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    Guide Flies: Simple, Durable Flies that Catch Fish.
    Guide Flies: Simple, Durable Flies that Catch Fish.
    Guide Flies: Simple, Durable Flies that Catch Fish.
    Ebook245 pages1 hour

    Guide Flies: Simple, Durable Flies that Catch Fish.

    By Tim Rolston

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    About this ebook

    For a fly fishing guide it isn't enought that the patterns they use are effective, that is a financial necessity. If they are not and clients fail to connect with fish, the erswhile guide is likely to be looking for alternative gainful employment some time soon.

    In "Guide Flies", international competative angler, fly fishing coach and fishing guide give up the secrets to success. Not only in terms of the fly patterns he uses, but equally and perhaps more importantly the methods of their manufacture. The book is littered with gems of imformation on tying and fishing these flies, how to modify them to suit your own needs and how to insure that they are not simply effective but equally durable.

    Guide flies also considers in detail the thought process behind the design of various key patterns and anecdotal evidence from real "on the water" successes and failures that have led to the development of the patterns illustrated.

    Guides tie flies for their clients and the clients come in all shapes, sizes and skill levels, which means that the flies detailed in this book are suitable for all anglers, experts and beginners alike. Not demanding of complex tying procedures, fancy tools or tricky to obtain materials. "Guide Flies" will alow any trout angler of rivers or stillwaters, to manufacture a selection of patterns which cover most of the bases and equally to understand why they should work and when.
    All beautifuly illustrated in full colour graphics and with links to external video content of the flies and techiques discussed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTim Rolston
    Release dateDec 4, 2014
    ISBN9781311256492
    Guide Flies: Simple, Durable Flies that Catch Fish.
    Author

    Tim Rolston

    I am an outdoorsman, not a computer boffin, or at least that was the picture when I started this a few years back. Since then I have become caught up with the advantages of electronic media. Steep learning curves continue, frustrations abound but out of that crucible have I think come some really worthwhile publications. How to Make your own fly fishing lanyard was the first and remains the most popular of all the titles. Plus it's free. Then "Who Packed your Parachute" an investigation into better ways to tie parachute flies followed.Still an experiment and free to anyone. Recently my book "Learn to Fly-cast in a Weekend" previously published in hard cover was converted to electronic format making it available to a far wider audience. It has received great reviews and then came the comprehensive and highly innovative "Essential Fly Tying Skills" book, which was previously only available on CD due to the file sizes has been made available for instant download. Now the genre has expanded further with "Guide Flies", with the same format of graphics, text and video clip links. I am still passionate about the outdoors, fly fishing and writing. I hope that you will enjoy the books and find them useful. I further hope that as I learn more there will be more titles with ever better content. Regards Tim

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      Book preview

      Guide Flies - Tim Rolston

      My first fly tying book Essential Fly Tying Techniques was possibly one of the most innovative fly tying books ever produced, combining text, graphics and video in a single publication. It covered as the name suggests critical skills for tying fishing flies. Primarily aimed at the neophyte, it still contained a lot of information of use to the more experienced and many tricks and techniques particularly aimed at tying more durable patterns.

      This book focuses on what I have called Guide Flies: patterns that are simple, inexpensive, durable and most of all effective. But this isn’t just a recipe book of fly patterns, it contains fishing stories which were integral in the development of these patterns and explanations as to the logic behind the designs. There is perhaps a critical ingredient to all good flies, the confidence they bring to the angler. I know these patterns work, I use them daily, as a fishing guide and as an angler, if they weren’t effective I would be out of business. But the explanations of how and why they have been developed over time should, I hope, give you the motivation to tie them and fish them with as much confidence as I do.

      There is so much hype associated with almost all elements of fly fishing gear, from the myriad leader designs, and aerospace aluminium solid bar stock reels, to the latest nano-technology fly rods. Flies and fly tying haven’t escaped the trend with new materials launched almost daily, fluorescents, plastic wings, burners, cutters, extended bodies and goodness knows what else. Actually it is all great fun and I have never met a great angler or for that matter fly tyer who didn’t have an enquiring mind and an experimental nature. But what patterns are you going to reach for when the chips are down? If you are a neophyte how do you sift through the hype to get to something that gives you confidence, that most elusive of on stream emotions?

      I think that the answers lie in what guides fish and what they offer to their clients. For us success is actually getting close to a financial necessity and for all the wonderfully fiddly creations out there, guides tend towards a pragmatic approach to fly patterns which can be usefully adapted for the social fisherman and the beginner to equal effect.

      That doesn’t for a moment suggest less fiddling or less of an enquiring mind, what it does suggest is that if you are fishing for a living, then experimentation is going to focus on simplifying matters, making patterns faster to make and more durable to fish.

