Summer 'fishing' Strategies

Now that the summer is well and truly with us, I wanted to try and get us ready for the more challenging part of the season, namly 'August' & early September.

This part of the season usually sees the fish quite languid, especially with the midday heat some of us are experiencing; however, there are some heavy showers on the way for most of us early next week!

In this missive, I'm going to give you what is, hopefully, a good grounding on how to approach these conditions, and that is by using - smaller flies.

Also, we have some superb 'small' flies, long leaders and a specialist fly rod, all ideal for your summer outings.

P.S. This email is going to be quite long, so you might want to grab a brew before you start reading!

I've no doubt that we've all seen swarms of midges above the surface of any water visited recently - especially when there are dappled sunlit pools. Low water levels and spooky fish mean reaching for the smaller flies in our boxes.

Some rivers are not as full of nutrients as others, it’s these rivers which tend to fish better using smaller flies, due in part to the fact the river cannot sustain the production of the larger species.

In these rivers trout can still flourish, they just alter the way they feed. Instead of selectively taking insects as and when they please (as insects are in abundance on the more nutrient-rich rivers), the trout in less rich rivers are opportunistic feeders.

This is where the small, imitative fly is king.

In essence:

small flies = light tippet = longer leaders = softer rods

The remainder of this email will take the above and hopefully shed a little light on each.

Small Flies

When you encounter low water it's time to turn to the smaller flies in your box - when I say small, I am referring to flies which are size 18 and smaller.

It is the one piece of tackle that the fish sees and makes their decision on to eat or not. The most important part of a fly is without doubt the hook, even more so when we are using very small hooks. It is important when choosing small flies to look at the gape of the hook (i.e., the distance between the hook point and the shank of the hook), make sure that the tied fly still has plenty of room between the shank and the hook point, if there's is hardly any room between the body of the fly and the point it will make it very difficult to hook a fish. Generally, the hooks which are sized at 18 and smaller all are ‘wide gape’.

Often, the reason small flies are dismissed by anglers is that they have trouble seeing them, there are a few remedies for this:

• Pre-Tie Your Flies: Tie up some short leader lengths at home with the small flies already attached. This way it's easy to attach them when on the water, rather than fiddling around trying to tie them on in dwindling light.

• Make An Educated Guess: For most dry fly angling it is not a necessity to actually see the fly, generally you will have a rough idea of where the fly is, if you see a rise, just lift into it – 9 times out of 10 it will be to your fly!

• Use An Indicator: If you do want to know where your fly is, either use a small fly with a hi-vis sighter post, or use the ‘Double Dry’ technique, where you use a visible dry fly and then tie a smaller dry fly from the eye of the hook on a long dropper – just like the klink n dink method, but using 2 dry flies.

Having a selection of small flies (both nymphs and dries) is essential when fishing through August and into early September.

It just so happens that we have you covered on the 'small' fly front, with:

Our Local King of Small Flies

This pattern is called the Agapetus and comes to you direct from Driffield, East Yorkshire (originally devised by Dave Southall who uses them with great success), where they are the 'go-to' fly when you need something 'small and black'. These stunning size 20 Micro 'Caddis' Dry Flies are exquisite and so nicely tied they are amazing. Try drifting one under a swarm of midges!

Another imitation of the numerous midges/aphids found on the water in the summer months is either the Pink Para Aphid or Crystal Greenfly, these flies are fished dry and sit just in the meniscus. They can be used as soon as you see small flies in clouds above the water, one of our new generation of flies, both are only available in size 18.

To give you an idea of their size, here are three of them on a 5p piece for reference:

If you'd like a generic selection of 'small' flies, then why not go for our River Whisperer Selection - we've taken all the guesswork out of it and curated a special selection of flies for the Summer - which work on any river or stillwater in the warmer months of the year (it includes the fly patterns above):

Ok, so you've got the flies, but what next ...

Longer Leaders

If you have already downloaded our copy of the Small Fly Manifesto, then you will have seen the leader recipes for various long & light setups to tie yourself. Here's the best one for fishing really small flies:

To the 6X at the end of the above, just add in a few feet of the 7X or 8X tippet and you're good to go.

However you decide to create your leader, the one thing above anything else which will increase your catch rate is the length! When fishing small flies, on low rivers you need to make your leader as long as you can possibly get away with.

This is what has given rise to the new style Front-Heavy Tapered leaders in the longer lengths – 11ft to 16ft. It is not uncommon for hardly any fly line to be outside of the rod tip and just the leader is cast.

TOP TIP: When trying to thread your tippet to a small fly, try cutting the tippet at a 45-degree angle, it makes it much easier to get the tippet through the eye of the hook.

Softer Actioned Rods

When fishing with light tippet, you need a rod which has a much softer action than your regular rod, this is how you can land much bigger fish on really light tippet. You need to ensure that your whole system - fly, tippet, line & rod - work in harmony. Just try landing a small fish on a fast-actioned carbon rod with a thin tippet (anything smaller than 7X) and you will appreciate the finesse of a rod with a softer tip.

https://www.barbless-flies.co.uk/products/pisces-1-nymph-9-2wt-nymph-rod?utm_source=spoks&utm_campaign=Summer+%27fishing%27+Strategies&utm_content=image&utm_medium=email&_spkscid=389eacbf-65cb-47dc-9a0d-543afbcd5bcb&_spksv=1.0

It's getting some rave reviews (see below), and we only have a few remaining:

You need a rod which will cushion every movement of the fish and protect your light tippet. This is where our very own Pisces 1 9' 2wt rod comes into its own, here's a very recent review from Mark:

P.S. I know it's called a 'Nymph' rod, but it is perfect for presenting small flies on long leaders (it's what it was originally designed for) - and it's a cracking Grayling rod.

Get out there and have some fun with small flies, longer leaders - and (hopefully) one of our rods!

Tight Lines.