Tungsten bead head chartreuse and partridge spider

Bead head spiders fish very well in conjunction with traditional spider flies and give you the opportunity of adding a bit of flash to your team and more importantly get your team down a little. The benefit of that of course is that the added depth gives a little more vertical travel to your team of flies as they swing round at the end of the drift and start to lift, which as we all know is when the majority of hits occur when swinging spiders.

Tungsten bead head orange and partridge spider

I nearly always fish my bead head spiders on the point in a team of two flies and with a relatively heavily weighted nymph such as a TBH duracell jig nymph, TBH collared hare and copper or TBH chocolate caddis nymph on the top dropper on the dropper 60 or 70 centimetres up the leader.

Greenwells spider

Many English flies have a spider version and Greenwells Glory is no exception. An interesting aspect of this fly is that the wing has been tied in beard style so as to camouflage the pint of the hook. The combination of the buggy shape, the movement of the soft hackle in the water often produce a hit. There is also the added benefit that they are so easy to tie. All river fly fishers should have a selection of English Spiders in their fly boxes.

Gold ribbed hares ear

This is probably up there in the top 3 or 4 best known nymph patterns. It’s a pattern that has stood the test of time and is suggestive of a wide range of caddis and mayfly nymphs and is best fished close to the bottom. It doesn’t matter if your in Argentina or Australia or any where between, past, above or below this is a true universal fly pattern.

River Jig Bugger – CDC orange TBH and black

This is really good representation of a woolly bugger for river fishing. It sinks well and the jig hook encourages the fly to bounce along the bottom hook point up which of course mitigates snags. Whilst I have set the recipe out below for the brown, black and olive jig buggers I also tie my sparkle bugger and skirted buggers in the form of a jig bugger as shown in the photos below.

Czech nymphs

The uncased caddis have quite a few similarities. They often adopt a curved fetal position and when they are free swimming they are more elongated still with a curved back but with a lifted head. The have short tail like filaments, have bodies of around seven or eight segments that may have abdominal gills at each segment, have darker heads with two or three segments and have 3 or more sets of legs below the head or toward the front of the grub.