I wrote last time about some keel hooks I had acquired and now I want to discuss another oddity, the sedge hook. I first became aware of these in the 1980’s when they were marketed as ‘Yorkshire sedge hooks’ and they appeared in a number of patterns tied by the foremost reservoir fly fishers of […]

A while back I bought some partly used packets and small boxes of fly hooks from a well know online purveyor of pre-loved goods. The photos accompanying said lot of hooks were none too, clear but for a small layout I thought it was worth the risk as I wanted to top up a few […]

As you regular readers know, I am forever buying old fishing tat. Gear or materials that nobody else wants finds its way to me and I spend hours messing around trying make whatever it is of some use. One purchase from last year was a wooden box full of fly tying materials and a fly […]

High winds and heavy rain are keeping me from the fishing this week so I will put up some fly tying posts. I’ll start off with this moan! Like the rest of you, I used to sometimes watch the plethora of fly tying videos out there on the different social media platforms. Being an old […]

There is, as we say here in Ireland, a grand stretch in the day. I became aware of it a couple of weeks ago when my normally dreary Monday morning commute was ennobled by a perfect sunrise as I ploughed along the east bound lane of the M6 between Athlone and Clara. With the days […]

The way this coming season is shaping up I will in all probability do a bit of rainbow trout fishing. Living in the Midlands during weekdays will severely curtail my normal boat fishing for wild browns but there are a couple of rainbow put-and-take fisheries close by to keep me occupied. The last couple of […]

Rainbow trout were exotic arrivals to the fishing scene around Aberdeen when I was but a lad. The ADAA stocked some in the Loch of Loriston just to the south of the city and I cut my teeth on rainbow fishing there. My boxes of dry Greenwells and other size 16 flies failed miserably to […]

The drive back to my digs along slippery back roads took me way longer than normal and I’m tired by the time I have eaten, showered and am tucked up in bed. My laptop bursts into life and I catch up on emails before my attention is turned to all matters fly tying. Outside the […]

Apologies for the recent lack of posts here, I am very busy at work and weekends are spent catching up on stuff, leaving no time for angling. A sad state of affairs I know but a small crumb of comfort is the evenings away from home usually present me with a little time to tie […]

The cock pheasant is such a handy bird for us fly tyers. We are all familiar with the tail feathers but this handsome chap provides a host of others we can use too. While it is easy to buy packets of the different feathers purchasing a complete skin gives you access to a range of […]

I blame the mayfly. In late spring each year anglers flock to the west of Ireland to fish the mayfly hatch and I am out most days acting as Ghillie to some of them. It is massively important to me that my charges enjoy the experience of a day on the lough and so I […]

Many years ago, soon after I pitched up in Ireland in fact, I began tying some of my favourite Scottish patterns but adapting them to Irish styles such as Bumbles and dabblers. Some of these worked well but others were frankly useless. Exactly why this should be is not obvious but there you are, that […]

Long, long ago when I was learning to tie flies as a young fella back in Aberdeen I fell under the enchantment of the traditional salmon fly’s siren call. So I spent time and treasure on creating some of those gems from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, along the way learning how to make built […]

I need a wee project on the go to give me a bit of focus. With the end of the ’32’ I had to dream up something else to keep this over active mind of mine occupied. It is not as if I don’t have plenty of other things to stop me from hanging around […]