Adult damsel fly

[mot]

I heard that at the venue I plan to fish on Sunday the fish have been feeding on adult damsels, quite unusual I think. Anyway, I didn't have anything suitable so I knocked these up from some foam, I'll do some sandy ones in the same style for the females. Hard to keep them thin enough in the body with foam, this is about the smallest I could achieve.

I've done the glass of water test and they sit nice and low like a drowned adult would, so I'm quite pleased with the result. I'm also experimenting with ways to accentuate the black banding on the body, as I think the naturals have much more black. I'll post the results if successful.




Cheers
Mot

[tinsoldier]

nice flies but its one ive never had much luck with

[wobbly face]

They look good mot.
Saw Johan Put tie some up at BFFI last weekend. He used short legnth of dry fly line for the body, nice and slime, coloured with permanent marker pen. Had clear plastic wings, his own design with pattern on wings which again can be coloured to suite naturals.

[Chelsea123]

Nice looking flies those,tried a few different adult damsel patterns over the yrs but don't think ive had a single fish on one

Neil

[flytier07]

I've never had a chance to use dry damsels over here, but they work very well on bass and panfish in america. Used to land one on a lily pad, then leave it a minute or so before pulling it into the water. Whenever I could do that a good sized bass or big bluegill sunfish would be onto it almost before it touched the water. Used it where there were trout, but never had one on the pattern.

[mot]

Thanks for the comments chaps. I remain rather sceptical myself, but I'd be kicking myself if I went and it turned out they were going nuts for the adults. I'll need some convincing to tie one on on Sunday though. I'll report back how it goes

[dwillis]

I was at Elinor on Monday on a rare hot still day - there were trout feeding on the top and leaping out of the water. There were also lots of adult damsels about. It took a while before I put a dry damsel on as I was also quite sceptical and I could not actually see any adults in the water - but the first fish I caught had a large ball of half digested adult damsels in its stomach. I should probably have gone with the dry damsel sooner - and this weeks Elinor report suggests others had already worked out the obvious. Your patterns look more convincing than the one I used so they should work in the right conditions.

I found this thread from last year:

adult Damsel Fly

Consensus seems to be that they are not actually spent adults but they sometimes either get trapped in the film - it was a soupy kind of day - or they get low enough for the trout to come out of the water at them.

Dave

[mot]

Thanks Dave, that gives me a bit of confidence. Whether they will still be on them by Sunday is anyone's guess but at least I'm armed and ready

[silver creek]

I will let my friends across the pond in a secret known by damsel fishers in the colonies.

The best damsel pattern I have is the Borger Braided Butt Damsel

Tying instructions are below:

Gary Borger » Braided Butt Damsel

FFF Fly Tying Group Membership Page

Some tiers have used foam to modify the pattern to guarantee a floating fly such as in the pattern below:

http://www.azflycasters.org/Archives...t%20Damsel.pdf

I mentioned this to Gary and he asked me whether the tiers had thought he had not considered foam. According to Gary, the trout can concentrate on the drowned damsels and the foam pattern cannot imitate drowned damsels because they always float. So tie the standard pattern first and add a few foam ones if you want. Compare the Borger damsel with other damsel patterns and you will note how realistic the braided butt pattern looks compared to foam, dyed deer hair, or dubbed abdomen patterns. None of these can match the thin abdomen of the natural insect. The Borger damsel is the most popular of all damsel patterns here in the colonies.

And use a strong tippet. The vicious take can often break you off.

Another point is that the stage before the mature blue damsel is the brown teneral phase. You can use a brown color marker to match the mono to tie up a few teneral patterns. The brown teneral patterns will also match brown dragon flies.

Damsel Teneral

Cortland braided mono comes in 30 and 50 lb strengths. Get the 50 if you can. You can use the braided mono for making braided loops and the 50 lb is stronger.

[mot]

Thanks silver creek, actually foam probably wouldn't have been my first choice for the body either but it was all I had in the house. I was pleasantly surprised at the result though as they sit nicely inrather than on the film. I'll have a good look at the links later as I'm on my phone now.


Cheers mot