Back at the vice

After a l-o-n-g hiatus, I have returned to the vice and started to do a bit of fly tying. 2025 will go down for me as the year when I hardly fished, did almost no ghillieing and tied virtually no flies. The good news is that most of the big non-fishing jobs required of me have been completed and some free time is now my own. The past few days have been spent organising my fishing gear, including all the fly tying materials. Works on the house had meant my stuff was scattered in all sorts of weird places and only now have I managed to relocate most of it and put it back into some sort of order.

As a first step, I decided to use up a small bag of materials which had accumulated last winter. These were waste ends of silks and tinsels, bits of fur and a few feathers which were left over from previous tying sessions. Maybe I should have just swept the lot into a bin and chucked them out, but that felt like a waste, so I used some of those bits and bobs up. My fly boxes were hardly touched this season, so I don’t really need too many flies and am tying for fun more than out of necessity. So what did I begin the winter’s tying with?

First up was a palmer pattern which I have used for many years. Just a black palmer but with a tail made from fluorescent white floss. Hooks sizes are 10 down to 14, and I made these up on some size 12 hooks.

Next up was a local variation of the Bibio. Every angler here in the west has a few of these in the box. It is just the standard Bibio with the black/red/black seal’s fur body and black hackle, but with a tail made from a couple of strands of pearl flash. Hook sizes are 8 down to 14, and I was using size 12 Kamasan B175’s today.

Then there was a few goslings. I do love a good gosling and my fly box has a host of these mayflies in it already. Hooks were size 8 long shanks and the tails were made from cock pheasant tail fibres. Rib is oval gold tinsel usually, but I tied some up with GloBrite no4 floss as a rib too. Body was either olive or golden olive seal’s fur. A fluorescent orange cock hackle wound under either a medium olive french partridge or mallard flank dyed olive completed these flies. The big hook might put some of you off (you can of course tied these patterns on more conventionally sized hooks), but I fish the big gosling on the tail of a leader and a sinking line. Not a fly to catch too many trout, but it does pick out bigger fish in my experience.

Lastly, I made some Peter Ross. Firstly, a few of the original pattern and then some of my Black Arsed Peter Ross. That is just the original fly but instead of a flat silver tinsel rear half to the body I use black holographic tinsel, then some claret seal’s fur for the front half. A great fly for the buzzer hatch this one.

With most of the the useful materials in the wee bag now used up I’ll put a bit of structure around my tying over the coming months. While my wet flies are in pretty good order, my dry flies have been largely used up over previous seasons and I need to do some fairly drastic pruning of the dross which remains in those boxes and make lots of replacements. It felt good just tying a few flies again after such a long gap. Relaxing at the vice with the occasional coffee and my inevitable music on in the background makes for a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Today’s musical fair was Al Stewarts oldest albums, a bit of Yes, and then on to Jethro Tull.

As far as the second book goes, well there has been progress of sorts. The publisher has offered me a contribution agreement, meaning they will publish it if I pay. I have turned that expensive option down and am working on self publishing. I will keep you updated on how that goes!