Stalking into Summer: Fly Fishing Tips for Clear Waters

With the warmer days of summer upon us, we’re approaching the best time of the year for sight fishing. Whether the quarry is trout, chub, carp and any of the coarse species, these tips and fly patterns should stand you in good stead.



1. Who spotted who?
Fish can spook easily on bright days. Do move slowly and carefully on the water, and watch the position of the sun to avoid throwing a shadow over the fish. Remember, if you can spot a fish, you only need one good cast to catch it. Far better to make one or two really good casts than to rush in and make many.
Chub are especially spooky, with trout a close second. Remember that these fish tend to face into the flow, so cast upstream to them if you can.

2. Subtly does it…
Fish are often more suspicious of flies in clear water, so it often a question of going a bit smaller. A Beaded PTN or Copper John is excellent for trout on rivers, while a classic Stalking Bug is often the favourite for stillwater rainbow trout. If the fish are spooking, try smaller versions of your favourite flies.


That said, stalking with a fly rod can work excellently for perch and chub, both of which like a good mouthful. For chub, try a large dry fly such as a Hopper, Kicking Beetle, or Black Cricket. If they won’t move from cover, a small streamer can work. The same is also true for the perch: try a Woolly Bugger or Perch Special.



3. Cut down on false casts:
Most fly fishermen make too many back casts. Ok, so it’s not a shooting offence, but the more times you put that fly line through the air, the more likely the fish are to take cover. Try making just one back cast if you can. Keep everything smooth and deliberate, and make few but clean casts.


4. The anticipation is killing:
Stalking is very often a game of clear anticipation. It is about presenting the fly where the fish can see it, but not spook it. Casting a slow sinking fly so that it just nestles into the path of a sighted fish is a real art form, but only truly comes with practise.
Try not to alarm fish by casting too close to them- fish aren’t stupid and as tempting as they look sitting there, you don’t want to be hitting them on the head. Even pike will spook with the wrong cast.
Clear water is often deceptive, and it can take a few seconds for the fly to sink. Try beaded nymphs if the fly isn’t getting down to the fish quickly enough.


5. X-Ray Specs
It should be bleeding obvious, but don’t forget a good pair of polarizing glasses. They’re easily lost or abused, so buy a spare pair for the car and keep your best on a lanyard. That is all (says the man on his thirteenth pair).




6. Ready to strike:
Be honest, how many times do all of us spot a fish, but not react quickly enough? Tangled line or a loose fly can take vital seconds to sort out- and this stalking style of fly fishing is all about taking opportunities at a moments notice. The remedy is simple: keep the fly located in one of your rod guides, and your fly line tidy and to hand.

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Turrall tie up fly event at this years CLA Game Fair

The creative and absorbing art of fly tying will again form a major attraction at this years CLA Game Fair, scheduled for Harewood House near Leeds from 31st July to 2nd August

Building on the great success of the fly tying feature in 2014, the CLA are again placing the Fly Dressers Guild in centre stage to provide an opportunity to all visitors, from raw beginners to seasoned professionals, to sample this fascinating branch of the sport in the heart of the fishing village.

The area will include round tables where youngsters can tie their very first fly, with one-to-one tuition from the FDG experts. More than 150 youngsters entered their creations in a light hearted competition last year, with winners each day receiving a superb fly tying outfit from sponsors Turrall.


CLA Head of Fishing, Chris Ogborne, explained: ‘We were delighted with the visitor reaction to the Fly Tying feature at Blenheim in 2014 so this year it will be bigger and even better. The Fly Dressers Guild do a fantastic job in introducing youngsters and beginners to the art of the fly, but they will also have areas for improvers and experts. Their input, help and advice is second to none. With support from the hugely respected firm Turrall, who will have all their latest flies and materials on display, I think we are going to have a very special feature’

There is no need to register either for the tying competition or for free advice – simply visit the Fly Dressers Guild stand in the Fishing Village There will also be a host of other things to see and do including a giant fish tank, casting pool, Advice Centre and the all-new Kayak Experience.

