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Brassie-
Hook: Tiemco
TMC 100 Dry Fly Hook or similar
Thread:
Red 8/0 Uni-Thread
Body:
Fine Copper Wire
Legs:
Pheasant Tail fibre tips
Head:
Red 8/0 Uni-Thread
| 1/ Tie
in the thread at the rear of the hook. Tie in a piece
of copper wire protruding out to the back of the fly.
Then wrap a base of thread back along the hook shank
until you reach the hook eye. This is about the easiest
pattern you will ever attempt to tie. |
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| 2/ Very
gently grasp the fine and delicate wire and begin winding
up the hook towards the thread. Each successive wrap
should bed down snugly against the previous one. This
gives us a heavily segmented, aesthetically pleasing
fly. When you reach the thread tie off and trim the
excess wire and move onto the next step. |
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| 3/ The
last of the actual steps involves tying in the 'legs'
on the underside of the fly. Take a small section of
fibres from a pheasant tail and tie in as shown, with
tips just about touching the barb of the hook. Trim
the excess at the but ends and add a turn of thread
to hide the cut. |
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| 4/ Finally
add a few more wraps of thread to build the head of
the fly up slightly. Do a couple of half-hitches to
make sure it all stays together and then cut your thread.
There you have a very simple yet effective pattern for
fishing many of our cold-water tailraces during the
midge hatch. That is most of the year. |
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The Pattern
The brassie is about as unassuming
a fly pattern as you are ever likely to find. If you fished
a season in the Western USA you would soon get to know this
pattern intimately. Everyone has a few dozen in their boxes
with all sorts of variations on colour. A dubbed black head
being very popular also. It is fished in most tailwaters with
great success and seeks to imitate a midge larva free drifting
in the water column prior to emergence. These cold water rivers
provide the ideal habitat, and the Goulburn with its cold
flows and in places mud and weed bottom is ideal for midge.
So we fish this critter fairly
regularly. Often clients don't want to fish something so small
but this quickly changes when it catches a fish or two. As
midge are the most prevalent insect in the Goulburn you should
always be ready to fish this hatch and more importantly be
capable of interpreting when it is actually happening. Two
times of note are in September-November and April until the
close of the season. During these low flow periods the Goulburn
experiences brilliant hatches of midge and some big fish will
selectively rise to them. At this time of year you should
not venture out onto the G without some brassies.
We have found that they are best
fished in tandem with a small dry fly pattern that also fits
in with the midge hatch. The Goulburn Griffiths or Griffiths
Gnat are two examples of must-have dry flies If you are serious
about catching fish at this time of year tie some up or purchase
some. If not keep presenting parachute duns and caddis to
these fish and be prepared to fail. Larger fish get that way
not because they are smart but because they aggressively feed
when the hatch is at its peak, concentrating on the insect
that is appearing in the greatest numbers. As such it is next
to impossible to tempt a fish rising to midges with a fly
that is too large. Flies must be kept down in the 18-22 size
range.
Midge larva are mostly found
near the stream bottom and that is why I don't see this pattern
as a strict imitator. It works better for us near to the surface
suggesting that it is more a generalist pattern capable of
loosely imitating a larva/pupa and possibly other sub-aquatic
insects. However in the right hands it is deadly fished near
the streambed and this is how most of our american clients
insist on fishing it. You may think that a fly that small
would never get down to the bottom, but the combination of
wire body and no bulk allow it to reach the bottom very quickly.
We mostly fish the brassie no
more than a foot below the dry and often only 3-6 inches.
There it sits suspended below the dry drifting in the bubble
line. Takes are ever so subtle and the dry will just dip under.
You should lift but not strike. We often use very fine tippets
in the 6X-7X class and these are easily broken with an enthusiastic
strike. We often hook larger fish when this hatch is on. Roger,
a regular visitor and syndicate member at GVFFC hooked and
released a 5lb brown during the midge hatches last spring.
If you would like a demonstration
of how to tie this fly or its dry cousin the Goulburn Griffiths,
just ask next time you are in the shop. But as you can see
it is pretty simple.
~Antony |