Grayling Techniques Flies etc.. Second Part. Techniques "Czech nymphing", and the old traditional "Down and across", with a team of spiders will also often prove successful for grayling. Nowadays, I invariably use a single fly only. Most of the waters I fish only allow one fly in any case. Whether one fishes upstream or down, is largely dictated by the terrain here. I actually prefer to fish downstream usually, as it tends to be more successful, especially when fishing a shoal. On occasion, dry-fly fishing is better upstream. Sight fishing with nymphs is rarely possible where I fish, and is seldom done. One thing that should be remembered is that grayling will hardly ever feed in cloudy or coloured water. At least not on flies! Larger grayling specimens tend to be solitary, and territorial, and will usually be found in deep pools, often under tree roots and the like, where they rarely rise to take floating flies, and it is necessary to go deep for them. Heavily weighted flies are often required for this. Tungsten beadhead hare´s ears and similar flies are popular choices. My own choice for this, is either the "creeper" described below, or a very heavily weighted shrimp pattern. Very often, a large woolly bugger will work very well! I have had a lot of success for large grayling, often well in excess of fifty centimetres, with a Woolly Bugger tied using a hare fur base, a grizzly cock hackle, and a short bright green tail. One may also use peacock herl for the base body. I also tie some with red tails. But although they catch fish as well, they are nowhere near as successful as the green tailed variants. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember why I tried the green tails. Doubtless I had a reason for doing so, but I failed to note it at the time, and it now escapes me. Whatever the reason may have been, it was a good idea! I seem to vaguely remember catching a lot of grayling with a lot of green stuff in their guts, and this may have been the reason, but I really can no longer remember. The small mouth myth Over the years, many angling writers have maintained that grayling have small mouths. To be honest, I can not imagine how this impression arose. One very successful technique here for large grayling, is to use a well-weighted size 6 long shank hook overwound with herl, and a black or brown head hackle. Some people prefer a grey wool body, and a grey hen or partridge hackle. Such a fly was also often used on some rivers in the UK years ago, and was called a "creeper" The fish seem to have no trouble taking it. The Woolly Buggers I mentioned above are also on size 6 long shanks. Years ago, when I fished in the UK, the standard rod for most river fly-fishing was a nine foot #6 weight. This is actually rather heavy for most stream fishing, and I prefer to use a #3 weight for grayling fishing, and indeed most of my other stream fishing nowadays. Long casts are very rarely needed on the streams I most often fish, a thirty-foot cast being a long one! I usually use a #4 DT silk line on this rig. It casts better, and the presentation is better than with plastic. Grayling here (North of Germany) grow larger than those in the UK. I have no idea why this is so. A one-pound grayling in some English streams would be a very nice fish, but is only average here. Stealth! Grayling are not as easily spooked as trout, although stealth is still of course required. Many times, I have been standing still in the stream, and looking down, have noted grayling finning near my feet. I have never experienced this with trout. Anybody watching would doubtless have been highly amused at my ridiculous contortions in an attempt to catch such fish! Some day I will maybe even manage it! As far as fly-patterns go, I would be more than happy with a selection of the patterns mentioned, and I don´t bother with lots of fancy flies. In England I used to carry a fair range of "fancy" grayling flies, but they were never as successful as the ones I use now. One very popular fly, the "grayling bug" using the famed "Chadwick´s 477" wool, caught me quite a few fish in England, but I now use a simple hare fur bug instead, where such might prove useful, and have noticed no drop in catches. This is just a relatively heavily weighted size 14 or 12 hook relatively thickly dubbed with hare body fur, which I mix so that it has a sort of "fawny pink" colour. No hackle, tail etc, ribbed tightly with wire, either copper or brass (“gold"!), and then well brushed out with a piece of velcro to the form of a "shrimp". OK, we've all done it. read a book or a magazine article about some clever-shite who wanders around getting paid for catching fish. Often large ones, in interesting and exotic places, which we will never ever see. Wonderful pictures of various stream and river-scapes, and fantastic fish are depicted, perhaps a re-hash of some tactic or other we have all heard a hundred times before, a list of flies, some technical information on lines or rods etc, and that was it. Always disappoints the hell out of me in the end! Although I keep reading them all, or at least as many as I can afford! Long ago, I decided that if I could not visit all these places, then I must find a way of catching such fish and enjoying myself close to home. The reason I explain this, is that anybody reading this can do exactly the same. It requires some application and knowledge, but once you have this, you can not fail. The result is inevitable. After all we are only trying to fool a fish, this is not quantum mechanics. As I mentioned in a previous article, in my opinion #6 weight rods are far too heavy for most stream fishing, and most especially for grayling fishing. "Oh of course", everybody doubtless thought at the time, and continued reading avidly, as they would also like to catch lovely fish on light gear, and then went on to wonder how I manage to cast a size six long shank weighted Woolly bugger, green tailed or otherwise, with such a rod. Well, I will let you into a little secret. Just like all the other clever-shites, I cheat! There is no way you are going to be able to cast such a heavily weighted and wind resistant fly using a standard #3 weight set-up. It is pointless even trying, you will cry tears of frustration, and if the rod does not shatter the first time the heavy fly hits it, then you will doubtless break it across your knee, and curse the fool who ever suggested such a thing to oblivion and worse. There is however an extremely simple and effective trick which will allow you to cast such a monstrosity, in the manner I will presently describe, without any trouble at all, to the everlasting amazement of your angling companions, (who don't know the trick yet), and hopefully the inevitable downfall of large numbers of nice fish. This trick is absolutely germane to many of the techniques I use, I could not possibly do without it, and if forced to, I would probably not catch very much, certainly not many very large grayling. to be continued

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