Fly Fishing Gear | Dry Flies

For rises you cannot identify When fish are rising steadily to something you cannot see well enough to match, an attractor with a tag gives them a ...

Contrast, not imitation Same heavily dressed construction, chosen for contrast rather than imitation. In broken white water a uniform fly disappear...

A red body, and a red tag's worth of trigger Red has a long record on Australian dries, and the Red Wulff puts that trigger on a high-floating hair...

For the two afternoons a year that matter Big mayfly hatches do not happen often, and when one does the fish that never show themselves start risin...

The yellow one imitates. This one interrupts. The yellow one is the imitation; this is the attention grabber. Hot orange is not subtle and is not m...

A head that cannot be pulled under Caddis fishing is an evening game, and the two things that beat you at dusk are a fly you cannot see and a fly y...

An orange post you can still see at the end of the day The rust body covers the darker sedges and the spinners that follow them, but the reason to ...

A mixture, not a match The Adams works because it is a mixture rather than a match. Grizzle and brown hackle wound together give a mottled grey-bro...

What a parachute hackle actually changes A parachute hackle is wound flat around an upright post instead of around the hook, and the difference is ...

The buoyancy is in the body Most dry flies float on hackle, and hackle wets out, which is why a fly that rode beautifully at nine in the morning is...

You can still see it in the last hour Kosciuszko duns come off best in the last hour, which is also the hour you can no longer see a size 14 dry fl...

A dry fly and an emerger at the same time The Klinkhammer's trick is the curved hook. The abdomen hangs down through the film while the thorax and ...

They are eating the ball, not the insect Midges swarm and ball up on the surface in numbers, and fish stop taking them individually and start takin...

Everyone needs a good blowie in the box Everyone needs a good blowie in the box. They are the most Australian trout food there is, blown onto the w...

A tag on a big fly works differently A small bright tag on a big buggy fly does something different to a small bright fly on its own. The hopper bo...

Size matters more than shade When big duns are on the water, size matters more than shade. A fish locked onto something substantial will drift past...

Trout catch the damaged ones A healthy adult damsel is quick enough that a trout mostly wastes its time chasing one. A damaged or egg-laying one is...

The brightest thing in the box, and that is the point Orange is a colour trout in this country eat with real conviction, and this is about the brig...

The name is the instruction The name is the instruction. This is a small, bright, high-UV fly meant to be trailed behind something bigger, where it...

The dry that does two jobs at once A foam underwing gives this one far more lift than its size suggests, which is what makes it a genuine dry-dropp...

Pearl and UV, for the last hour of light The pearl body carries a high ultra violet content, and that matters most when visible light is running ou...

Foam, and a fine wire hook on purpose Built out of foam rather than hair, which means it floats high and keeps floating after a fish has chewed it....

For the fish that has already refused two flies Some fish rise steadily and refuse everything, and the answer is rarely a bigger or brighter fly. I...

For the light where a drab fly simply vanishes There is a point in the evening, and in glare on a bright day, when a natural-coloured dry becomes i...