      All of the patterns discussed in this book have been born out of constant adaption, innovation and adjustment. There isn’t a single one that cannot be changed and adapted further to suit the specific requirements of an area, stream or angler. They have all been tested over several decades and there isn’t a pattern here that hasn’t accounted for hundreds if not thousands of fish.

      In a few the materials are highly specific, in most they can be modified to suit varied situations, from picky fish to a lack of availability.

      This isn’t simply a fly tying book however, based on reader feedback I have equally tried to include fishing stories related to the patterns. Anecdotal evidence of success or failure and the origin and development of some of the flies, most of which have grown out of constant on stream experience over years.

      Yes it should provide the reader with a host of tried and tested flies, to tie and fish but I hope that it will equally be an enjoyable read, sufficiently enjoyable to motivate you to whip up some guide flies and head for a stream near you. .

      What are Guide Flies?:

      The term Guide Flies has been around for some time and is certainly open to debate as to the exact meaning. There are some guides, who for example, never use anything other than commercial patterns bought off the shelf and others (like me) who wouldn’t be seen dead tying a fly onto a client’s leader (or my own for that matter), which hadn’t come from my own vice.

      So, much as guides may vary in their interpretation of what exactly makes a guide fly I suppose that perhaps I should try to provide a definition from my own perspective.

      I doubt that Guide Flies are necessarily better than any others, there could be a few that are worse for that matter, but if you are a fishing guide then having your clients catch fish is pretty much part of the job description. It certainly comes in handy in the marketing department and a guide who consistently fails to put clients in touch with fish is likely to be looking for more gainful employment sooner rather than later. So Guide Flies should be expected to be reasonably efficacious in terms of luring fish to take, that is pretty much a given I suppose.

      However simple effectiveness isn’t really a sufficiently concrete criterion to my mind, there are many flies which are effective, in fact I am frequently astounded by just how many, and with that in mind how relatively few I actually use. In fact a recent question posed on the Innovative Fly Fishers bulletin board asking what where people’s favourite four dry flies produced a remarkably consistent reply from all of the respondents. It would seem that for all the various patterns out there, the ones many of us use are the same. Despite much of the marketing hype and the innovative use of many natural and man-made materials it seems that anglers; and one supposes by implication fish, still like the same ones they always did.

      Equally Guide Flies shouldn’t ultimately be the exclusive preserve of guides and their clients; the point of this book really is to try to afford others the opportunity to make use of some very effective fly patterns, and tying techniques that are used by the professionals. They may well grow out of guiding experience but they are not limited in their use to a particular sector of the angling population. Oddly enough, you may well not be better off driving a formula one racing car to the office or trying to wallop your golf ball off the tee with the same driver used by Tiger Woods, but guide flies are of universal appeal. They are not only tied for the guide but for the client and therefore they are for the most part easy to cast and easy to fish, there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t work for you.

      Specificity:

      There are some Guide Flies which are designed for specific geographical locations, most guides have fixed or at least favoured areas where they work and thus develop patterns that suit and may indeed be specifically fashioned for particular streams, stretches or even hatches for that matter. However I suspect that most Guide Flies are geared towards situations more than specific locations or hatches. They have been engineered with low or high water, slow glides or fast riffles more than to copy specific bugs, although there are a few of those in this book. In general guides carry flies that will solve problems, expected or unexpected on the water.

      It is part of a guide’s job description to keep coming up with potential solutions, no matter the conditions or the hatches. Certainly one can fail on occasion, but one should never run out of ideas or quit trying to solve the problem at hand.

      Versatility:

      This leads on from the previous point; flies that can be adapted on the stream can prove supremely useful to both guides and anglers. It is impossible to be prepared for everything that nature may throw at you and having flies that can be chopped up and modified can be a real asset so long as you remember your scissors.

      The spun dun style flies featured in this book are a case in point, where one fly can be modified into a Dun, Emerger, Cripple, Spinner or Nymph with a simple snip or two. Not all, but many guide flies are adaptable to different situations, either by the manner in which they are fished or through manipulation and trimming. The modifications could be as subtle as wetting or drying them or might involve actual surgery, either way adaptability and versatility represent (at least to my mind), one of the hallmarks of Guide Flies.

      Ease of Manufacture:

      Guides make money from fishing not fly tying and spending hours at the bench labouring over a complex and troublesome pattern which is just as likely as not going to end up hung in a tree without getting wet is counterproductive. Quick to tie flies are the preserve of the fishing guide, and a useful adjunct to anyone else who prefers catching fish to labouring over a hot vice.

      Obviously Guide Flies should be effective, that goes without saying, but they should also be quick to tie.

      Cost:

      Then one should bear in mind that guiding is a commercial operation, so cost comes into the equation. I doubt that many guides are going to opt for overly expensive nik naks in the majority of their flies.

      Certainly some things are a given, most guides are going to use quality hackle, at least genetic Bronze Grade saddles or capes for dry flies, but we are not, for the most part, given over to pre-formed hopper legs, or the

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