It's Starting to Wake Up

Fishing has been pretty poor  recently , a fortnight ago, the grayling  poked fun at us , this weekend the flounders pretty much did the same.

Ive been struck down with the cold , started on Friday sore throat etc , by Sunday sore head , legs,knackered today coughing and sneezing all the time,  so i took the day off work.

  The dog was pestering me to get walked so i coincided a walk down the river with what ive grown  acustomed to as early season hatch time , thats 1pm on my local, 2pm once the clocks change , you can almost set your watch for it.  Looking at a tail of a pool a disturbance caught my eye , and sure enough it was a trout rising , and another one was doing like wise just slightly further upstream  , and in the next pool again another fish rose , to a very sparse hatch of large dark olives, great to see and with 11 days till the start of the season , looks like my fears of a late start have been put to bed.
 
It spurred me into a tying mood, i had to freshen up the big stuff, the stimulators etc flies i will use in the height of summer. So got to work.
First up were the stimulators. it's a fly thats quite enjoyable to tie, proportions seem to be quite important though it's very easy to make it look wrong. I tied mine on size 10 tiemco 200R  hooks and found for the style of fly a smaller  hackle typically  for a size 14 fly was ideal for the abdomen and a one typically for a size 12 for the thorax.

Ive only tied a handful , i reckon it's all i will need , the stimulator is a fly that looks like it has no place in a uk anglers box, but for pocket water, coloured water or for just stirring up dour trout there great!

 . Next up i thought i'd do some balloon caddis sporting some rubber legs. i have some fond memories of using these years ago on a small tumbling highland stream, these ones below are tied on #12's. 

these ones below are similar , but it was the turks tarantula that is the influence  , im just too lazy nowadays to tie it, same go's for quite a few patterns , and i doubt they are any less effective in the roll.

Other high summer candidates will be the cdc and elk, and the g&h sedge, maybe a chernobyl ant . Other than that i think the summer nights should be covered .

Did a couple pike flies too, i wanted to try out my new 4/0 hooks ,  got a few new places in mind for the pike this year , which i'm looking forward too.