We’re off to Eyebrook and Rutland next week for the annual Beardy Bros 3 day fishathon so over the past week I’ve been looking for ideas on spring fly patterns and what type of flies might work well for April/May on large still waters and reservoirs. The Eyebrook website has lots of info and is one of the best fly fishing venue website I’ve seen. It gives you information on all the bank locations, how to fish them and what to use and there’s also a page on which flies work well at Eyebrook. Perfect!
Rutland on the other hand has almost none of that type of information so I was left trawling through blogs and forums looking for those little nuggets of information. To be honest, they were pretty hard to find, but with a bit of work, past knowledge and common sense I managed to come up with a short list of possible flies…
Buzzers – At this time of year its got to be buzzers. Eyebrook has some good suggestions and most people in the know seem to go for good old black buzzers early in the season. Some variations with green and orange cheeks also seem to come up a lot. I went for a few variations of standard buzzers as well as some hot head style to use on the point if the fish are a bit deeper.
Emergers – If buzzer hatches are going to be in full swing then a good set of emerged patterns will come in handy. I decided to go for a range of shipmans buzzers, which I realised I didn’t have in my fly box at all, some Klinkhammer variations and some CDC style nymphs which should cover most uses. The shipmans also work well for mimicking terrestrial insects such as the Hawthorn fly as well as emerging buzzers so should be a good all-rounder to have at this time of year.
Corixia – I’ve had a few of these in my fly box for years but very rarely use them. They’ve been in there so long the threads are coming apart now! Corixia are one of those patterns that I hear about a lot but have never really tried to fish with properly. Eyebrook is supposed to be very good for Corixia close in to the bank and reed beds so I decided to give them a proper try and tied up a couple of variations. Its always exciting to try a new fly and not just rely on the bog standard buzzer so I’m looking forward to trying these. They might also come in useful on my local water which can be very tough at times. I’m beginning to wonder if more natural patterns such as Corixia and hoglice might be good ones to try there when there’s no sign of fish on top.
Hawthorn and Mayflies – It might be a bit early for Mayflies but with English weather you never know what might happen. If there Mayflies aren’t around then Hawthorns might be. I cheated with these and bought a couple of nice ones but the Klinkhammers and Shipmans will also work well as Hawthorn imitations.
I’m sure there are lots of other flies that will work and on the day I’m sure I’ll be trying more but these seemed to be the top choices. Now all I have to do is turn all this vice time into a weekend of stunning fishing next week!