Trout and Salmon

WRITE TO: Write to: Crawford Little, c/o Trout and Salmon, Media House, Lynchwood, Peterborough PE2 6EA. Or e-mail: crawfordlittle54@gmail.com
QI’M NEVER sure what
leader to use in low-water,
summer conditions. How
light would you go, and
how long a leader would
you opt for in difficult conditions?
Ray McAfee, via e-mail
A THE SIMPLE answer would be
“as long and light as you dare,” if the
conditions demand it – but Heaven
forfend that Crawford Little should miss
an opportunity to complicate matters.
That would never do…
In low-water, summer conditions I’ll
often be swapping between various
techniques and fly types. The standard
swing with very small flies (a long-tailed
14 might count as “large” in this context)
which I dress on short-shank, wide-gape
hooks. Or riffling flies. Or those baby
Sunrays I call Sunbeams. Or deep
drifting (some call it “nymphing”)
with micro Frances flies and the likes.
And so on.
Yes, but how thin a leader? It all starts
with the fly. The fly’s size and weight
decide what strength (or diameter) of
leader we should use. Thick for a big
and/or heavy fly, thin for a small and light
fly – and even thinner for a micro fly.
In these days when catch-and-release
is imposed or encouraged, many
salmon-fishers would blanch at the mere
mention of 0.30 mm tippet. But for the
smallest flies, the low-water aficionados
sipping their espresso at the Casa
Frances wouldn’t twitch an eyebrow until
you’re talking 0.20 mm, which is 5 lb
breaking strain in Maxima talk.
Why would they choose such a very
thin leader? Because they believe that in
the clearest of very clear water, the
thinnest of thin leaders can make the
difference between fish on and no fish.
But for goodness’ sake, don’t try it if
you’re the sort who likes to stand his
ground and drag a fish ashore. Or on
your stiff double-hander and clackety
old reel. My own choice would be a long
(10 ft-plus) but sensitive single-hander,
rated AFTM 5-7, a reel with the
smoothest of drags, and a pair
of running shoes…
What length of leader? Some say that
salmon are not leader shy. Fair enough,
in some circumstances, but when the
water is really clear I like to give the
salmon the benefit of the doubt by
allowing a wide berth between the fly
and the tip of the fly-line. Which means
a long and therefore tapered leader.
I prefer to make my own tapered
leaders. I do not have the sort of brain
that retains complicated formulae, but
I can remember 5, 4, 3, or 6, 5, 4 with
2 ft of tippet. The 5, 4, 3 plus 2 produces
a 14 ft leader, the 6, 5, 4 plus 2 a 17 ft
leader, and so on. When the going gets
tougher, how about a 6, 5, 4, 3 plus
2 otherwise known as a 20-footer?
That should do it, for goodness’ sake…
Q
I
HEAR much about Sunray, Collie and
Monkey flies. Can you please explain
which is what? That is, what are the
differences between one and the others?
Barry Chapman, via e-mail
A SOME SAY that Noah refused to
disembark the collie dogs from the
Ark until they’d agreed to give him a
hank of hair from their hind legs. He
then whipped the hair to a hook and
cast it on to the receding waters –
where it was immediately grabbed by
a muckle great salmon. Others say the
deed was done by a Scottish gillie in
the mid- to late 19th Century. Either
way the Collie Dog fly has been
around for a very long time.
This straightforward pattern was
almost certainly the first of the longwinged
flies, and may well have been
the first hair-winged salmon fly.
However, it seems we humans can’t
see something simple without
wanting to complicate it.
In the 1960s an Englishman living
in Norway with his Norwegian wife
and holding a lease on the Laerdal
River, cross-bred a Collie with a Bitsa
(bitsa this and bitsa that) and called
the offspring a Sunray. That man was
Ray Brooks, and the fly is properly
known as Ray Brooks’ Sunray Shadow.
It has the same long wing as the
Collie, only Ray used hair from a
monkey and tied it over a brown or
white base wing and added some long
strands of peacock herl.
The original Collies employed a
single or double hook, though
nowadays most dress them on
dressed aluminium or plastic tubes.
However, Ray chose to dress his
Sunrays on translucent, clear plastic
Sunray Shadow.
Collie Dog with silver
hook for coloured water.
tubes. Incidentally, he advised fitting
them with brown trebles for clear
water, and silver for “less clear” water.
Something worth remembering in
these days when silver and gold hooks
are widely but perhaps unthinkingly
employed, irrespective of
water conditions.
The Monkey is the newest of the
long-winged patterns. Nevertheless, it
seems unclear whether it was bred on
the Aberdeenshire Dee or introduced
by visiting Scandinavians – though to
be honest, I’m not altogether
convinced by either explanation.
That aside, the Monkey is basically
a weighted Sunray, typically tied on a
brass bottle tube. Though personally,
in order to produce what I think is an
attractive “shouldery” profile to the fly
when it is swimming, I prefer a brass
(or tungsten) bead immediately
behind the head of the fly, with a
slightly smaller cone head in front.
At the risk of stating the bleedin’
obvious, the added weight ensures
the Monkey operates below the water
surface, while unweighted Collies
and Sunrays can be fished in or on
(riffling) the surface – or deeper on a
sinking line. The Monkey also sports
jungle-cock cheeks and a throat of soft
hackle, fox hair or “plucked” marabou.
Strands of flash may be placed under
the hackle as well as in the wing.
“Sunray in her Braws” (finest clothes),
as the author William Scrope might
have named it.
A modern Monkey,
tied on a bottle tube.
August 2017 | 71