MY TOP SIX STREAM FLIES
Text and photos by Darryl Lampert
Most flies I fish nowadays have a couple of things in common. They are:
- Quick to tie - in other words, I am lazy and don’t want to spend a lot of time on something that is more likely to end up in a tree than in a trout’s mouth.
- Buggy - I don’t tie very well so most of my flies tend to look like balls of fluff. I do however believe that movement is key in fly patterns, which is why so many of the patterns I fish incorporate CDC.
- Evolution - I find tying the same pattern all the time boring and also think that the more a pattern is fished on catch and release waters, the less effective it becomes. In order to counteract the boredom I experiment with changing patterns and this also helps with staying ahead in the arms race on C&R waters.
CDC & Elk (Klippies & Gans)
Over the last couple of years my fishing and tying has become extremely technical. I walk down to the water carefully, measure the air and water temps, take a barometric reading, measure the wind speed and direction, measure the water depth and current speed, turn over some rocks and check the insect life, seine the river to see what is in the drift, open my fly box and then tie on a CDC & Elk having taken all of these factors into account.
Hans Weilenmann has come up with a very good fly, but I tend to butcher it in the way I tie it. I tie these flies with a number of variations, from adding tags, adding rubber legs to make CDC & Elk Hoppers, adding flash legs and a couple of other combinations. I have been fishing them for several years and coined the name “Klippies and Gans” for a South African version which uses hair from a Klipspringer (rock jumper antelope) in place of the Elk Hair and CDC from an Egyptian Goose (Gans in Afrikaans). The Klipspringer hair is thick, hollow and floats very well. They work well on our freestone streams in the Western Cape, are easy to see with Klipspringer or a bleached Elk Hair or Coastal Deer Hair wing and will easily float a small weighted nymph beneath them – something I do often.
The remaining five patterns are in no particular order.
HiVis CDC Midge
This is a pattern I developed a couple of years ago to imitate the Net-winged midge (Blephariceridae sp) hatch on the Elandspad river. Early to mid-morning these midges swarm low over the water and the fish go dilly jumping around trying to catch them. It can be a very frustrating time for the angler as the fish key in on these small black midges that are usually flying a centimetre or two above the water. Most patterns that sit too low in the water are ignored and you typically need something small to imitate these midges, which means seeing the pattern can be problematic. This pattern looks like a ball of fluff and has been called that by several of my angling companions. What can’t be ignored is the fact that the pattern often works when more imitative patterns have been ignored. The Fluorescent Red Antron post makes the pattern highly visible, a bonus when tied small or fished in tricky lighting conditions. The palmered CDC causes the pattern to sit on tiptoes, hiding the hook and providing a footprint of light which to me is a far better imitation of a dancing midge or mayfly when seen from a trout’s perspective. The natural movement of the CDC is obviously also a trigger and aids in a far gentler presentation when compared to conventionally hackled patterns. The pattern has accounted for a lot of my larger fish and besides a number of different freshwater species; it has also been effective when targeting surface feeding mullet in the surf.
Mullet caught on a Ji-vis CDC midge!
CDC Mayfly
This is a pattern that I have been fishing with some success for the last couple of seasons. The pattern was developed by MC Coetzer a local angler and was based on a pattern he saw tied by one of the junior Slovakian competitive fly-fisherman (Vlado Ligda) who visited South Africa last year. MC modified the pattern to make it look prettier and float better and I tied and fished the pattern like this for a couple of months. All of MC’s flies are tied better and fish better than anyone else I know; hopefully he will also be asked to contribute to this list. I then started tinkering with it and came up with a version that doesn’t float as well, but presents more delicately and provides a slimmer profile. On a recent outing with my good friend Denton Ingham-Brown, he called this fly a sniper’s rifle. I was fishing a modified CDC & Elk (Flashgun) which Denton calls my shotgun approach (as I scatter the fly over all likely looking water) and the fish would either eat the Flashgun or show themselves and turn down at the last moment. If they turned down and rejected the Flashgun, then a quick change to the CDC Mayfly (Sniper Rifle) would raise them a second time and deceive them. You may ask why I don’t just fish the CDC Mayfly first? I find that in a lot of cases you may not even raise a fish on a smaller pattern and the Flashgun acts as a good attractor to bring the fish up and show themselves. A lot of people don’t like fishing CDC flies as they find them too much effort to clean and treat after taking a fish. I am never in a rush when fishing and find that the effectiveness of CDC patterns more than makes up for the extra effort required when fishing them.
CDC Nymph
This is an extremely simple pattern to tie when using the original recipe which consists of a single CDC feather, a hook and an orange tungsten bead. It perfectly imitates the Cape Orange-headed Tadpole which is found in most of our rivers plus a number of other insect species. Over the years I have had good feedback from a number of anglers using this pattern and have personally caught several species on it including Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Smallmouth and Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth and Largemouth Yellowfish, Mudfish, Clanwilliam Yellowfish, Clanwilliam Sawfin, Sharptooth Catfish, Carp, Cape Kurper, Redfins and several small saltwalter species. Apparently the Cape Orange Headed Tadpole heads out to sea for part of its lifecycle before heading back into freshwater to moult into an adult frog. This could account for the patterns effectiveness in saltwater. As with most of my patterns it has now evolved to include materials like Coq de Leon, thin rubber legs, flash, various shades of dubbing and ribbing plus a variety of different coloured tungsten beads. I suggest you try the original before mucking about with it too much.
CDC nymph variation
“Czech” Nymph
A couple of years ago, Jiri Pejchar from the Czech Republic came out to South Africa and gave a fly tying demo at the Cape Piscatorial Society clubroom. He tied several patterns but the one that really caught my eye was one he tied on a Jiri Klima Compact Weighted Nymph Hook (also known as a micro nymph hook). The pattern looked like a perfect imitation of a baetis nymph and I bought a couple of boxes of the hooks from Jiri Pejchar and convinced him to part with the tying demo fly. I tied up some when I got home that night and fished them the following weekend. I was blown away by the effectiveness of the pattern and it has been my nymph pattern of choice since then, particularly when fished as a dropper.
Like most of the patterns I fish, I modified Jiri’s original fly and now tie a couple of different versions of this pattern. I prefer slimmer bodies on my baetis imitations and will often tie these with a plain thread body, some incorporating flash and thin rubber tails and some without. This pattern’s shape and weighting allows it to pierce the surface film and sink into the fishing zone quicker than similarly weighted tungsten beaded flies. It also “swims” in a more realistic fashion compared to round beaded flies and can be deadly if fished with some induced movement when drag free drifts have failed to illicit a take.
The Silver Bullet
The first five patterns were fairly easy to come up with as I fish them all the time. The sixth pattern is a tricky one as it could be a hopper, para-RAB, RAB, soft hackle, CDC beetle, ant, Woolly Bugger, Fritz or one of the many other patterns that appear on my tippet from time to time. So for my last pattern I would like to introduce the ultimate fly: The Silver Bullet – Presentation!!
Darryl Lampert
