Down Time December 06 2024, 0 Comments

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, temperatures are dropping and many fisheries are coming to a close. Work is often busy, and Christmas keeps us occupied, but when you do get a moment to spare on those cold wet days, how will you spend your downtime? When you can't go fishing, but would like to. Why not try tying up some new flies for a season to come?

Sometimes the most effective flies are those that are just a little bit different. Why not take some of your old patterns and try to tweak them a bit? More than likely you'll have some failures, but sometimes you improve upon a fly and make it stand out from other flies, and hopefully the food.

At the essence of a fly, for the most part, are the characteristics of whatever it is you're trying to imitate. Stray too far from that food source and you'll likely have something that isn't too successful. But if you get the basics down and tart it up, often you'll be quite successful. When trying new things, consider the following:

- Can you take a drab colour and make it brighter?

- Can you adjust weight of the fly to make it sink faster or slower to increase it's time in a feeding zone?

- Can you add a highlight, such as some flash, a bead, or a hot spot?

- Can you change materials from an existing pattern to make the fly look better in the water? Or faster to tie?

- Can you make certain features more or less prominent? Better segmentation? Bigger eyes?

I'll often start by changing just one variable and going from there. Here are a few examples tied for next year's lake fishing.

They're by no means pretty, but they represent a starting point for experimenting, because there's nothing quite as satisfying as fooling a fish on a fly that you've created!

If you have any new flies you'd like to share, we'd love to see you post them to our Facebook page.