Morning,
I hope you had a great weekend - it was a hot one, and I didn't manage to get out onto the water once - family duties called - so I did what it seems like everyone else was doing - sat at a family BBQ with a beer in hand!
Whilst chatting with one of my in-laws, who's just taken up fly fishing, we got onto the subject of how to 'match the hatch' - he was finding it really difficult to put names to the insects and then select the right fly, so I handed him one of out NEW Generic Dun Selections (you can read about it below) - that should fix his, and 90% of fly anglers, problems with fly identification in the coming months.
Most of the time, when something's hatching and fish are rising, I haven't really got the faintest idea what I'm actually looking at.
I'll squint at the surface. I might pick one up if I can manage it. And then I'll do what I suspect most of us do - I'll find something in my box that's roughly the same size and roughly the right colour, tie it on, and fish it.
That's it. That's my system.
I've been fishing for more years than I care to admit, and I still can't tell a Pond Olive from a Small Spurwing at thirty feet with a hatch building and a decent fish working the far bank.
But I know what light grey looks like. I know what olive looks like. And apparently, so do the fish - because this approach seems to work.
Which is exactly why we've put together our NEW Generic Dun Selection.
Sixteen flies. Four colours. Two sizes - 14 and 16. All tied on AHREX FW503 barbless hooks, which are about as good a dry fly hook as you'll find. And between them, they cover pretty much every upwinged fly you're likely to encounter on a UK river or stillwater across the summer months.
We are making our NEW Generic Dun Selection available to you today for only £26 £32.80 (which includes FREE delivery to anywhere in the UK) - just click on any image or link in this email to grab your selection or view the flies in more detail.
Please Note: We have limited stock of these - only 40 selections to be precise - so grab yours while you can, they will be popular!
We have also made our Generic Duns available to buy individually:
Go on, you know you want to!
Here's a rough guide to our Generic Dun Selection of patterns - and I say rough, because nature doesn't do exact:
Light Olive - your workhorse. Large Dark Olive, Medium Olive, Pond Olive, Pale Watery. If something olive-ish is on the water, this is your starting point. Tied on size 14 & 16 AHREX FW503's.
Grey - Iron Blue Dun, Blue Winged Olive (the wings especially in flat light), Small Dark Olive. Cooler, cloudier days. Often the most underrated colour in the box. Tied on size 14 & 16 AHREX FW503's.
Rusty Brown - March Brown, Sepia Dun, Autumn Dun. Crosses into spinner territory too, which is a useful bonus later in the evening. Tied on size 14 & 16 AHREX FW503's.
Yellow - the Yellow May Dun, mostly. Heptagenia sulphurea if you want to impress someone on the bank. A pale, bright little thing that comes off limestone rivers and stillwater margins on warm summer evenings and makes you look far more knowledgeable than you actually are . Tied on size 14 & 16 AHREX FW503's.
The point isn't to match every fly perfectly. It's to be close enough, in the right size, in the right colour family, to fool a feeding fish. Which is, let's be honest, all any of us are really doing most of the time.
If you're the sort of angler who has the Latin names memorised and knows exactly what's hatching from fifty yards, fair play. You probably don't need this.
But if you're more like me - squinting at the surface, making your best guess, and quietly hoping - then this is the selection for you.
Either way, we're about to enter the 'post-Mayfly' lull - here's a few tips on how to tackle it:
Fishing The 'post-Mayfly' lull
If you've been on the water during mayfly season, you'll know the feeling.
One week, the fish are throwing themselves at anything vaguely creamy and fluffy. The next - silence.
The post-mayfly lull is real, and it catches a lot of anglers out. But it doesn't have to mean blank days. Here's how I approach it:
- Drop down a hook size. Fish that have been gorging on size 10 and 12 mayflies for two or three weeks become almost comically suspicious of anything large. Switch your thinking entirely - a size 16 Light Olive or Light Grey Generic Dun is exactly the kind of offering that starts to work again once the mayfly circus has left town. The fish are still feeding; they're just being more selective about it.
- Look for the evening rise. Through June and into July, the BWO - Blue Winged Olive - often provides the most reliable surface activity of the day, but it's typically an evening affair. A size 14 or 16 Light Grey is your friend here. Fish it on a fine tippet and don't strike too quickly; evening rises tend to be deliberate and unhurried.
- Fish the margins and slack water. Post-mayfly, trout often shift from the prime lies they occupied during the hatch and drop back into quieter water to recover and feed more opportunistically. Work the edges. A Light Olive or Rusty Brown drifted along a grassy bank or beneath overhanging vegetation will often find fish that seem otherwise absent.
- Don't overlook the Yellow. The Yellow May Dun comes into its own in late June and July, particularly on limestone rivers and reservoir margins on warm, settled evenings. If you've got the yellow in your Generic Dun Selection and you haven't fished it yet - now's the time.
- Be on the water earlier. May and the mayfly teach us to fish the middle of the day. June onwards often rewards the angler who's there for the first (or last) hour of light, when cooler overnight temperatures have left fish alert, confident, and looking up. A size 16 Light Olive on a long, fine leader in the early morning can be devastating.
The lull isn't the end of the dry fly season. It's just a gear change. And the Generic Dun Selection - with its range of colours and sizes — is exactly the kind of versatile, no-fuss kit that gets you through it.
Go on, you know you want to!
Have fun out there and good luck!
