The Bigger They Are The Ardea They Fall                                Dries         Wets         Nymphs      Spiders

Dry Flies            Olives and Midges            Iron Blues            Sedges

Grannom

The Grannom (Brachycentrus subnubilis) is the first sedge fly of real importance to appear in the spring.  It tends to appear in April and the hatch last 10 days or so.  It prefers medium paced chalk streams and rain fed rivers and one bonus is that there are not other sedges around at this time so general any small sedge pattern will do.  On chalk streams the larvae congregate around reed beds whereas on stony rivers the glides are better places to fish in a hatch.

Halford’s Grannom

Halford’s dry fly version of the Grannom.

Halford notes that, ‘An even better body for this fly is obtained by selecting a strand of condor pinion-feather, which is nearly white at the point and shading into a dark slate-colour at the root; the longer flue is then stripped off the dark portion of this strand only, and the whole dyed in No. V [grannom green].

The light un-stripped part, which shows distinctly the green colour of the dye, is worked at the tail-end to form the eggs, and the darker portion the body of the fly.

The wings of the Grannom when first hatched are quite pale, but darken considerably from exposure to the air.

The trout, however, invariably prefer the newly-hatched flies, so that it is most necessary to dress them with the palest wings possible.’

Russell’s Grannom

Another fly from the late Pat Russell who was based in Romsey.  This fly was invent to specifically imitate the mated female which has a green egg sac carried under the abdomen.  Hence the green wool tag – it is interesting to note that Halford also put a tag of green ostrich herl so was probably trying to imitate the same arrangement.

Hair-winged Heron

D.W. Roxborough in his undated pamphlet ‘A Brief Guide To The Hill Loch Fishing Of Gairloch and District ’describes the following pattern (unfortunately not in great detail and with some vital information missing) and also does not give it a name or an originator other than to say it is a local pattern which fishes well whenever there is a hatch of up-wings (Pond olives – Cleon dipterum).  Therefore I have filled in the blanks in the original pattern and given it the name of Hair winged heron as it is the only hair winged fly that I have discovered that uses heron herl as well.  NB – Make sure you Watershed/Gink/Silicone the squirrel hair (but not the body) very well before tying it in.  If I had one improvement for this fly it would be to improve its floatability by tying in an under-wing of CdC below the squirrel.

Grouse Wing Sedge

The following is an Irish pattern to imitate the diminutive Grouse wing sedge, Mystacides longicornis. It also serves also for any other small sedges with grey, light-splashed wings.

Silver Sedge

Another Irish pattern, this time imitating one of the Silver Sedges most likely, Lepidostoma hirtum.