It is a great privilege to be a friend of Davie McPhail. One of the most friendly and helpful people I have ever met.
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Atlantic Salmon Flies
A Salmon Angler may become plagued with doubts on the riverbank, most especially about the fly.
There is really no need for fly choice to become complicated. The most popular salmon flies come to the fore and remain there for years because they are found to be consistently successful and not because of fancy names or due to articles promoting them, or for any other reason but their widespread success.
That success means they do create the right impression to the fish due to their general design, colouration and proportions. Patterns like the Cascade or Gold Cascade, The Park Shrimp (the original dressing with arctic runner tail), Willie Gunns, Stoats Tails, Orange and Gold Shrimp e.t.c.
Durability is an important factor in salmon flies, as is the quality of the hook that the fly is tied on. Real value for money in salmon flies only actually lies in purchasing custom tied flies with durability or build quality as standard.
Custom tied flies are correct in design and proportion and they are tied to last. It is very easy for instance to tie a fly with a tiny head, it looks good but you are then relying only on the hackle stalk to hold and eventually it breaks, the hackle unwinds and the fly is useless, same on a body hackle if it is not contra wound with the ribbing. When the hackle stalks are under turns of thread forming a normal head they are protected from damage and the fly is secure and durable.
Hair wings pull out on many flies as the cut ends are not super glued. The supposed bargain quickly becomes nothing other than a waste of money, to say nothing of hooks they are tied on.
What an intriguing subject good salmon fishing flies are. How does one define building fishing experience into the tying of an Atlantic Salmon fly, or to be more specific creating an effective but durable salmon fishing fly? From my experience of Ghillying for many years on a prolific Irish river system, and fishing successfully in Scotland and the North of England, I know that some importance should be placed on salmon fly choice. How they are tied matters.
"There is an indescribable something about a fly dressed by an expert amateur who is a practical salmon fisherman which the fly dressed by a non-angling professional frequently lacks." - T.E. Pryce-Tannatt.
Salmon and Grilse take a wide variety of offerings at times. Mainly due to the fact that anything resisting a flow or crossing a flow, or indeed moving downstream faster than the flow, or moving across as it drops back wth the current is going to give some impression of life to the fish, otherwise it would not be able to resist the current or move across a current or ahead of a current.
Its not just as simple as what some fish will take at times however. What matters is what more fish will be attracted by and take, or what is more likely to create a positive response in a given set of circumstances and conditions. What is known and well proven from experience to be more consistently successful in certain circumstances.
Resistance to the current is but one factor and there is often much more to it than that. A fly can look unnatural resisting a current if it is the wrong size or profile for the flow. How the fly actually appears in profile for the speed of the current is an important factor, (or indeed for the fly's own water speed that it is fished at which is a different thing). The current influences the ideal proportions and profile of the fly as it has influence on the water speed it will be used at.
The suitability of the materials used in the tying for the type of fly and proportions in relation to the hook will dictate how well the fly sits or swims in the water. Proportions must also be used for consistent fly size change, and recognition by the angler then of the right sizes for the water heights and conditions or time of the season.
I offer a range of mainstay proven salmon and grilse patterns on reliable hooks and on tubes. Single and Double hooks only. Partridge Salars in black, silver and gold. Partridge Standard Code P doubles. Loop doubles for those going to Russia or who prefer them for heavier water fishing in spring or autumn. Bottle Tubes, Aluminium, and Copper tubes, hard plastic tubes, Cone head tubes.
Simply try some and compare the quality and durability to others. Make up your own mind.
All salmon flies are hand tied, there are no machines for tying flies - at least so far as I am aware. Hence you can witness advertisements for any salmon flies produced anywhere using the phrases 'hand tied' or 'hand crafted by craftsmen.' It is a fairly meaningless phrase.
Fortunately I learned my salmon angling, salmon fly-tying and material dying in really serious custom fly-tying country and Irish shrimp fly country, the Foyle system in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland salmon flies mattered and mattered greatly. Tying both trout and salmon flies was, and still is, a local and highly regarded tradition in Ireland. One had to effectively serve a long apprenticeship learning the necessary skills before one would be considered as a serious salmon fly tyer of fishing flies in the North. I am not talking of anything but fishing flies.
Anglers, material dyers and tyers on rivers like the Faughan produced some of the mainstay traditional Irish Shrimp patterns, many of which are used to this day and many of which also spawned a whole host of successful variants. All the tying was for wild fish fishing, river and Lough wild brown trout, sea trout and Atlantic salmon and grilse. The colours used, durability, proportions, mobility, material and hook choice were of importance. The importance placed on these things by locals would often not seem to have the same relevance to others or the perceived wisdom from some sources where we would hear strange reports like - colour doesn't matter. We had arrived at other conclusions.
