Fly Fishing Gear | Dry Flies

Loud and clear, which is the whole idea Five by five is radio-speak for a signal coming through perfectly, and that is a fair description of this o...

The olive one, for the days that look too rough to fish Blue winged olives are contrary insects: they hatch hardest in the weather most anglers giv...

The last meal of the evening, and the one they rarely refuse Every mayfly ends the same way. After the mating flight the spinners fall to the water...

A big mayfly, for when a big mouthful is what they want The green drake is the largest mayfly most Northern Hemisphere anglers will ever see, close...

Land it hard Big terrestrials do not land delicately. They hit the water with an audible plop, and trout that have learned what that sound means wi...

The wing is protecting the CdC The elk hair wing is doing two jobs here. It gives the tent-shaped caddis outline, and it sits over the CdC undernea...

The dark one, for when the sky is doing the work A dark fly is easier for a trout to see from below against a bright sky than a pale one, which is ...

If you could only carry one dry, this would be a fair choice The Adams covers more water and more hatches than any other dry in the box, which is w...

No hackle, no tail, and that is the point The F-Fly is one of those designs that does more with less: no hackle, no tail, just a body and a small w...

The few seconds an insect cannot get away Most caddis and mayflies are eaten in the few seconds they spend stuck half in and half out of the film, ...

What a quill body gives you A quill body is a single stripped stem wound up the hook, and it gives fine natural segmentation that dubbing cannot: s...

Crust sits differently to flake Crust behaves differently to soft bread in the water. It sits high, holds its shape and stays up long after flake h...

A fish you can chase without guilt Carp are a declared pest in this state and they are also one of the hardest fish you can hook on a fly rod, whic...

You do not match the hatch, you make one There is no hatch to match with carp, so you make one. Throw a handful of floating dog biscuits out and gi...

Stripped right back The same black and red idea stripped right back: no hopper legs, no bulk, just a small fly sitting low in the film. It is the o...

Two flies, one snip apart Two flies in one, and the second is a snip away. Fished as it comes it is a CdC Red Tag. Cut the red tail off and what is...

Lands like nothing, and that is what you are paying for CdC comes from a duck's preen gland, and the reason tyers put up with how delicate it is co...

Two wing materials, each doing a different job Deer hair floats and poly yarn is easy to see, and this one uses both in the wing rather than choosi...

Density is the point A caddis sits on the water as a solid tent, and from below a trout sees that shape as a dark block rather than as a set of det...

A long body with no weight in it An adult damsel has a long thin abdomen and almost no weight to it, which is difficult to build without ending up ...

It imitates nothing, and fish eat it anyway The peacock and red floss body was never meant to match a hatch. It is an attractor, and one of the mos...

The fly that started the hair-wing family Lee Wulff was losing patience with slim Catskill dries drowning in the fast water of New York's Ausable, ...

A century on, still the first dry most anglers reach for When fish are up and you cannot pick the hatch, this is the sensible first cast. The grizz...

Enough float to carry a beadhead The problem with a dry-dropper rig is that most dry flies cannot carry a weighted nymph without being dragged unde...