Martyn White | Thursday, 20 February 2025
Just a quick one from me this week. As surprise visit from my cousin meant no fishing and a sustained campaign against liver health.
He's gone now and I've entered my recovery phase, something all athletes will confirm is essential. SO I've been topping up my nymph box before the maruta arrive in the next few weeks. Although I always have my staple patterns I do like to have a mooch around the web to see if any new patterns catch my eye. Not much of the new stuff that I saw really appealed, I've plenty of competition style patterns that work fine and I doubt I need any more. A lot of the other stuff I was looking at was much more complex than it needs to be. A few that struck me were some caseless caddis patterns, all covered in additions that I can't see making any positive difference most of the time when compared with a little dubbing bodied bug or if you need to feel extravagant, a Czech nymph.
For me the fly in the POD is about as much as I need most of the time. Occasionally a Czech nymph or something with a bit of flash can make a difference, but I wouldn't be worried if I just had these in a few sizes.
Hook: Grub 8-16
Weight: Lead wire
Rib: Green or black wire
Abdomen: Green or tan dubbing
Thorax: Black dubbing.
Bug it, fish it upstream, under an indicator, whatever. It works and it works all year.