Another year has flown by and more fantastic memories stored both in mind or caught on camera. 2009 was a fantastic fishing season, with some of my personal best wild fish caught but, and more importantly, it was the most enjoyable season yet, and I was lucky enough to have shared it with a fantastic bunch of people.

2009 has been such a memorable year (with highlights ranging from a lonesome days fishing, to a fabulous weekend fishing with a good mate, to the full on chaos that comes hand in hand with a summer’s social (but I wouldn’t change that for the world!)) that it’s been a little difficult to describe the last season in words, so I’m currently working on a new image gallery instead. Stay tuned for the new gallery, it’s going to be a cracker! Thank you all for making 2009 so special; thanks to those I’ve fished with, tied with, drunk with, it’s been a great year indeed!

Thanks also to all who supported the Support for Welsh Rivers campaign; the hard work is not yet complete, but I’d like to thank you all for your support and also your efforts in acquiring so many signatures. In the end, the number of signatures submitted was over the 8,000 mark, and I’ll think you’ll agree that this was an exceptional number of signatures generated during the pathetic tiny time window which had been granted by the Welsh Assembly in order for us to collate our evidence. Your hard work is so appreciated.

Lastly (and by no means least), I’d like to say a huge thank you to you guys, the readers of FFISW, without you there would be no reason to carry on writing, taking photos and talking crap. Thank you all for enduring my incessant ramblings over the last year, and I’ve so enjoyed receiving your emails and reading your comments on the site.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of new years; may all your lines be tighter than those of 2009.

Happy holidays everyone!

All the best,

Gareth

Santa seems to have delivered a little early this year, what with a nice package waiting for me as I got in from work on Monday night. Inside was a selection of materials and flies very generously sent by the small-fly-genius that is Mr Andy Baird of Small Fly Funk.

Andy is an addict when it comes to fishing and tying small flies, and to say he’s an expert tier in the realm of micro flies is an understatement. As I’ve mentioned before, Small Fly Funk is THE best website on the topic of tying and fishing small flies/midges available today.

Included in the envelope were quite a few hackles taken from a Whiting Midge saddle, a saddle I’ve been looking at purchasing for quite a while. Without trying to sound too crazy (I suppose they are feathers after all), the midge hackles are amazing. Densley barbed and uniform throughout their length, the genetic breeding of these roosters by Whiting Farms is truly amazing…and these are only ‘Bronze Grade’! The midge saddles, as their name suggest, offer the smallest of hackles and are genetically bred specifically for tiers of small flies. These saddles would suit patterns ranging from #20 down to #28, maybe smaller at a push.

Also included by Andy were a number of Daiichi 1110′s in size #24,and the venerable Vince Marinaro Midge hooks in size #28, perfect for small midge pupa. Both hooks fantastic in their own right, and with a huge small fly tying heritage.

Lastly, Andy generously included a selection of his flies, and they’ve given me so much food for thought. Such a thinly practiced art is small fly tying/fishing that it’s sometimes hard to compare your flies to those tied by others. Andy’s flies are, in general, some what of an inspiration to my tying, and to see the quality of them up close is a real eye-opener. So much so, I feel the need to try and raise my quality tying in the small fly arena.

A selection of flies by the master, Andy Baird (the largest fly below is a size #24!)

After starting the week with a weird amalgamation of training courses, eye straining web development, and arguments with colleagues over why they are required to stick to IT protocols, it’s a joy to have had a relaxing evening at the vice tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be standing in waist high waters with air temps hovering around 0°C, but I’m always hopeful for a hatch of blue wings, small olives, or the ever faithful underdog, the chironomid; so, a few flies need to be tied.

Tonight’s main focus was to neaten my biot paraduns, as I always tend to either tie the biot off with too much bulk or with too big a thorax. Tonight I think I’ve stuck to my “Less, Less, Less!!!” rule. If I was to give any sort of tip to someone taking up fly tying I would, most definitely, recommend the use of less thread wraps, as I think a lot of us over do our tying. As another small-fly master once said, “Tying small flies and fishing them is fly fishing stripped to its bare essentials” (Ed Engle, Tying Small Flies). Amen to that Ed.

Tan Biot Paradun

Andy, thanks again mate, the materials (and your superb flies) have opened my eyes even further into the world of small fly tying.

If you’re seeing this post then you’re happily, and quite successfully, browsing FFISW on the new web-server!

The migration of the site was forced when my old hosting company’s regular, and unacceptable technical deficiencies, forced me to bite the bullet and jump ship to a host that could provide the basic level of service I needed. This, unfortunately, has meant a little disruption for you guys as I began moving all the posts, comments, users, etc that had accumulated over the last four years.

Unfortunately, the website move has mean that a) the forum now contains zero posts (as I’ve been totally unsuccessful in porting the content across), and b) you will all need to renew your passwords (this can be done easily via the ‘Lost your password?’ link at the bottom of the ‘Login’ facility and, once you’ve clicked the link, just pop your email address in and you’ll receive an email with the new password shortly). Once you log in for the first time, you’ll be required to change your password to something memorable. If anyone has any problems renewing their password, or notices anything strange over the next few weeks, just send me an email via the ‘Contact’ page, and I’ll get it sorted for you as soon as possible.

On the bright side, this ‘project’ has made me re-address a few things; but mainly, the URL. flyfishinginsouthwales.co.uk was always a little long, and to be honest, was quite a pain to type sometimes, so I’ve accumulated two new domains – ffisw.com and ffisw.co.uk, both of which are much easier to type. There are also a few other things I need to tweak over the weekend, so please bear with me.

