PF 2013

Wishing all the best to my fishing friends, a very good 2013 fishing season and tight lines!

Polish Quill Flies

With the 2012 season officially over I can concentrate on preparing for the next one.
This particular fly is a good start - an excellent Grayling catcher originaly coming from Poland. I was told it was first tied by folks fishing the fabled river San, where the Grayling grow fat and spoiled by the heavy Baetis hatches. As they age they develop discerning tastes, and the wise old lunkers require a special kind of fly and approach - an emerger of a very slim silouhette, gently fished from upstream so neither line nor leader ever crosses the cone of vision of the fish. The angler is granted just one pass.

The fly is a very simple one, but there are some aspects worth special attention:

• The hook is of a slightly heavier gauge than most dry fly hooks of its size - this will help to sink the hook bend and "cock" the fly up like a true emerger. The CDC wing will keep the fly afloat, the coarse thorax will create footprint in surface film and the quill body will be sunk below.
• The body of a peacock quill is tied over a layer of wet tying lacquer. This will make the fly slightly more durable (though still better suited for fishing for gentle Grayling than Trout with their spiky teeth). 
• The thorax is made of my special homemade mix of Hare and Fox Squirrel hair. The squirrel is very spikey, and by itself rather coarse for smaller flies. Mixing it with hare much improves its appeal and ease of dubbing.

The tie:
#18 Dohiku dry fly hook
#70 UTC Ultra Thread, color Tan
Peacock quill dyed Olive
thorax of mixed Hare & Squirrel fur
CDC wing tied facing upwards

Closing the 2012 Season

November 30^th is the last day of the Czech trout fishing season. It is the last opportunity to wet a line in trout waters till April 16^th 2013. Due to unfavorable weather forecast and work & family issues I have ended the season a few days earlier than officially required.

For the last fishing trip I selected the river Úpa. It is one of the lesser known Czech streams, but it supports a healthy population of my favorite fish species.

I wanted to avoid the most popular stretch of the water, which is known to hold a large population of Grayling - not only it contains such excellent spawning area that the fish have a tendency to overbreed and as result are somewhat stunted, but it runs next to a busy road. The car trafic in particular turns me down.

Instead I decided to fish a more scenic spot downstream, which I have not fished for several years. I have encountered some quality Grayling there in the past, but I have not fished it for a long time.

After fishing for some time I was surprised to catch ony smallish brown trout. I was not comfortable fishing for spawning fish, and so I was forced to change plans and turn my fishing trip into a hiking trip (in full wading gear). A few phone calls confirmed that a few dry summers and a some legally protected herons & cormorants had completely ruined this once great stretch of Grayling water.

So at the end this little brownie is likely to be my last salmonid fish of the 2012 fishing season.

October Frosts

Family obligations have kept me off the water for most of September and October (i.e. the best part of the Grayling season). I have therefore put great expectations to this past weekend, when I have finally managed to squeeze in a little time by the river with some fishing pals.

The trip was planned to the greatest detail, so that nothing could possibly go wrong. As is often the case with fishing trips planned too meticulously something did go wrong - in this case we were let down by the weather. A freak October snowstorm hit the Czech Republic, which made the fishing somewhat difficult.

When the snow stopped to fall we had a period of crisp frosty sunshine, very unlike the usual October mists. There was no chance of surface fish activity, but at least we were not fishing in a snowstorm.

The nymph proved to be an effective method, and both me and my friends managed to catch and release over a score grayling - not bad given the circumstances.

We even managed to catch a few out of season brownies, which was rather unexpected. The stretch of river we had chosen is way downstream from the prime brown trout riffles, and is locally known as pure grayling water.

The flies that proved the most effective were largish Czech Nymphs with contrasting hotspot and beaded nymphs tied after the Slovak pattern Uhorčík.

The color pink, normally a certain grayling favorite, was surprisingly ineffective. We had much better success with flies with tags and hotspots tied in darker claret or fluo green.

The Joys of Fly Swapping

Swapping flies is as old as fly tying. It probably started between ancient Greek folks fishing for fishes of a speckled hue on fabled Astraeus, but it was greatly improved with advent of the Internet.

I am a great fan of swapping flies, active on several internet forums. These couple of flies are for a swap on Czech site www.mrk.cz.

Having finished this bunch of tiny flees (#20 Eagle Owl mayflies) makes me think a bit on what is the most fun part of swaping. I have come up with several answers:

• The first and most obvious is that fly swaps let me see patterns and tricks of other fly tiers and learn from them.
• The second is that preparing for a swap makes me think hard about what pattern to select; it has to be something unusual to be interesting, and yet it has to be a pattern that I know well.
• The third is that tying dozens of identical flies is good for the soul of fly tier; it polishes the  techniques.
• And finally the fourth reason is that it builds relationship over the fly tying community.

Looking at my collection of some hundreds of labelled flies I wonder which of the four reasons matters the most to me. It will probably take some more fly swaps to fully understand :)

Scruffy Grayling Bug

A new pattern has been added to my Step by Step tying page: the Scruffy Grayling Bug.

This is a good pattern for the times when grayling do not consider it necessary to rise to the surface. But need not be considered exclusively a grayling pattern, as this little brownie attests.

Golden Olive Emergers

The weather seems to be taking a turn to the "worse" - the temperature has dropped, and after weeks of scorching heat we finally had some rain - which can mean only one thing: the summer is past, and the grayling season is coming!

Due to both past and forthcoming changes in my family arrangements I expect to spend somewhat fewer days fishing than I used to, but still I need to get ready for my favorite part of the fishing season.

Here are a couple emergers for grayling fishing. They are tied on a slightly heavier hooks and meant to be fished sunk in the film.

The tie:
#18 Dohiku 301 dry fly (somewhat heavier gauge than Hanák 103BL, my other favorite)
14/0 Sheer Thread color grey
3 strands of orange Krystal Flash to make my fly stand out in the crowd
body wrapped from goose herl dyed Golden Olive (Veniard)
2 tips of CDC feather