underside of the surface into a mirror that reflects the river or lake bed – or the water’s gloomy depths. So in most places the ceiling of the trout’s world is green or brown or sombrely dark. The exception, again for complex reasons, is a circle of daylight above the fish’s head that acts as a kind of porthole. The trout can see out into the world above water, but only through this porthole – and everything it does see is distorted. The common term for the mirrored area is, unsurprisingly, ‘the mirror’ and the round porthole through which the trout can see above water is ‘the window’. (All of these extraordinary effects, and some of those that follow, are clearly shown in photographs in The Trout and the Fly, the book we eventually published).
John and I were keen to take account of these effects in our fly designs. In particular, we wanted to provide the trout with two visual features which are present in any fly sitting on the surface when it is viewed from below. The first was a tiny prickle of light spots that the feet of a fly transmit through the darkness of the mirror where they touch it. The second was wings that would appear to become separated from the body (rather in the manner of a flame from a gas jet) when the fly drifted from the mirror into the window.
One result of this work was a fly that was aerodynamically designed to land upside down, with the hook point uppermost, when cast. We did not set out to design a fly that landed upside down. Our aim was to design a fly that gave out the signals described above, to a trout looking up at the surface for approaching food: light dimples on the surface and wings that would flare over the edge of the window.
However, as we worked on such a fly, it became clear that the only way we could achieve our goal was by turning the fly upside-down. We were almost surprised – though more sensible men would not have been – when our end-product looked quite like a real fly, even to us.
John and I both knew, of course, that such refinements were not necessary for 99 per cent of the trout we tackled. Indeed, I believe that any effort to turn the hook upside down as an objective in its own right is wasted, offering aesthetic appeal but no observable, practical advantage. However, our upside-down (USD) patterns did bring about the downfall of some of those tantalising, pernickety, wary fish in the 1 per cent category – and that had been our aim.
This whole period was fascinating for us both. We had rummaged through the technicalities of fly design and presentation to an extent which, it is probably fair to say, few others had done. We had photographed much of what we had seen; we had documented it meticulously and we had put our work, through the resulting book, on record.
The period also marked a particular stage in my evolution as an angler: my absorption with the most difficult fish. Soon after the book was completed – and perhaps even as a reaction to such a long period of locked-away, esoteric study – my interest began to turn in the opposite direction. I began to look for simplicity.
The flies I have carried in the years since have become fewer and fewer and ever-more simple. They reflect my belief that appearance (i.e.pattern) in a dry fly is vastly less important than most writers would have us believe – and that the only really important requirement of a dry fly is that it be of correct size. Colour comes a distant second. I fish these few flies in the knowledge that most feeding trout are catchable if they do not know they are being fished for and are presented with flies that look as though they might be food, in a natural and unalarming way, when and where the trout expects to see them.
And so, these days, I do not drive to the waterside towing a trailer burdened with copies of every fly and bug known since Genesis, in triplicate. I do not carry representations of Centroptilum pennulatum. Nor of Heptagenia lateralis. Nor of Rhithrogena haarupi. Ecdyonurus torrentis is not in my box. Hydropsyche pellucidula has slung his hook. Leptophlebia vespertina might be in Argentina.
If anyone looks in my box these days – even fly box was an overstatement for years because I actually used those little plastic tubs that rolls of 35mm film come in – they will find only two kinds of general-purpose dry flies: little brown jobs and little black jobs. All the brown patterns are identical to one another and all the black patterns are identical to one another: it is only the hook sizes that differ.
The little black flies have a black seal’s fur body with a short black hackle at the head. Nothing more. I carry these in sizes 14, 16 and 18. I use the largest size when hawthorn flies are about, the middle size to suggest black gnats and the 18s to suggest smuts.
The other flies are all sedge-style dressings. They have a seal’s fur body, the overall hue of which is a warm olive-brown (I do not agonise over the shade of olive brown: each mixture varies and I do not find it matters a jot). The wings are fibres taken from a brown saddle hackle, tied horizontally along the back and clipped off square just beyond the hook bend. A short, brown hackle wound just behind the eye completes the job.
I do not carry a dun pattern at all for the smaller upwinged flies, because I know I do not need to. I know that virtually every surface-feeding trout that is eating small duns will accept the sedge pattern – and the sedge pattern has marginally more bulk (which makes it easier to see), floats longer (all those tiny bubbles trapped in all that seal’s fur) and will last for several fish because it is more robust than a dun.
The only other brown fly I carry is a spinner pattern in sizes 14 and 16 and again, all are identical. They have the same olive-brown seal’s fur body, a few brown hackle fibres for the tail and a strip of very thin plastic tied in the middle, just behind the hook eye, to suggest the spread wings of the egg-laying or dead natural. There is no hackle. If the wings are nicked at the base with scissors, on the rear edge, close to the body, they will not take on a propeller shape and cause the leader to kink. They will also collapse as though hinged when a trout sips the fly in.
Beyond these, the only dry flies I carry are for use on special occasions: mayflies for when the mayflies are up, daddy-long-legs for when the naturals are on the water. And that’s it.
My nymph box is similarly sparse because, again, just a handful of patterns meets most of my needs.
To cover any deep-lying fish or to explore a likely lie on a rainfed river, the fly I most commonly use is an artificial shrimp. I tie these shrimps mostly on size 12s, with a few size 10s. I tie them with different amounts of lead wire under the dressing and distinguish one from another by tying each weight with its own colour of tying silk: in other words, I colour-code them. Unweighted, these dressings are deadly for fish on the fin, high in the water. Weighted, they are also useful for fishing deep down from reservoir banks – and as stalking flies on clear stillwaters.
The shrimp usually has the same seal’s fur mix for the body as my dry flies. I rib the fur with gold wire and tie a thin, clear strip of plastic along the top of the body to suggest the natural shrimp’s shell-like back. Other nymphs I use for general river fishing are size 16 and 18 midge pupa-style dressings, which have a tiny tungsten bead behind the eye. These little flies, attached to ultra-fine leaders, can be very effective when used against difficult fish – and when fishing for coarse fish, which I do quite often. If I need to get down fast in deep, heavy water, a hare’s ear with a large tungsten bead head, often fished on the end of a long leader, does the job.
For fishing on lakes I am never without a range of midge pupa dressings in sizes 16 to eight, variously weighted. I also have a couple of long-hackled spider patterns which can be fished slowly while still suggesting life on a large scale; a damsel nymph; an absolutely deadly, weighted mayfly nymph that I tie with a marabou tail, dyed ivory; and a short, highly mobile black leech dressing that I will try if all else fails.
Add to these flies a few others accumulated over the years – those that have been given, bought or removed from overhanging branches – and you have my entire collection. Honest.
The pleasure I now take in simplicity does not mean that I need not have gone through