Fly Fishing Colliford Lake

Welcome to another blog spot from Turrall flies. In this instalment we have some thoughts on fishing wild, windy lakes for brown trout, plus your chance to win a selection of our favourite flies for these settings. Dominic Garnett takes up the challenge on Colliford Lake, Cornwall.


Fishing a team of three flies can be excellent fun on large waters. The lochs of Scotland and Ireland, where many of the classic patterns originate, are rightly famous for their brown trout fishing. However, here in Devon and Cornwall we also have some epic and underrated fisheries, with so much history and promising water to try. Indeed, It might seem odd to describe 900 acres of water as something of a "local secret", but how many visitors going on fishing holidays in Cornwall drive right past?


Day tickets can be picked up easily at the Jamaica Inn, just off the A30, which is a welcome stop, not to mention a fascinating slice of Cornish history. Whether the fishing is good or indifferent, they also serve a great pint of Jail Ale, should you fancy celebrating or drowning your sorrows later in the day.


Breezy conditions tend to bring the best our of Colliford Lake to life, but there was only a gentle wind as we tackled up on this occasion. Encouragingly, there were odd buzzers coming off though. And surprisingly, for such an inviting scene, there were no other anglers.



What are the best flies for Colliford? I tend to like a team of three, but mixing and matching flies a little. A larger buoyant fly such as a Mini Muddler, Muddler Daddy or Sedgehog works a treat on the top dropper, given any breeze. Not only does a fairly meaty, floating pattern send out a good wake to draw the trout, it also gives added bite detection (and I like to apply floatant liberally to make such wake flies float like a cork). If you can get the fish chasing, the surface takes can be spectacularly brutal, but even if they're a little deeper, the commotion will also often draw trout up to look at your other flies.

For a middle dropper, I will then try something traditional and bushy. Snatchers are particularly good. Dark colours are excellent, but reds and clarets are also handy if the water has a little tinge to it. Finally, I like to go subtler with my final fly, with a Daiwl Bach or buzzer on the point.



Regardless of conditions, it pays to be mobile on such a lake. In some 900 acres of water, you simply can't expect the fish to come to you. There are several useful access points however, and I started on the corner beside the dam. It was a beautiful scene, with spring in the air and the bright yellow gorse bushes bursting into life. I began with a stop start retrieve- and while I couldn't persuade an early fish to rush to the surface, I managed to tempt a silvery looking brown trout to a Daiwl Bach.


The bites then dried up. Weird really, because the place was teeming with life. Later can often be better, so I spent some time with the macro lens, surveying the life in the margins. The most notable insect life were beetles, dropping into water on a regular basis.



The most prolific trout food of all however, were sticklebacks in their thousands. In other places you might get them in dribs and drabs, but here they seem to form great gangs, hugging tight to the shore around the cover:



Meanwhile, out on the lake, things were still slow but hopes rose as the breeze kicked up a little and there was a massive, crunching splash at the surface as a trout hammered some unfortunate target out in the ripple. I had been thinking of switching over to a lure, but the attack convinced me to keep faith with a Green Mini Muddler, as recommended by Simon Jefferies at Turrall, who is also a fan of Colliford. I tweaked it gingerly across the surface, stepping and casting to cover the water. I must have walked several hundred yards, but just as I was wondering where the trout had gone, a dramatic response arrived.



There was a giant swirl and a few seconds I wondered what on earth I’d hooked, such was the power of a pound plus brown that fought with absolute fury. These Colliford fish are almost silvery when young, but this one was a light gold and especially beautiful. I could have taken it for a frying pan, but this would have been a sad end for such a cracking fish. Incidentally though, fish of the pound to two pound stamp are by no means exceptional in size for Colliford - and the bailiff tells me they reach anything up to four plus if you’re lucky or determined.


It can be hard work to find the trout, but timing is also of the essence here. It pays to be patient too, rather than flogging away all day, because things often wake up later in the day. I fancied that once the light began to drop, things could get really interesting and so it proved, because although there wasn’t exactly a feeding frenzy, there was the odd rise or swirl right by the shore- and I took another nice trout of around very close to the bank after seeing it rise.