If anyone has the old address saved in their Favourites/Bookmarks, you won’t have to change a thing, as the old address still points to the site, but you’ll be able to use the new addresses whenever you like too. From now on, however, I’ll be promoting the site address as www.ffisw.com.

So, after the little hiccup and after several late nights spent slaving over my laptop, the site is now back to where it was, so I hope you continue to browse happy.

Enjoy!

G

Yup, we’re outta’ here!

Thanks to the lovely people at Fasthosts.co.uk and their ‘intermittent issues’ which occur with clockwork precision each month, I’ve decided that enough is enough. Don’t panic, FFISW won’t be stopping, I’ll just be moving hosts (some of you might remember that I only migrated from my last host just over twelve months…does this say anything about the UK’s hosting solutions? I’ll leave that question hang there for a while).

What this means to you guys is that there will be a little disruption of service over the next month or so as I begin the hellish process of backing up the entire website in order to migrate the blog, forum, users, posts, etc over to the new platform. I will, of course, endeavour to keep any disruption to a minimum, but as with all jobs of this nature, a few headaches are likely to ensue (stay tuned for pi$$ed off reports regarding smashed faces monitors/keyboards, disruption to fishing/tying/life).

On the bright side, and there is one, this ‘opportunity’ should allow for a few new additions to the background functionality of the site, but I’ll leave the details of this for when FFISW is closer to being migrated.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy Christmas! Stay tuned for more on the saga of the great migration.

EDIT: 18/12/2009 @ 11:45

Some/all of you who’ve registered with the site may have received an email from my new platform stating that you have just signed up. Please ignore these, and I’m hoping that those will be the only ‘stray’ emails that have broken out of the web site.

The new site is going fairly well though; when I know when the old site will be shut down, I shall let you know.

G

EDIT: 18/12/2009 @ 13:35

Migration complete, and I’m glad to say, everything has hopefully copied across. All we have to do now is wait until the URL flyfishinginsouthwales.co.uk points to the new server.

When everything is pointing to the new server all users will be required to re-new their passwords but there will be more on this when the time is right.

Thanks for your patience.

G

With the constant rain the UK has been enduring for over a month, the weather forecasts finally seem to be predicting calm weather on the horizon. The science behind these ‘predictions’ is lost on me, as forecasts/predictions/divinations for any more than one day away always seem to be wrong (unless you have a month of rain of course; then it’s easy).

It’s a conspiracy, as I’m positive that the new 3D topographical weather displays that our local/national weather forecasters prance in front of are really shrines to the weather gods of old; their over-animated jumping, flailing, and waving of claw-like/arthritic appendages is in some way a form of appeasing them.

Happy, innocent weather forecaster, or dark priest and appeaser of the evil-weather-gods?

I could be wrong of course, but I’ve digressed slightly.

Continuing on from my last couple of posts, I’ve had to put the small stuff on hold for a little while in order to make room for some ‘special’ patterns more suited to the high/fast water conditions which we are currently enduring as punishment from the weather-gods for our evil and wicked sins.

In fast and/or high waters, I tend to fish the slacker margin-waters first. These tend to bring a few smaller fish to hand, but when the high waters are safe enough to wade, I like to short-line/Czech nymph the main body of water in search of larger fish. If the grayling are there, they are usually hunkered down close to the riverbed where water flows are a little calmer, and this is where the challenge lies; getting your flies down, and getting them down fast.

I’m not a huge fan of fishing a full team of ‘heavy-weights’. Instead, I much prefer to fish one heavy fly on the point, with another two lightly weighted flies on the droppers. In these fast water conditions my point ‘fly’ will usually be a horrendous amalgamation of tungsten; its sole purpose of dragging the rest of the team down fast. If it’s doing its job correctly, I’ll feel the confident tap, tap, tap on the river bed. If the tapping stops, or if the line pauses/moves/acts unnaturally, I’ll strike.

Sacrificial they may be, they are tied to suggest an element of life, and it’s because of this that it’s not uncommon to have one attract the attentions of a respectfully sized grayling.

Because of their primary purpose as depth charges, simplicity is a must, and I only ever tend to use two patterns.

Peeping Caddis

The ‘lighter’ of the two, is a cased caddis pattern which incorporates an SSD split shot towards the hook eye, and two layers of square lead as an underbody. Split shot, although not as dense as tungsten, is heavy in its own right; add to that two layers of lead as an underbody, and you have a very heavy caddis pattern.

The ‘Incredible Hulk’

Add very fast water to the equation, however, and you might find your caddis ‘bomb’ doesn’t hit the bottom as quickly as you’d like; when this happens, I’ll switch to a truly heavy fly.

Consisting of thread, varnish, and five tungsten beads, this basic pattern is for when all else fails; one which will have you ‘touching bottom’ within seconds and one which allow your droppers to fish the differing depths of the water column quickly and efficiently (don’t worry about the SPLOSH as it hits the water, the grayling don’t tend to mind!). This pattern has one catch, however: apply too little attention, and you’ll lose it (and all five of the costly tungsten beads). Constant attention must be paid to both the line tip and to the tapping, and the entire rig must remain tight; if it isn’t, you’ll feel neither the take, nor will you feel your heavy point fly hook into a snag/rock. Once snagged you may be unable to pull your fly free, and as a consequence, you may lose your point fly or, quite possibly, your entire team. Getting deep quickly, it seems, has a price.