Three quarters of the way there

My target of 1,000 flies tied for the winter is well on course. Indeed, I am far ahead of where I thought I would be at this stage. That will probably change as Christmas hits over the coming weeks, what with shopping , cooking and the occasional libation (hic). Today I cracked the 800 barrier, so I am three-quarters of the way to my target. What is more, I have an easy run for the next week as I plan to fill a box of buzzers.

The rational for the new buzzer box is simply that I was being caught between two different boxes and neither fulfilled what I required when fishing for wild brownies. My normal rainbow trout nymph and buzzer box is a large affair which I usually could not be bothered taking with me, while the handful of buzzer patterns in my lough style wet fly box rarely had the patterns I wanted on any given day. I emptied an old fly wallet of its contents (a raggedly looking assortment of lough flies which had all seen better days) and it is now ready to receive a collection of basic buzzer patterns. This wallet is small enough to fit into my tackle bag and yet will hold just enough buzzers for most situations.

Like most fly fishers, I have a lot of different patterns in my boxes but to be honest, I tend to fall back on just two basic flies. The first (which I have discussed in a previous post) is the Vicar, just a tying silk body and thorax separated by a couple of turns of tinsel. I sometimes rib the abdomen with fine wire but often I don’t even bother with that refinement. Colours I carry with me are black, brown, red, claret and grey with the tinsel collar being silver, gold or red usually. The whole fly is coated with varnish once completed. I am not a huge fan of epoxy as I find it messy to use and often still sticky even after the torch has been used. If that happens I give the fly another coat of clear varnish so it is dry to the touch. Hook sizes are 10 to 14 and I prefer Kamasan B100 or B110 grub style hooks.

My other ‘go to’ buzzer is that old campaigner, the Okdoky. To make these I put a spool of GloBrite floss into a bobbin holder and wind on a head with the floss, whip finishing and removing the waste. Next, I start the black tying silk behind the head and run it down around the hook bend in touching turns, catching in some fine silver wire on the way. Return the tying silk in more touching turns to make the body, then rib with the silver wire. tie in the rib, remove the waste end and whip finish. Epoxy or varnish the whole fly and the job if done. Hooks are the same as I use for the Vicar. Colours are black body with red, green, orange or white heads. When tying this pattern for rainbow trout I vary the body colour a lot and I have found a white body can be an excellent pattern some days.

I plan to make 30 or 40 of these buzzers before returning to normal wets and dries, more than enough for the coming season. I missed the duckfly hatches completely last season but hopefully I will be able to get out in March and April next year and fish lough style on the windy days and buzzers on calm ones. To complement the conventional buzzers I also use hatching imitations such as Palamino Midges, and since they are a bit thin on the ground for me I had better add them to the tying list. There is always more to be done, isn’t there!