Category Archive for : ‘Fly of the Month’

Peter Lapsley’s Nymph

In our next newsletter we’ll be featuring Richard Kos’s new shrimp pattern. But it’s still in the preliminary stages of design and development and needs a fair bit of field testing according to Kossy before he’s prepared to release the details.

So for this month we’ll feature another fly from the UK. For a number of years I’ve enjoyed the British magazine ‘Fly Fishing & Fly Tying’, and particularly the many articles by writer Peter Lapsley. Sadly Peter passed away in August of this year,

Caddis Larva – Jonathan Barnes

Jonathan Barnes is a UK angler and former national champion specializing in river fishing. He writes for various UK fly fishing magazines and has made a large number of YouTube Videos on all aspects of river fishing. He is without doubt a top trout fly fisherman.

On one of his videos he demonstrates the tying of two flies, one of which is the fly described here. He describes them as ‘cracking flies’, and uses them frequently when nymphing. He assures us they have caught him countless

Gary Lafontaine’s ‘Emergent Sparkle Pupa and Deep Sparkle Pupa’, as tied by Hubert Reichelt

(Hubert offers the following background on these two quite deadly patterns.)

Gary LaFontaine is credited with discovering the triggering characteristic of hatching caddis flies and the subsequent development of fly patterns that display this trigger in a lifelike and dynamic way. His research is now legendary in the history of fly fishing – three years of painstaking work, with hours spent in scuba gear lying on the bottoms of pools watching trout feeding and taking,

Frank Sawyer’s ‘Killer Bug’

Frank Sawyer, who died in 1980, was an English river manager, writer, and inventor of a fly that is possibly the best known and most widely used nymph ever created – the famous Pheasant Tail Nymph. Sawyer advocated a method of nymphing where the nymph was allowed to sink and then made to ‘swim’ towards the surface by slowly lifting the rod tip. The Pheasant Tail Nymph was the first and still most widely used of his weighted nymphs. It is tied with fine copper wire and

Fred Dunford’s ‘Corduliid’

Fred Dunford is our guest speaker for the July meeting, so it is very appropriate for us to feature Fred’s famous mudeye pattern (i.e. dragonfly larva), the Corduliid, as this month’s Fly of the Month. The following notes are Fred’s description of how this very effective pattern was developed:

The Corduliid was born of dire necessity, its evolution commencing after a particularly demoralising rise at O’Neill’s Bay, Lake Eucumbene, in March 1966, when a full-scale mudeye migration left myself and several others completely baffled and defeated. The excruciating part

Muz Wilson’s Fuzzle Bugger

(As tied by Rick Innes)

There are some flies that have earned the label ‘absolutely essential – must be in the fly box’. No doubt there will be plenty of discussion on which flies ought to be on the list but I’m sure the Royal Wulff would get the tick from most anglers, as would the Parachute Adams. Another would certainly be the Woolly Bugger – a fly that has proved it’s worth time and time again, particularly for fishing stillwaters.

Some years ago Murray (‘Muz’) Wilson,

The Essential Midge – Mick Hall (Part 2)

Olive Brown female Midge size 14 – Goulburn River

“(Mick Hall is well known to us all. A VFFA member, he is also one of Australia’s best- known and respected fly tiers. When asked for details of one of his flies for our Fly of the Month he provided a very comprehensive exposition on our midges, along with several patterns he suggests. His notes and suggestions for fishing midges was given last month, along with two of his suggested patterns. This month

The Essential Midge – Mick Hall

(Male Chironomid – matched with a size 16 fly)

(Mick Hall is well known to us all. A VFFA member, he is also one of Australia’s best known and respected fly tiers. When asked recently for details of one of his flies for our Fly of the Month he provided a very comprehensive exposition on our midges, along with several patterns he suggests. Here is a brief summary of Mick’s notes, along with two of his favorite midge patterns. We will give details of some

Bruce Whalen’s ‘Latex Hopper’

Yes, there are heaps of hopper patterns around, but this is a good one and is reasonably easy to tie. And it was designed by one of our own – Bruce Whalen, who was a VFFA member back in the 1970s and 1980s when he devised this interesting variation on the justly famous Nobby Hopper. Bruce called it the ‘Latex Hopper’.

The variation is basically the use of a latex strip to form body segmentation. Bruce’s experiences suggest that his fly was even more deadly than

Bruce Smith’s ‘Creel Caddis’

This month’s fly was suggested by Richard Kos. It was originally devised by Bruce Smith in the late 1990s. Bruce had been fishing the evening rise on the Goulburn, and had offered the usual stock standard caddis patterns to trout that were clearly taking natural caddis off the surface. But on this occasion the trout persistently ignored Bruce’s Elk Hair Caddis and all other caddis alternatives, so he sat for a while and watched the naturals in action. The females were laying eggs and in the process