midge activity is the bibio and when I am fishing those waters most of the time I have a bibio on the top dropper. This blob is fast becoming a go to alternative to a bibio for me.
Tequila blob
It took me some time to get into using blobs but these days there are plenty of trout waters where I include a blob in my team most of the time. This is one of my favourites blob flies particularly when the waters have a good population of rainbow trout.
Red TBH CDC black fuzzel jig bugger
This fly is one of a series of 4 woolly bugger flies that I tie specifically for river fishing and if I only had one woolly bugger in my river fishing fly box this would be the one.