Hi,

I posted a report of my recent fishing trip in the ?reports? section, but wanted to post a slightly different report here. Basically, I?ve been involved in a number of threads and discussions about various wet flies, and I just wanted to list the patterns that I found effective on this last trip. These results represent only those fish brought to hand by myself, my Dad, and my wife and doesn?t count the numerous hook ups and strikes that we all had as well.

My best fish came on a fairly standard size 12 beaded pheasant tail nymph. This was a 52 cm, 1.8 kg (approx 20.5?, 4 lbs) rainbow. This came from a deep pool at the mouth of the Waiteti river as it enters into Lake Rotorua. This is no where near an exceptional fish for this fishery (where 10+ lbs fish are caught, if not regularly, certainly not infrequently either).

In the same spot I also hooked up (but busted off) on a ?bluenose squirrel tail?, which is one of the first patterns I designed. (thread black, red tail, olive body, copper rib, grey squirrel tail wing, blue and olive hackle collar ? two feathers one of each colour).

Now, after that, we fished in a few smaller rivers, and this is where the action was. The fish are smaller, but more plentiful, in both the Waihou and Waimakiriri streams. Typical fish size is about 20 cm (7-8 inches). The rivers are faster flowing and, personally, more to my taste.

Anyway, we did well with the following list of spiders:
2 on Bettly Blues (which I call because I was introduced to them by our own Betty Hiner)
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... tyBlue.jpg

2 on a Water Cricket flymph (adapted from Pritt?s Water Cricket spider)
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... mphjpg.jpg

2 on a Stewart?s Black Spider:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... r_dark.jpg

2 on an Orange Water Cricket (the link shows a yellow one Pritt lists both yellow and orange body colours):
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... ricket.jpg

and also

1 on a Winter Brown:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... rBrown.jpg

And, from the discussions on Flymphs (closely related to spiders of course)

1 on a blue flymph:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... Flymph.jpg

and 1 on a gray and French flymph, which I don?t have a photo for

I?ve become interested in flies with two colours for the body. I tried a few, and had some luck with these:

1 on a Harlequin:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... laquin.jpg

and

1 on a Jock:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... m/Jock.jpg

And, being one to fish some well known classic wet fly patterns (well, ones I think of as classics anyway) these all brought fish to hand as well:

1 on a Royal Coachman:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... achman.jpg

1 on a Peter Ross:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... erRoss.jpg

2 on a March Brown:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... hBrown.jpg

2 on a Parmachene Belle:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... _Belle.jpg

Finally, awhile back I posted some New Zealand patterns, and I tied one of them on and shortly there after brought a decent sized (for the river) fish to hand on this purple Fuzzy Wuzzy.

1 on a Purple Fuzzy Wuzzy:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... y_sz10.jpg

I intended, but forgot, to try out some of the pukeko flies and some Tummel-style patterns. So, those experiments await until a future date. Hopefully, not too long from now, but who knows?.

Fun stuff!

- Jeff