Viking Lars | Saturday, 20 November 2021
For reservoir- and still water fishing in the UK, there’s hardly a more famous fly than Shipman’s Buzzer. And it’s so easy and fast to tie that most fly tiers can fill a box in a few hours. It’s multi purpose and can be fished in several ways. Everyone needs one in their boxes - several, in fact.
It’s an imitation of a hatching midge or buzzer. It has two main features - a piece of white poly yarn that imitates both breathers and tails and a duped body of seal’s fur. If you get fancy, you can tie in a rib and if you decide to go all flashy, a pearl flash rib and two strands of pearl flash in the breathers and tail look quite good.
Buzzers come in all sizes and colours. I tie mine in olive, brown and claret - and that’s it. I mainly fish 14s and 16s, but at least in the UK, larger sizes are common as well. The ones in the PoD are tied on Ahrex FW 504 Short Shank dry fly, which is obviously a light wire hook.
I fish them both dry (as dry as you can fish a fly like this) with a little floatant. Without floatant, Paul taught me it’s fished “damp”, not dry, not wet and this is for me where it’s most effective.
Without floatant the fly will at some point sink over the surface. Even sunk it’s really effective, static and with a little movement. Sunk and retrieved slowly with a figure-of-eight-retrieve.
Tying the fly it’s important to keep the dubbing sparse and the stiff, straggly fibres in the seal’s fur are important for keeping the fly in the surface.
If you don’t already, spend an hour tying a few dozen in a two or three colours and try them.
Have a great weekend,
Lars