What flies do you use for bass in the UK - here's mine, all home-tied!

Olive over white sparse DNA Clouser. Simple as that

Never used a Clouser. All of the above serve me well without the risk of concussion! The sandeels in the second picture are my default fly on a fast intermediate.

clouser fly has got to be number 1 all rounder fly.tied in differant sizes and styles will take most of british speices from golden greys to bass ,mackeral ,scad ,mullet,pollack ive even had a weaver on a clouser.
just my view.
happy swffing.mick

Im gonna have a go at this salt water flyfishing for bass! i know a little spot at rhos on sea that might just yield a few fish! ian,

Out by the sunken boat, Ian? Llandulas is not bad, in the mouth of the river either. You gotta beef the gear up a bit though. The reservoir #7 weight outfits won't cut it in a stiff breeze.

Relatively new to the swff game but have found that skinny sandeel and juvenile baitfish patterns work well on the south coast. Range of weighted and unweighted flies combined with floating and sinking line options covers a lot of different depths.



Tied the bottom fly on Wed last week after having some follows and swirls at a longer sandeel pattern as well as a solitary mackerel landed (there were a lot of small 1 to 2 inch baitfish around) on a Tuesday sesh (bumped into Timmy Mullet - nice fella!)

Went back on Thursday for a very quick session during dog walking duties and the smaller fly produced a nice bass. Ace:



Will tie up some floating baitfish patterns as the bass were slurping down some stunned fry several minutes after the boiling mass of marauding mackerel had passed through. I figure that a two fly rig (floating baitfish on dropper, slightly weighted stunned baitfish on point) drifted around and twitched occasionally in the aftermath of a mackerel assault could do the business...

Those are nice flies and a nice bass too! I very much like popper-style flies and look for any excuse to fish them.

Second down on the right hand column in my flies is Hot Lips, a snook fly from the USA. My best day was 3 bass in 3 casts on a hot, calm day when they were bashing the baitfish near Tywyn in North Wales. Nothing like seeing the take on a fast-stripped surface fly. Biggest of the three was 4.5lbs and smallest 2.75lbs.

I recently attended a talk by Gary Coxon on fly fishing for bass and he maintains that as the season advances your flies should get bigger. Round about now we should be fishing 5" - 6" patterns. Interesting theory!

Here's a few that I use, I have more but these are my favourites. (not home tied though)

Interesting looking popper lurking in the plastic bag in the background!