Of course the apprenticeship would be good fun and you would have to take a little bit of stick from time to time as people would pull your leg mercilessly, perhaps telling you that the head on your fly reminded them of their young labrador pup.
The idea among Irish custom salmon fly tyers is that if it mattered then you had it covered, on the days when some of these things were not so important as they could be, having them covered may not have mattered on that day, however your fly was certainly no worse for the care involved in its making and the attention to colour, proportion and material choice. Then on the days when it did matter you were already well prepared for that. The only enemy those custom tied flies have is poor casting and placing them in bushes or the bottom of the river, other than that they will be used and catch fish for a very long time. That is what represents real value, durability.
Sometimes people would find out that some things can matter greatly. When salmon keenly take the ruby claret dyed feathers used in Northern Shrimp flies while at the same time ignoring the normal matt and dark claret - the lifeless claret equivalent of Navy Blue. That dark matt type of claret colour is not used in the Foyle system. The grilse in low water taking in preference the soft tailed small shrimp flies tied from selected feathers while largely ignoring small shrimp flies tied with stiff tail feathers. There is then the aspect of durability in that when you find a good taking fly and have caught a couple of fish on it and have confidence in it, you can then keep catching on the fly as it stays intact, perhaps sometimes taking up to twenty fish or more on the one fly. There was no such thing as taking a couple of fish on a fly to then find it coming apart, every fly was custom tied by local tyers and as far as I was aware nobody at that time used anything else.
I have occasionally seen some very experienced older anglers look at the fly in the water at the side of the river before deciding whether or not to fish with it, on more than one occasion then take it off due to the fact that they considered that it wasn't a good fly because it wasn't sitting or swimming right. It wasn't right due to proportions or density of dressing.
Fortunately I learned my salmon angling, salmon fly-tying and material dying in really serious custom fly-tying country and Irish shrimp fly country, the Foyle system in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland salmon flies mattered and mattered greatly. Tying both trout and salmon flies was, and still is, a local and highly regarded tradition in Ireland. One had to effectively serve a long apprenticeship learning the necessary skills before one would be considered as a serious salmon fly tyer of fishing flies in the North. I am not talking of anything but fishing flies.
Anglers, material dyers and tyers on rivers like the Faughan produced some of the mainstay traditional Irish Shrimp patterns, many of which are used to this day and many of which also spawned a whole host of successful variants. All the tying was for wild fish fishing, river and Lough wild brown trout, sea trout and Atlantic salmon and grilse. The colours used, durability, proportions, mobility, material and hook choice were of importance. The importance placed on these things by locals would often not seem to have the same relevance to others or the perceived wisdom from some sources where we would hear strange reports like - colour doesn't matter. We had arrived at other conclusions.
Of course the apprenticeship would be good fun and you would have to take a little bit of stick from time to time as people would pull your leg mercilessly, perhaps telling you that the head on your fly reminded them of their young labrador pup.
The idea among Irish custom salmon fly tyers is that if it mattered then you had it covered, on the days when some of these things were not so important as they could be, having them covered may not have mattered on that day, however your fly was certainly no worse for the care involved in its making and the attention to colour, proportion and material choice. Then on the days when it did matter you were already well prepared for that. The only enemy those custom tied flies have is poor casting and placing them in bushes or the bottom of the river, other than that they will be used and catch fish for a very long time. That is what represents real value, durability.
Sometimes people would find out that some things can matter greatly. When salmon keenly take the ruby claret dyed feathers used in Northern Shrimp flies while at the same time ignoring the normal matt and dark claret - the lifeless claret equivalent of Navy Blue. That dark matt type of claret colour is not used in the Foyle system. The grilse in low water taking in preference the soft tailed small shrimp flies tied from selected feathers while largely ignoring small shrimp flies tied with stiff tail feathers. There is then the aspect of durability in that when you find a good taking fly and have caught a couple of fish on it and have confidence in it, you can then keep catching on the fly as it stays intact, perhaps sometimes taking up to twenty fish or more on the one fly. There was no such thing as taking a couple of fish on a fly to then find it coming apart, every fly was custom tied by local tyers and as far as I was aware nobody at that time used anything else.
I have occasionally seen some very experienced older anglers look at the fly in the water at the side of the river before deciding whether or not to fish with it, on more than one occasion then take it off due to the fact that they considered that it wasn't a good fly because it wasn't sitting or swimming right. It wasn't right due to proportions or density of dressing.
