It is freezing outside this morning, a heavy frost overnight has given way to a bright cold morning here in Castlebar. Car windscreens are being scraped and morning travel news is full of warning to take care on slippery roads. A trip to the river is in my plans for today but I am in no rush to get to the banks of the Robe, the water needs to warm up a bit before it will be worth a cast.
I want to share a useful pattern with you today, one which has a short period of use limited to the first few weeks of the season. Appropriately enough it is called the Snowdrop.
Here is a fly which is a pure attractor, I suppose it could be an imitation of a tiny fry but I have my doubts that the trout are feeding on such tiny fry at this time of year. So what exactly the trout take the Snowdrop for will remain a mystery. All I know is that they do take it and that is good enough for me. I found the pattern on the website of Dietrich Bohnhorst (you should check out Dietrich’s videos on youtube, they are very entertaining).
Fly patterns don’t come much simpler than this one. The hackle is white hen and the tails are made from a few whisks of white hen hackle fibres. The body is silver tinsel with a silver wire or oval tinsel rib to protect it. The only change I make from Dietrich’s tying is that I prefer Fl. white tying silk as opposed to the black in the original. I varnish the head with clear varnish to keep the head a nice bright white which I like to think is an additional trigger point. Sizes 12 and 14 heavy wire hooks are my prefered options.
I fish this little beauty on the tail of a wet fly cast. Some days it will will comprehensively ignored by the trout, so if you are not getting a response pretty quickly take it off and try something else in its place. On other days it can produce fish in good numbers on the river or lake. Tie a few up and keep them in your box for a trial between now and the end of April
Claretbumbler 