Nick Thomas has once again come up with an innovative and different fly pattern for ESF readers
This is a streamer, but not a normal streamer for casting and stripping back on a sinking line. This one is designed to fished in a different way; on a short line exploring deep runs, around rocks and along undercut banks, working and steering the fly with the rod tip. Tied on a jig hook with a heavy tungsten bead and a slim streamlined profile, the Diawl Trwm gets down to the river bed quickly and then worked to imitate a small fish or fry struggling in the current and vulnerable to being nailed by a predator. It's a great fly for fishing tight situations where casting is difficult; just the places that larger cautious fish are likely to hang out.
Fishing large streamers for big trout in rivers doesn't seem to be a very favoured approach in the UK in contrast to the US and elsewhere. On reservoirs and lakes yes; they are slung out as lures and yanked back with great abandon. On rivers, no; there is an impression that it's 'just not the done thing'. As Charles Jardine says in his book ‘Flies, Ties & Techniques’, when talking about Oliver Edwards' sculpin streamer; "people have been known to be in fear of their lives for using anything slightly larger than a caddis on many UK rivers". Even while the contributors to ESF are, I would imagine, a fairly progressive and open minded bunch of anglers, I can find only one article in the 62 issues to date that focuses on streamer fishing, and that was from an angler in Bulgaria.
Apart from the strange notion that large flies imitating fish are ethically dubious, their relative lack of use may be due to the tackle required to effectively fish such big flies using standard methods. Casting a large streamer pattern needs a reasonably heavy rod, say a 6wt or 7wt, particularly if the fly is heavily weighted. This, coupled with the usual advice to use a sinking or a sink tip line, generally means that an angler venturing out with rod, reel and line for a day streamer fishing is pretty much constrained to doing just that. If the fish are taking nymphs or start to rise there's not much chance of delicately offering them a small dry fly or subtly drifting a duo rig down the current if all the gear is designed to sink like a stone.
I designed the Diawl Trwm for fishing on the lighter 3wt and 4wt rods I use for river fishing. With a furled leader looped to my fly line I can easily switch back and forth between a single dry fly, a duo rig, a pair of nymphs or fishing the Diawl Trwm. I'll usually fish this fly with a small nymph on a dropper about a foot above. The pair of flies then give the impression of a small fish struggling in the current to catch a natural nymph. Sometimes the larger fish I'm after take the big fly and sometimes the smaller one. I don't mind.
This fly got its name from a chance encounter on the river. I was testing the new design at Llandaff one day, working my way up the edge of a current seam, when another angler appeared around the bend ahead of me and we both waded to the bank for a chat. The conversation turned, as it usually does on these occasions, to what flies were working that day. I'd already had a couple of good fish on the new fly, so I unhooked it from the keeper ring and dropped into his hand. He bounced it up and down on his palm and whistled. "That's a heavy devil for sure. What's it called?" I admitted that I hadn't come up with a decent name for it, but I had one now.
Hook Hanak H450BL size 10 or Partridge Patriot Jig Size 8
Bead Tungsten 4.7mm
Thread Uni 6/0 black
Tail Organza ribbon 12mm
Body Organza ribbon 12mm
Eye Acrylic paint
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Cut a length of organza ribbon 1cm longer than you want the tail to be. Cut the ribbon diagonally to yield two equally sized triangular pieces.
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Strip out all the longitudinal fibres from each piece.
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Trim away the short fibres from 1cm at the thick end of each section to create tying in tags.
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Place the bead on the hook, run on the thread and take down to the bend in touching turns. Tie in the tails on either side of the bend and bind down the tag ends.
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Pinch the ends of the tail pieces together and grasp in metal hackle pliers or forceps a short distance from the ends. Briefly heat the ends with a flame and hold together until the melted section cools and the two ends are welded together.
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Cut a six-inch length of black organza, trim to the same width as the hook gape and strip out the long fibres. Trim the short fibres at one end, tie in by the tag at the bend and bind down along the shank. Wind the organza up the shank to the bead, tie in and trim away the excess. Coat the thread with superglue and whip finish. Add a dot of paint to each side of the bead and allow to dry. Varnish the head.
This simple black version of the Diawl Trwm is my favourite, but much variation is possible should you desire it. Check out the article 'Get Your OJO Working' in ESF #33 for examples of the effects you can get by winding different colours of organza together. The example below was tied using two strands of tan coloured organza with a section of black ribbon sandwiched between for the tail. The body was formed by co-winding the same two colours up the hook shank, followed by two turns of red organza to simulate the gills of a small fish and finished with a few wraps of black ribbon.
Fishing the Diawl Trwm is essentially a variant of Czech nymphing. I use a 4-foot furled leader and 6-8 feet of level tippet with a dropper about a foot above the point fly. With a few feet of fly line out of the tip ring the rig is lobbed upstream and allowed to sink until I can feel the heavy tungsten bead bouncing along the bottom (A). The flies are allowed to dead drift on a tight line with the occasional lift of the tracking rod tip to jig the flies up and down (B). This action simulates the action of a small fish or fry that's moved out of its comfort zone under or behind a rock in pursuit of food only to find itself struggling in a current it can't cope with and is being swept downstream until it can regain the safety of the river bed. Once the leader has drifted downstream and the pressure of the flow on the line begins to lift the flies (C), I sweep the rod tip round towards the near bank in a series of twitches, again with the aim imitating the erratic movements of a disorientated fish. The process is then repeated with the flies lobbed to a different spot and guided along a new path.
As well as targeting big trout this fly and fishing method is ideal for other predatory species like chub and perch, particularly when they are hanging out in their favourite snaggy habitats among reeds and branches or under overhanging banks where casting a conventional streamer is problematic. Stealthy stalking followed by a well placed short lob upstream and careful guidance of the fly as it drifts down on a short line has got me some specimen fish from some very tight spots where I couldn't control a streamer cast from any distance away.
Nick Thomas lives in South Wales. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs many years ago and continues to design, tie and fish flies for trout, grayling, carp, bass and anything else that’s going.