A Guid New Year tae Yin an aw.....

That's it folks this year is almost over . All our fishing trips of the year gone by will now become memories in the burning embers of camp fires of future fishing trips.For me the highlight of my angling year was my trip to the North West of Scotland in July to Loch Watten. Of course I have had many many enjoyable angling experiences this year but none can compare to my trip to Caithness. Great fishing and good company are the perfect mix for unforgettable fishing outings. This will be my last post of the year as tomorrow, Hogmanay I will be very busy in preparation for the Bells.For any overseas readers of my blog who do not understand the term "The Bells" this is the phrase we use here for bringing in the New Year at midnight on New Years Eve.All the family wait till the stroke of midnight toast the New Year usually with a fine Malt in hand then we get all sentimental and have a good greet as we remember the year just past and absent friends etc. I would like to end my year of blogging with a wee slide show of some flies I tied this year.Hope you continue to enjoy my blog in the future
A Guid New Year tae Yin an’ Aw an’ Mony may Ye see…

Merry Christmas

A Very Merry Christmas to all my visitors. I trust each and everyone of you are having a great day. I will not bore you with all the usual stuff you read in angling magazines etc at this time of year about how great a time it is for the keen fly tyer as there will be a hell of an amount of tying materials lying about the house what with all the tinsel etc. Instead I thought I would celebrate by tying one my favourite style of flies.Rudolph the Red Nosed Dabbler!. It was about time I posted a pic of one of these style of flies.
I believe Dabblers first originated in Ireland and were originally dressed as bob flies but I reckon the Dabbler is a good all season pattern. It can be used from the first day of the season to the last.It can represent and be used in a variety of styles and conditions. It can represent small fry it can also be utilized as a sedge pattern as well as its original function as a top dropper pattern. To be honest I would be Happy to fish it on any position on my cast. A truly great all round pattern for wild brown trout and also the rainbow trout of Hillend Loch. It is also a very satisfying pattern to tye too.

One Year Old Today!

I can hardly believe it. My blog is one year old today.I know I'm only an infant in blogging terms and I have much to learn but when I set out one year ago and typed my first words on these pages I could never have never have imagined how many people would be interested in anything that I had to say about my fly tying and fishing exploits. I have had visitors to my blog from all over the world as well as all over the UK.How they found out about my blog is beyond me. I suppose the Internet makes the World a global Village.My blog might not be up there with the likes of Davie McPail's etc in numbers but over this last year I have watched with interest as my hit counter has been steadily recording a pleasing increase in viewers month by month. I am currently sitting at just over a thousand visitors a month now. I set out originally to publish photos and articles of my fishing trips and also somewhere to publish pictures of my fly patterns. I hoped at first that my blogging would attract the attention of my fellow Airdrie and District Club anglers and friends and didn't really think beyond that. During the course of the season it was such a buzz to meet anglers at the Hillend Loch side and then for them to ask if me if I was the bloke that did the Hillend Dabbler Thingy! I think I bored my mates rigid by telling them this and that and that I would be putting their pics on the blog etc.In the end I think they actually looked forward to seeing their pics and stories of our exploits together at Hillend and further afield on the blog. I have really enjoyed recording a year in the life of my favourite pastime. You may have noticed that over the course of the season I didn't catch huge numbers of fish but I can assure you that I have enjoyed every minute of my angling and blogging over this last year because for me angling encompasses a whole lot more than just catching fish and I hope you agree that I have tied to express and articulate the pleasure and enjoyment I gain from my pastime within the pages of my blog...The Hillend Dabbler.
I was wondering how I should mark the occasion of being one year old on here.In the end I decided just to post a simple photo of Hillend Loch as it looked this morning. It looks exactly as it did one year ago when I first started blogging. Anyone fancy ice fishing! Its hard to imagine that in 84 days time this place will be free of ice and snow and once again I will be afloat drifting along the north shore casting the flies that I have been tying all winter.

A Simple Fly!

