Day Five: A Hurried Humpy

A two minute tie:

I’m not going to lie to you; I very roughly tied this up before I had to go out.

 I have never landed anything on it. So I gave a few to my father with the comments like “The fish just smash it” and low and behold for him they did. I guess I did a better job selling it to him than I did to my target.

Day Four: Green Caddis

Better with a ‘Hot Spot’

This fly caught my very first Ruakituri Rainbow, a freight train of a fish, weighing 2lbs. At first I was sure it was at least 20. Two hundred meters downstream I finally had him in the net.

Using it with a smaller nymph as a dropper tends to be the most successful way to fish this pattern, the Hot Spot only adding to its effectiveness.

Day Three: Rabbits

Steeple Casting Frustrations:

A few years back in a corner of the Kuratau River, this fly drove me to drink. A Bow sitting behind a trailing blackberry bush hit this fly no less than 10 times, and each time I failed to connect. The reason being, yip you guessed it, during the casting process I clipped a tree behind me snapping the hook off at the gap.

Lesson learnt: check your fly often, and change it if the point has been damaged!

Ps:  yes I did land the fish first cast after changing fly.

Day Two: San Juan Worm

It’s cheating really!

Or is it? One thing we all know is Trout love worms, so why do we cringe at the thought of using them?

A recent trip we started off with two very good fish then nothing for 3 hours, that is until the Worm was brought out to play, and then all hell broke loose.  If the river is up and dirty launch the San Juan and see if your fortunes change.

Day One: The Red Tag

And so it begins!

A fly tied a day for 365 days, and what a fly to start it with.

The Red Tag, one of the most versatile flies ever created, fished anyway imagined. As a dry it is handy, but fished down and across, on dusk and during the night it down right deadly.

For me it reminds me of my old man, he holds much faith in the simplicity of this fly and many Hutt browns owe their demise to its effectiveness.

One down 364 to go.......