For a long time I have found that John Emerson’s CDC dry fly ( colloquially known as the Shit fly) has been a hugely effective fly for the Browns at Pendreich. I have bought these from John at Uniqueflies because I struggled with tying such small flies and could not get the split wing right. I bought some Semperfli Nano Silk recently and this helps hugely both in terms of how strong it is but how much easier 12/0 thread makes tying such small flies. I also did two things a wee while ago… I asked Trout Fisherman magazine how to do split wings which they published and did an in mag SBS on ( getting me a prize!) but then I got John to show me how he does it. John uses a slightly different method to do split wings, he wets the CDC which makes splitting easier. The Trout Fisherman mag method created a thorax cover which was used to split the CDC.
With the nano silk and using both a thorax cover and wet CDC I am finding I can split a wing reasonably down to size 22 midges. So I tied half a dozen today and decided to give them a go this afternoon.
Some CDC/Aerowing midges I have just tied
It wasn’t really dry fly conditions but I gave it ago trying a midge on point and a shipmans buzzer on dropper. My first casts down the east end got no reaction and the wind was a pain so I moved round the corner. Now it’s very weedy round here and it does not get fished much, but with dries it is fish able. I wasn’t getting much of a reaction then heard a fish rise to my left. As I turned to look as luck would have it a fish rose to my flies, I missed by a mile but managed to tangle my leader.
Leader sorted I tried again, once again as I looked to see the same fish rising to my far left a fish came again and again I missed.
I decided to move to try for the fish rising to my left, getting remotely near was hard in the boggy conditions and I knew I was taking a chance using two flies. With a finer tippet on the fly presentation was better. First cast there was a subtle dimple below the fly and a fish was lifted into! It was a decent fish that was intent on leaping all over the place, as it come closer I seen the Shipmans enter the weeds. I cringed but alas I was snagged. I managed to keep the fish on but the dropper wasn’t coming free and in the end I had to tug hard to release it breaking off the point fly and the fish.
I am counting that one! Remote release!