No further takes arose, but that last hour did whet my appetite for a return. The margins could be especially interesting for a dedicated dusk attack. The margins are so full of sticklebacks that they must surely make shoreline raids at the right time. On a bright day, the bigger fish might feel vulnerable coming into inches of water, but in the half light or even just into darkness it could be a very different story.

Flies for wild waters: Win the set! Do you fancy winning the flies pictured in the blog? All you have to do is like and share the link to this blog on our Facebook page or Twitter feed, where you can also check out the latest news, flies, photography and more.

The magic of ultraviolet: Tips for using UV fly tying materials

If ever there was a phenomenon in fly materials to take the modern tying scene by storm, it has to be the world of ultraviolet (or "UV") reflective materials. Why the fuss? And more importantly, can such materials really make a difference to your catches? We certainly think so. The results are backed by catches on the bank and science, besides hype, with several of our best selling flies incorporating UV materials.
Can you see the difference with your own eyes? In practical terms it would have to be a no, because strictly speaking, ultraviolet light is a form of radiation not visible to humans. Various fish species are indeed sensitive to UV light however, and trout seem particularly responsive to it. Flies incorporating special UV reflective tinsels, fritz or dubbing have an additional appeal to fish when light levels are low and standard colours get lost. This makes them especially valuable early and late in the day.
We'll spare you the science lecture on this occasion, but suffice to say that UV materials seem capable of enhancing many of the patterns you favour, turning good flies into deadly flies. But it isn't just a case of using them blindly, or flooding hooks with fancy extras. Let's take a look at some of the most effective uses, tips and products: Fly Applications There are various ways to incorporate UV reflective materials into your flies without overkill. For the rainbow trout fisherman, perhaps the most obvious is by adding simple cheeks to nymphs and buzzers. You don't need a vast amount of material and in fact tiny slips are ideal:

An extra tip here for those who struggle to tie in fiddly little slips of material is to simply stick in place at the end using head cement or epoxy; a dubbing needle is far better than fingers too.
Ribs are another classic- especially with either light coloured materials or those with a naturally reflective sheen to them such as peacock. A UV rib is superb with classics such as Daiwl Bachs. Again, you don't need loads to make a fly that stands out and another good tip for smaller flies is that you can make a thinner rib by gently stretching most tinsels and flash materials.

Which materials would we start with? Packs of UV Multiflash or UV Enhancer are both ideal for a range of uses and great value, since each pack gives you two or more colours to try:

The original purpose of these flashy strands was for lures and predator flies however and there's no reason why you shouldn't use them for exactly that. They can be used for some deadly reservoir trout flies but another popular use would be in pike fly tying. You don't need a huge swathe of material, but just a few strands of UV reflective material seem to really appeal to the fish. Dawn and dusk, when UV comes into play even stronger, are also absolutely key times for pike to feed as any keen predator angler will tell you. Here's a variant on Dom Garnett's "Black Beast", which makes good use of our UV fly tying range:

On the subject of predator flies and lures, a really easy way incorporate some neat special effects into your flies is to use some UV fritz. The "Kennick Killer" has been one of our most popular reservoir flies for several seasons now, with original creator Duncan Keir a huge fan of UV. In fact, we had so much interest in the materials that we ended up producing "UV Killer Fritz" in various colours and guises.

The sky is the limit as regards your own tweaks. Another area well worth investigating is using little patches of white or light colours beside your UV hints, for example, for maximum reflection. River anglers can also try swapping the gold beads on their river nymphs for silver or even white versions for deadly effect. Whether you experiment with your own ideas, or simply grab a few of our bestselling flies that use the special effect of UV, we're sure it'll put another few fish in your net this season!
Remember you can also share your catches with us on Twitter, using the handle @TurrallFlies while we also have plenty of exciting news, tips and more on our new Facebook Page. Meanwhile, you can also catch some mouthwatering images of our favourite fly fishing haunts, catches and favourite flies on our Pinterest galleries.