We're dipping our toes into stillwaters today ... Over the past few weeks we have mainly concentrated on Mayflies, but this week we've had loads of new Stillwater patterns arrive. We have heavily invested in increasing our range of Stillwater flies, over the last 12 months we have added over 400 different patterns, and now have virtually all of them available on the website.
The fish up here in North Yorkshire are now starting to confidently take the hatching Mayfly - at last! P.S. If you like the mayfly image above as much as we do, see the end of this email for our 'Tombola' giveaway.
Diawl Bachs - Here we have a selection of 16 diawl bach's four different patterns in two different sizes (12 & 16). These are a favourite on the stillwaters, fished as one of a team of three flies drawn slowly on a dry line with a long leader.
When we first launched Barbless Flies - all the way back in 2014 - we started with only two selections of flies.
Our initial aim was to put together separate universal selections of dry flies and nymphs which you could take to any water (be it river or stillwater) in the UK, and be confident of catching fish - no matter what time of year.
As the weather starts to warm, within the next few weeks, fly anglers from across the country will be blowing the dust off their dry fly boxes and putting them to use in anger on our rivers and stillwater.
Our Dry Selection has not changed at all since we first launched it eight years ago. Until now ...
We've now given it a slight tweak to make it usable in even more fishing situations you may find when using dry flies.
I love early season fishing, especially when the water is still cold (isn't it always!). Last year, when fishing my local small stream, there were some March Browns starting to hatch and a few were caught up in a small side eddy. I sat and watched these flies hatch - normally in a river these flow past you, so you cannot actually see the whole process of the fly hatching. What surprised me most is the casing that's left behind when the fly hatches (known as the shuck) and just how many fish were taking the flies just as they were hatching - so taking both the partially emerged fly and its shuck.
I attended our annual AGM for one of the clubs I'm a member of last weekend and got chatting to one of the long-standing members about a local guy I had heard - and read - a lot about. I knew he was once a member of this same club (Derwent Anglers Club). The fabled guy was Eric Horsfall Turner.
