Fly images

Cormdogg

I'm going to make a more serious stab at fly fishing this year. New rod ordered all I need to do is buy some flies. People regularly recommend various flies at various times throughout the season but the names means nothing to me. Could people post photos when possible with the flies they're talking about to help out the novices like myself please or is there a good website with names and images? I took a spin up to Bohernabreena yesterday evening, had a chat with a couple of lads seems nothing much has been taken up there probably due to the poor weather.

stevenmu

I'm hoping to get up there myself this weekend, hopefully the weather will be a bit better although there's plenty of rain forecast.

I'm in the same boat when it comes to identifying flies, I've read so much that I'll recognise a lot of the names but not be able to actually identify them. I tend to look at some of the online shops for pics, http://irishtroutflies.com/ have a good website, move your mouse over the name of the fly and it shows you the pic.

coolwings

There are a limited number of natural food items on the trout's smorgasbord.
Those that are insects will have 3 or 4 stages with a different appearance at each life stage.
So for example the adult winged sedge lays eggs on the water which we don't have to imitate.
Then the eggs hatch and become a larve or grub which lives on the bottom. We have to imitate the main ones only.
The larva changes into a nymph or pupa which swims through water and the trout see them. We imitate the pupae bigtime.
The pupa gets to the surface and becomes a winged fly called a dun, they get eaten so we imitate them. In olives and mayflies the fly looks different after it mates and we call it a spinner so we imitate the egg laying stage with a 2nd imitation better than the one that copied the hatching dun.

There are a few other aquatic food items that are always knocking around, water boatmen, baby perch and roach and sticklebacks, leeches, freshwater shrimp and crayfish.
That's it. A good variety, but still a limited number of food items to have a copy of. Where 2 flies look alike we can use one imitation to imitate both and save flybox space.

It gets unnecessarily complicated because there must be 100 fly dressings for every item. They are broadly similar but many have names that are not linked to the food item they copy, so that is not obvious at first.

So a hatching sedge pupa can be copied by a Wickham's Fancy, Emerger Sedge, Invicta, G&H Sedge, Muddler Minnow, Wet Green Peter, Golden Olive, Fiery Brown just for example, and this duplication really doesn't help the beginner at all.

The good news is that the different items have different months they are active. So in April only the flies for April will be fluttering about, with a couple of late March or early May species sprinkled about, and only their nymphs will be swimming around too. This cuts the problem down in size for us.

There are also totally fancy flies that represent nothing alive, but we know the trout will experiment and eat them because they have been tested over decades and thousands of trout. To a trout they just look like something that might be good to eat that warrants a taste.

There is only one sure way through all this maze. You have to read a book or several books on trout food, with colour pictures and sizes given.
I recommend Brian Clarke's and John Goddard's books.

After you know the food items, and can recognise them, and when they are likely to appear, then you can stock up your flybox with a realistic sample of these trout's goodies. Your knowledge will increase your catch rate 50 fold.

But you will still be grasping at fuzzy clues every time you arrive at the waterside until you die, because we never know enough, or are as good as we can be the next day.

premiercad

I bought John Goddards waterside guide last year. It will give you a good idea of the basics of the life of aquatic insects that trout eat and great pictures too. The most important thing I find is observation. Being at the waterside. Actually going for a walk rod or not and watching a trout feeding or flies coming off the water. If you spend long enough taking in the big picture the rest is trial and error. I spent a lot of time beating the water with every fly I had and just getting fustrated. I am slowly learning to take in what is going on around me on and under the water and put it into practice.


I would recommend Oliver Edwards Essentials Skills DVD's for anyone starting off Fly Fishing or Fly Tying. I think his approach is the ultimate in Flyfishing. Go out catch an insect in the river/Lake tie a good imitation and go fish it!

pullandbang

Get your hands on Peter O'Reilly's book, Trout & Salmon Flies of Ireland.
It concentrates on flies that work here and he has great pictures plus what you need to tie them.

minktrapper

Cormdogg wrote: »

I'm going to make a more serious stab at fly fishing this year. New rod ordered all I need to do is buy some flies. People regularly recommend various flies at various times throughout the season but the names means nothing to me. Could people post photos when possible with the flies they're talking about to help out the novices like myself please or is there a good website with names and images? I took a spin up to Bohernabreena yesterday evening, had a chat with a couple of lads seems nothing much has been taken up there probably due to the poor weather.

Put up a gold ribbed hares ear in size 14 and a greenwells glory in 14 (both great river wet flies) and fish them down and accross and you cant go wrong.The fella in the shop will know them.Fly fishing is easy. Just unnessarily complicated.

coolwings

Cormdogg wrote: »

... I took a spin up to Bohernabreena yesterday evening, had a chat with a couple of lads seems nothing much has been taken up there probably due to the poor weather.

If you out your hand in the water I'd guess it was still a very cold temperature.

Those lakes are in a shady valley and it takes a few weeks for them to move into spring season.

In the meantime, the trout will be in the shallows where the sun can have the most effect bringing into activity the little flies and prey creatures.

Fishing stick insect (caddis larva) and shrimp (gammarus) and small black nymphs over a clean bottom in the shallows - places that would be exposed later in summer - will do the trick. Oh yes - and try minnow and stickleback imitations too.

riverbum

I Agree totally with the lads above. Imitation is everything.
Identifying imitative flies is the first step for any new fly angler so I would also recommend Peter O'Reillys "Trout and Salmon Flies of Ireland" it is a very comprehensive guide to the imitations used in Ireland, about 20Euro in Easons.
Your next step , and probably the most important one will be to identify what it is that you are imitating and that is challenging. At first you will pick a fly from the water and not actually realize that the flies you have on your rod are designed to imitate it, but in time , and with patience you will get there (or so I keep telling myself). Pat O'Reillys book "Matching the hatch" is a good starting place, also available at Easons, and you won't go wrong with any of John Goddards books, I believe his "Waterside Guide" is excellent although I have yet to get a hold of one.

So, Aquatic Entomolgy, is the name of the game. Google it and you will find a world of information for free on numerous websites.
www.troutnut.com and www.flyfishersrepublic.com will give you a good insight into the subject and although a lot of the species they focus on are not relevant in our part of the world, you can still pick up a lot of tips.


Here's one of the many versions of the Blue Winged Olive to get ya started.[URL="javascript:popupWindow('http://fliesofireland.buy.ie/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=1002&Identifier=e6e21c17d4cb5bac294678cb8edd167e')"][/URL]