20 February 2014
Also known as “Fowlers Magic Dragon”, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, or just “the Puff”, but most likely not known at all. I suppose I have done very little to spread the news about this fly, but that was borne out of a desire not to be pretentious about the thing, rather than any motivation to keep the pattern to myself. This fly is a catcher of fish in stillwaters in South Africa. And a catcher of some large fish too.
This piece originally appeared in the FOSAF publication “favoured flies” in Oct 2008 Brown Trout have been tickling my fancy for over twenty years. There is something about a Brown that is appealing, fanciful, and frustrating all at the same time, and whatever that something is, it has me hunting them regularly. I struggle to define what it is about a Brown that holds appeal for me. Perhaps it is simply that there are less of them around than the Rainbow, but I suspect it runs deeper than that. Whatever it is about Browns, it keeps me coming back.