Tonight I was listening to the Hearts v Motherwell match on Radio Scotland and while listening to the game I tied the above fly which is a variant of that well known Traditional wet fly , Black Pennel. I must have been subconsciously influenced by the colours of the Edinburgh club's team colours as on this occasion the variant I have tied has a maroon/claret theme. I think the colour combination will be one that works well as I have had quite a bit of success with claret coloured flies over the years. I am reliably informed by Stan Headley that claret coloured flies should be the anglers first choice in poor light eg, as darkness approaches. Not that I have ever met Stan . I got that bit of information from the Gospel according to Stan..... The Loch Fishers Bible. The pattern I have tied tonight incorporates black tying thread, Orange tippets for the tail, claret peacock herl body with a silver tinsel rib and of course that all important sweeping claret hen hackle.I look forward to fishing this fly in the coming season which is now 89 days away.

Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Magazine!

As I mentioned in a Blog post in November, this months edition of the excellent fly tying monthly has a page dedicated to this months Essential Challenge fly tying competition winners. I was one of the lucky winners to have my flies included in the article which I called the Hot Orange Grizzly. The above photo is taken from the magazine with a brief description of the fly from Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine contributor Magnus Angus. It was really pleasing to have my patterns photographed and have them included in such a well known national magazine. As if this was not enough I also have a picture of one of the flies I posted on the Magazine forum and there is a picture of this on page 12 which carries an article promoting their forum.
This months mag also carries a brilliant feature from fly tyer and mag contributor George Barron who I met at the British Fly Tying Fair at the end of October. in this feature Gorge Barron delves into Emrys Evans "Plu Stiniog" which has been translated from Welsh into English and ties four modern flies from this great treasure trove of fly patterns from the Principality.
If you haven't already purchased a copy of this months Fly Fishing and Flytying Monthly I would thoroughly recommend that you do so

Grounded but Flytying!

As the weather situation here in Airdrie appeared to be eventually getting better over the last couple of days I arranged to have a holiday from work today as I had some business to attend to in Motherwell and Glasgow.Last night I cleared the snow from my car in preparation for venturing onto the roads for the first time in over a week. Then when i awoke this morning and looked out my window I couldn't believe my eyes. The snow had came back with a vengeance and was still falling and piling up at an alarming rate. With the entire town of Airdrie in a gridlock situation my plans scuppered for the day there was only one thing for it. I made a big pot of Scotch Broth and then while that was cooking and simmering away in the kitchen I pulled up a chair at my tying desk and got to work in tying even more flies for the forthcoming season which is only 98 days away. I tied various flies, mainly Loch style flies, no change there then I hear you cry. Well its mostly loch fishing do. Caithness was on my mind as I sat at the desk for most of the day. I tied all the usual suspects and a few others which were a combination of standard patterns the above fly is one of those such flies. It is a bit Loch Ordie, green tail Kate and watten warrior.
As I sit and write this my wife has just returned from work and told me that the Carlisle road in Airdrie is still gridlocked with reports of cars been stuck there for 8 hours.All major roads such as the M8, M74 and A80 show no signs of letting up. If it carries on like this I wont be at work tomorrow which means that my new fly box will be full sooner than I thought.

The Dirty Weeker

Tonight as I look out my tying room window the picture is of a winter wonderland well not quite as after all I'm from Airdrie. My car lies buried beneath quite an accumulation of snow and my thoughts have been drifting back to hot summer nights fishing wild Scottish Lochs so I thought I would share a fly I had success with at Loch Watten back in July, the very amusingly named Dirty Weeker.
I have wondered for some time about where the name comes from,Well it apparently is a corruption of a phrase the evolved during the town of Wick's Herring days. It was not as you might think a derogatory term which pokes fun at people who dinnae wash. The original word was "Dirdie" a Caithness word meaning busy. Over time it was corrupted to dirty and somehow adopted by locals endearingly referring to each other as "Dirty Wickers" meaning a real Wicker.
The Dirty Weeker is a fly that originates from Caithness in the extreme far North of Scotland.This pattern was devised by Hugo Ross from Wick who has an angling business in the Northern seaport. The fly is synonymous with the angling tradition of wet fly-fishing at Loch Watten, arguably Scotland’s finest venue for traditional loch style fishing. I have seen various different fly patterns which claim to be Dirty Weekers so I was not entirely sure about the exact dressing therefore I made a few enquiries on some angling forums and after searching through some angling books the overall collective opinion was that the original dressing was as the above pic shows. Hot orange tippets, claret seals fur body, oval gold rib, a cock hackle with an orange hen hackle in front and of course black tying thread on a size ten or twelve hook.
Stan Headley recommends this pattern in his excellent Loch Fishers Bible for fishing at Loch Watten which is as good a reason as any to have a supply of them in your fly box.

