I have lumped these diverse types of insects together as much for convenience as because in may cases they can be fished in similar ways. All of them respond to being fished relatively static and without any drag. Having said that midge in particular remember that if you are fishing to fish actively feeding on midges or midge type naturals speed and accuracy of casting is essential.
I did a couple of years of estuary guiding and quickly found out that there are lot of flies out there that just don’t work. These are the ones that do. My selection is a mixture of tried and true traditional flies and quite a few I have developed myself.
I reserve my dry fly selection for flies that are fished on the surface of the water and either represent the dun or spinner of a an insect that spends part of its life cycle in the water such as a Mayfly, Caddis fly, Midge, Dobsonfly, Cranefly etc. or they represent terrestrial insects that have fallen or have been blown onto the surface of the water. I have separate page for my hoppers and emerger type flies each of which I also carry in my ‘Dry fly box’.
I keep flies like Spiders, Carixia, Snails and Shrimp flies in my Nymph box because I fish them ostensibly in the same way that I fish my nymphs.
If you approach your fly selection on the basis that trout eat anything, over time (probably your first outing) you will miss fish that a more discerning fly fisher would at least win a look from. For example, on Lake Eucumbene when we are having a good hopper season, if you tie a fly on that is a good representation of the local hopper you have almost as good a chance as any hopper of attracting the interest of a fish. If however you tie the same fly on in the middle of August you can float that fly around the dam (in this case dam dam) all day and not even raise a fish.
The number of fly boxes you carry is obviously one of personal choice. One difficulty you may encounter when you are setting up your fly boxes is which flies you should include, and how many flies you should carry in your fly box or boxes. The last thing you want to be doing is standing on the bank of a river madly pulling flies out to find a fly you know is there . . .somewhere, but it isn’t where you expected to find it or you fly box or boxes are so crowded with flies that the one you are desperately looking for is hidden away . . . somewhere.
Insects such as Mayflies, Stoneflies and Dragonflies that have part of their life cycle in the water provide a significant part of a trouts diet.
The weight of a fly line can also be expressed in ‘grains’ of weight where the number represents the weight of the taper of the fly line. A simple conversion of line weight, for single handed fly rods, to grains is expressed in the following table.
My first fish on fly fell to the magic of a Woolly Bugger and many have gone the same way since then. There are probably more variations to the Woolly Bugger than I have had breakfasts. Some are over-dressed some under-dressed, some weighted other not, on all sorts of hooks and in all sorts of colour combinations. These are the best of the best.
You may recall that in my recipe for fried honey and soy trout that I suggested that ” any left over trout should not be wasted. Using your fingers (after washing) flake the remaining trout and carefully remove the bones”. If you want to turn the left over flaked trout into great trout rissoles this is how you do it . . . they are very moreish. Preparation time less than 15 minutes.
