Continuing the Just One Thing Series, begun with Chris Stewart I present a post by Dave Southall. Dave has always been very generous with his time and words when I’ve asked him to share here on Casting Around and has made a few other contributions to Casting Around over the years:
Destination Guest Post: Tenkara in Austria by Dave Southall
and
Tenkara Colors Profile: Dave Southall
So I now turn it over to Dave
Micro-Flies by Dave Southall
I’ve fly fished for over 50 years and for the last 20 years I’ve been an enthusiast of super-light lines and delicate, precise presentation of my fly/flies (drag-free or subtle manipulation). In 2010 I became aware of Tenkara thanks to Daniel Galhardo and his excellent Tenkara USA website. The ability to fish with super-light level lines, holding virtually all the tippet off the water was just magic to me when presenting dry flies (my preferred way of fishing, although I do fish subsurface flies including traditional Japanese Kebaris). Recently I’ve been also fishing a lot with long light-line western rods, including a Sunray JL Volition 10’ 2 weight, an Esoteric Tackle 10’ 6” to 12” 2/3 weight Nymph Rod and a Sunray 10’ 6” to 11’ 6” Zero, 0 weight rod. In all these cases I’ve used either a Sunray 1 weight Micro Thin delicate presentation Jeremy Lucas line and customized 12+’ leader, an Esoteric Tackle 0 weight WF Nymph Line and 12+’ leader or a Sunray 0.55mm Micro Nymph Line and 12+’ leader. I’ve also used the Sunray 0 weight rod with 20’ of 0.275mm/0.01” diameter fluorocarbon line plus 3 to 4’ of tippet (Tenkara Style) to good effect on waters where I felt that the fish were too big for Tenkara.
The super-light approach really pays dividends when I fish micro-flies (size 22 to 30). Long soft rods not only help to protect the light tippet (0.08 to 0.10mm/0.003” to 0.004”/8x to 7x diameter) that is needed to satisfactorily present such tiny offerings but they also aid precise presentation.
This brings me to the main point of this “Just One Thing” post, Micro-Flies.
I know that in the USA tiny flies have been much more generally accepted compared with here in the UK where many fly fishers consider a size 16 fly to be really small. Whilst reading about fishing in the USA I regularly come across the use of size 24 Trico spinners and size 24 and smaller Midges and Midge Pupae, particularly on tail waters.
I’ve been fishing small flies for the last 20 years and in my opinion Micro-Flies are an essential part of every trout and grayling fly fisher’s armoury. Yes I know that many Tenkara addicts successfully fish all season with one relatively large fly pattern and there is no doubting that on some waters, specially tumbling, mountain pocket water one rarely needs flies smaller than size 14, but on richer, lowland streams and meadow-water on many mountain streams tiny flies are sometimes the only way to catch fish that are preoccupied on an abundant tiny food source. Let me recount my last 12 months of fishing in the UK and USA to illustrate my point.
From the start of our Yorkshire, UK, trout season in late March 2018 and right through the summer I saw very few hatches of Mayflies/Upwings on my local spate rivers. On most days any rising wild brown trout were taking either Aphids or Chironomid Midges that were between 3 and 5mm long. Even size 20 dry flies were ignored, but a size 24 CdC IOBO Humpy was rarely rejected as long as I got an accurate, perfect, micro-drag-free presentation. Meanwhile on my local small still water, which is stocked with farmed rainbows, the fish were generally focused on tiny Chironomid Midges (pupae and adults). Here even a size 24 CdC Midge or Buzzer Pupa was generally rejected and I had to step down to size 28 Buzzer Pupae tied with just 0.09mm diameter coloured wire on short shank Tiemco 2488 or Gamakatsu C12-BM hooks and size 30 CdC dry flies.
In September two friends and I visited Montana and here too we found that we needed size 24 or smaller dry flies for much of the time. Two days on the spring creeks near Livingston (De Puys and Armstrong) coincided with big hatches of small Chironomid Midges and tiny Blue-winged Olives, whilst on the Gallatine River and Mill Creek we had good hatches of tiny BWOs in the afternoons. Size 20 CdC dry flies were occasionally taken but in all cases a change to a size 24 short-shank IOBO Humpy increased our catch rates significantly.
On my return to the UK in November, when on two occasions I visited one of the rivers flowing through the center of a big West Yorkshire Industrial City, it was leaf-fall and the grayling were avidly rising to the Aphids that littered the leaf-strewn river surface. My favourite size 24 IOBO Humpy was soundly rejected, yet a size 30 CdC Minimalistic Micro Midge (just a tuft of CdC lashed to the hook shank) was willingly accepted. Throughout December, January, February and early March I visited this and another Industrial City River and thanks to the mild winter on virtually ever occasion the grayling were rising to tiny Midges and again size 30 CdC flies proved their worth.
If you want to know more about the Micro Flies that I use, how I tie them and how I fish them then look at my blogs on the Sunray website https://sunrayflyfish.com/blogs/news
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