Naseby Fly Tyers

I had a great night last night thanks to Paul Jervis inviting me to give a fly tying talk and demo at the Royal Oak in Naseby. He has been running a weekly fly tying session through the winter and also a bit of fishing for a group of around 10 locals. It's great to get a group together like this.

It was an informal session and I walked through a whole host of tying and fishing techniques based around a green pea, orange booby, hares ear, slate grey buzzer, elk hair sedge and a green daiwl bach.



As this was the first time I have done a talk - apart from a few Pitsford open days - I took Mike and Phil along for some moral support. With a good number of traditional ales on tap and a great spread laid on by Paul and family it was a great night that I thoroughly enjoyed - hopefully everyone else did too, but I am sure they did.

There had to be something go wrong and as i had just finished my hares ear it pinged out of the holder and couldn't be found - all that effort! Thank goodness I had another one in box I show. We did find it afterwards - just in case they have been turning the place upside down today! I have salvaged a few today and have loaded them up below.



UV Hares ear, fluorescent orange tying silk, hares ear tail, hares ear body and thorax, pheasant thorax cover, oval gold rib and flour Orange head.





Slate Grey Buzzer, slate grey tying silk body and thorax, fine pearl back, red holographic rib, pearl thorax cover and orange goose biot cheeks.





Elk hair sedge, ginger palmer hackle, gold rib, ginger front hackle and a pinch of natural deer hair for the wing.



Thank you all!

Read your -mails!!!

I should have done this before going fishing on Sunday as Mike managed to catch a 5lb 8oz Rainbow and Phil a 5lb 20z on Friday. They were a little closer the lodge and on a red daiwl back. I may have had more success and confidence at least.

Great fish Phil!

it's been a while

It has, it seems ages since i last went fishing!

I have been focusing on my Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge that I managed to complete in 10hrs 58mins. There's more detail at www.kevshillwalking.blogspot.com if your really interested.

It has been a nice week this week and I fancied that Ravensthorpe would be warming up for some small fly action. However when I woke up this morning to wet on the ground and grey skies I thought, typical!

I think everyone had the same idea as me as all the boats were taken and the cotton end lay by full of cars. In hind sight i should have perhaps gone off the dam but I only had a couple of hours and knew there were fish here. The platforms were taken so i found a gap in the trees just beforehand and started to tackle up.

It really felt like spring was here as the sun began to peak through, dandelions and daffodils adding colour, I could hear a chiffchaff in the tree next to me and there was a hatch on as the swallows, house martins and sand martins were swooping around infront of me. It was a pleasure to be out.

I started on a mains damsel and couple of buzzers on a floater and it was only second when all tightened up and I was into a nice 2pounder.

The mains damsel has been a great fly for me. We called it this after John Mains as far as I am aware originated it for competition fishing in hard early season conditions. It is a simple fly to tie consisting of an olive marabou tail, olive marabou body, pearl over the back and a silver wire rib.

It was a great start but not to be followed up unfortunately. I moved onto straight lining daiwl bach's and cruchers and drifting out a bung but nothing. There were a few fish further out and the hatch slowed down at midday.

When the couple of guys off the platforms left having only one apiece too on buzzers,I thought I would follow too. A nice ease back into it again though.