Truttablog

The Slinky Damsel: a step by step

I started tying this pattern about 10 years ago. The idea was to have a smooth body, and at one stage the thorax was smooth too, to represent the exoskeletal properties of the naturals. In other words I wanted to steer away from a “fuzzy” fly, and stick with a sleek profile, with well defined eyes and legs. This sleek profile helps the fly to sink with minimal additional weight: a worthwhile property, in that it allows for delicate presentations in the shallows. I started off with a single plastic bead at the front, and then moved to a

9 September 2013

First rains

Oh September rain You drench my folded vale. Your cold and cheerless mist Like linen, soft and pale. But you seduce. You persist. And your verdant prize Is my Holy Grail. Gone be fawn and dust. Out with brown and drought! It is your sparkling stream for which I lust. And water for my Trout. Come grace us with your driving squalls, And saturate us in your dew. Oh how I have prayed for you! Explanation. August here in the KZN midlands is not a pretty time of year. At the end of a long winter, the

30 August 2013

Feathers: buying decent marabou

The other evening, I was tying up a few flies for still-water, and I was getting to the end of a pack of marabou. When I remarked to the family that I was running out of feathers, I got some funny looks. That’s because as I said that there were wisps drifting about me in the air, there was some getting in my nose, and there were black feathers all over the place. But they were the wrong feathers you see. Those who use marabou, will know what what I am talking about, feathers with thin, sharp ends. No fluff

27 August 2013

More cranes

Normally when you crest the hill and find a flock of cranes in front of you, they take to the air before you can grab your camera. This day I was lucky:

18 August 2013

A few lines on a cloudy winter morning

A cloudy winter dawn The first light of day brings honking geese Hinting at what lies beyond the drawn curtains, and out across the drab patchwork landscape: Low slung cloud, and dampened dust, Odours of dead wet kikuyu grass, and a wafting hint of silage, hanging in the still morning air. And farmyard sounds that carry in the silence Pervading morning memories of childhood on the farm. Nostalgia nestled in the moment, Like my sleepy being in this warm bed. Commentary/explanation

14 August 2013

Knotted legs

In a previous posting I showed a fly pattern that uses knotted pheasant tail legs, and I promised a posting to help readers tie these. Tying knots in short pieces of feather fibre is difficult, so don’t beat yourself up if you end up with bits of knotless feather on the floor, and a foul temper. That would be entirely normal, and part of the process. In fact, if I haven’t tied these in a while, I forget all my own learning and do the same for a good 20 minutes before the synapses fire, and I remember this method:

9 August 2013

Measure once, Cut Twice

Back in 1996 I was cornered by a horde of tackle dealers, who politely informed me that the rod I was using at the time was……… Well it was…………….. I needed a new one. And the ones they put in my hands that day beside a dam near Somerset East were sublime. So on my return home to KZN I visited one of them, and he very generously gave me three fly-rods to try. I tested them on a prime still-water, and settled very quickly on this one:

28 July 2013

Tying a cripple: a step by step

This represents a half hatched nymph. A crippled and hopeless morsel for the Trout to take at will. The idea is to hang the fly in the surface film, with the tail end of the nymph shuck still attached and hanging in the water. The front end of the fly represents the half hatched winged insect, it’s looped body stuck in the top of the shuck, and its legs trailing beneath its thorax and partially opened wings. The materials you will need:

21 July 2013

Tying the woolly bugger

19 July 2013

Strip-show

In his excellent book, “Frogcall”, Greg French uses this as a name for the chapter on stripping Trout. Here is a photo essay, a “visual trifle”, of the process, as undertaken by my friends and I each winter:

13 July 2013