In 1886 F.M.Halford attempted to define dry fly fishing as "… presenting to the rising fish the best possible imitation of the insect on which he is feeding in its natural position."
Bibio Hopper
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2400
Hook Sizes: 10, 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them.
Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers!
Black Gnat
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2532
Hook Sizes: 14, 16
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
The Black Gnat is an imitation of a wide number of naturals that are very similar to us fishermen
In spring, and again in autumn, black gnats can be seen swarming near the surface. Although the spring and autumn flies are not the same species, they are so similar that for angling purposes we can treat them as one.
On rivers and streams, black gnat clouds are frequently densest over the slower sections. Mating pairs are particularly vulnerable in blustery weather and fall to the surface, where the trout are only to pleased to consume them.
Blue Wing Olive
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2534
Hook Sizes: 14, 16
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
BWOs are small, the surface of smooth water is a barrier to them, and many are trapped just below the surface or must struggle to break through the water's surface tension.
At this point they are highly vulnerable to trout, and they are frequently taken just subsurface.
Cinnamon Sedge Mottled
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2856
Hook Sizes: 10, 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
There are many dressings for this fly, which works excellently as an all round dry fly, and has taken many trout for me.
I greatly enjoy fishing the dry, but this seems to work in all aspects. Drifting loch style, small stillwater, moorland brownies.
Claret Hackled Hopper
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2403
Hook Sizes: 12, 10
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them.
Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers
Coch-y-bondhu
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:800
Hook Sizes: 14, 16
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
As a beetle imitation the Cock-y-bondhu, is certainly one of the most successful.
It is one of the earlist fly's created, it is a simple working pattern and has been a fixture in flyboxes for centuries.
It is a summer fly, but can be successful all season and is a must for the wild trout.
Hare's Ear Hopper
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2402
Hook Sizes: 12, 10
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them. Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Hawthorne
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2531
Hook Sizes: 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
On sunny spring days, hawthorn flies flit along the hedgerows and among low bushes; and if there is a good breeze, particularly on exposed upland streams and lakes, very many of these large flies end up on the water. These are the first of the terrestrial insects to cause a worthwhile rise.
Sedge Special Klinkhammer
Availablity:
Immediate Dispatch
Flybox Code:2341
Hook Sizes: 14, 16
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
Klinkhammers are different from many other parachute dry flies in that the thorax of the fly is designed to hang down through the surface of the water to imitate an emerging insect.
The exceptional trigger point is the body penetrating the surface film; which gets seen by trout from a greater distance, long before they see the surface footprint, creating exciting takes!
Hans Van Klinken, the Dutch creater of the Klinkhammer, also fished many of the rivers in Scandinavia as well as in his native Holland. His mentor was a Swedish fly fisher, Kenneth Bostrom who had created a fly called the Rackelhammer to imitate hatching sedge. It floated when cast upstream but Hans found if it was tweaked, to suggest life, it sank. Hans adapted the idea and made a fly that still floated after it had been tweaked. It became known as the 'Klinkhammer Special' . At first he bent the hook of a parachute fly so that the abdomen would sink below the surface and the thorax would float. Later he developed a special hook that did the same but imitated the curved body angle of the insect as it hangs below the surface just as it starts to emerge. This is what makes it different from a regular parachute dry fly. The abdomen serves as a primary trigger, penetrating the surface film and getting noticed by trout from a great distance, well before they pick up on the above surface footprint features.
Black Hopper
Availablity:
1-2 Weeks Delivery
Flybox Code:2401
Hook Sizes: 10, 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them.
Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Medium Olive Hopper
Availablity:
1-2 Weeks Delivery
Flybox Code:2405
Hook Sizes: 10, 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them.
Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers
Orange Hopper
Availablity:
1-2 Weeks Delivery
Flybox Code:2404
Hook Sizes: 10, 12
Note: You can alter a hooksize or fly after adding it to your basket.
The Hopper will fish deep in the surface film, often hanging by surface tension right underneath it, and this is exactly where you want them.
Not many splashy takes with these flies, just nice confident slurps from Brown Trout.
Count to three before striking, and you are well and truly in!
Fishing the Hopper requires a leap of faith for most fly fishers
Alder
Availablity:
Trade
Flybox Code:955
Trade Only
Note: We can manufacture any design to order, subject to a minimum order size of 12 doz with a typical 3 month lead time.
Of the 'Alder', here is what is written in FAVORITE FLIES AND THEIR
HISTORIES, by Mary M. Orvis (1896):
"The original of this fly is hatched from the egg laid by the mature insect upon the leaves of trees or bushes bordering the water, preferably alder-bushes. The natural fly was first imitated in Great Britain, where it was much used, early in the season, as an evening fly. In this country it seems effectual throughout the summer, and wherever the 'trout lepyth'."
Obviously this fly does not owe its birthright to American tiers, however it was and is used so successfully in Catskill waters as to be considered 'native'.
Alder
Availablity:
Trade
Flybox Code:827
Trade Only
Note: We can manufacture any design to order, subject to a minimum order size of 12 doz with a typical 3 month lead time.
The Alder this an old pattern dating back over 300 years,.
Charles Kingsley wrote of his ' beloved alder fly' in his Chalk Stream Studies and it is still a favourite in flybox today.
The Adler, tie as shown, floats high on the water and is good interpretation of the real insect.
To be fished near overhanging trees, bushes and reeds, where alder flies often fall in the water.
Can act as a caddis substitute as well.