Essential Fly Tying Competition!

A couple of months ago I participated in a tying competition in the national magazine... Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine, called The Essential Challenge. The format of the competition was that the tyer had to send off to a fly tying company called Essential Fly UK for the Free! tying materials. Then obviously tye an original dressing with the materials provided.The comp is divided into monthly rounds where there was three winners for each round, then at the end of the comp all the round winners will enter into the Essential Fly Final, for want of a better phrase and then from the successful patterns an over all winner will be chosen and the winner will be given a £500 gift voucher to spend at Essential Fly and on top of that the winning pattern may go into mass production and the lucky winner will receive 5% in commission on sales.
Well then, much to my surprise a parcel arrived at my house yesterday and once I opened it I learned that I was one of the winners of round two of the comp and was pleased to see that I had received a very nice practical fly box along with an accompanying letter congratulating me on my success. A photograph of my fly along with a description and comments from Magnus Angus will be in next months fly fishing & Flytying magazine. Which is just as well as I have a vague recollection of my dressing but cant remember exactly what the dressing was , I do know that it incorporated straggle fritz. I remember giving my last example of the fly to my angling friend Scott while out on the boat Hillend but unfortunately he lost the fly in a fight with one of the Hillend's resident brown trout. So you can imagine how pleased I am and how much I am looking forward to seeing my fly in next months magazine. Once I see what the correct dressing was I will tye up a few and get a couple of pics published here on my blog.

Synthetic Hackle Material

I recently purchased an interesting synthetic hackle material with a brand name of Krystal Hackle. It comes in an assortment of colours. I wasn't sure how best to use the material I just got two bags of it in claret and golden olive colours.I wasn't happy with my first experiments with it and just resigned it to the rest of my kit which never gets utilized at the bottom of my tying trunk. Then one night when I was tying my mind turned to this stuff again as I really thought it could give a very subtle hint of flash if used in the correct manner in conjunction with natural feather fibres. When I fist experimented with it I didn't like the way it looked on the hook it just looked a complete mess but once I got the hang of it I realized that after every turn I had to sweep it in a backward motion, then after about four turns I then tyed on a natural partridge hackle all be it dyed in a dark olive colour. The result was the above fly. I am pleased with the results as it does give a very good hint of flash but very importantly not in an overpowering manner as some patterns tend to be. As ever the Hillend trout will be the best judges of it's effectiveness. Roll on March.

The Loch Fishers Bible

Anyone who knows me will be aware of my love of angling books especially a publication with a Scottish flavour. In my possession I have many which I treasure from such angling luminaries as Sandison,Stewart,McEawan, Robertson, Bridget Reid, Sharp, Inglis Hall,Stoddart and Lawrie to name but a few but one man I have for some reason overlooked up until now is Headley, yes I do have his Flies of Scotland book but up until today when a parcel from a well known online book company landed through my letter box I didn't have .... The Loch Fishers Bible. Which has been folly on my part . Of course I have heard from others about this book but didn't realize until this afternoon what I had been missing.I have had a look through some of its pages this afternoon and this evening and I can tell already that this is a valuable reference source for my fishing library. It has a lifetimes worth of knowledge within its pages and I have grew very fond of this work already. I like his style. The following should give an insight into his style of thinking. I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs from the book which I am in total agreement with after hearing about the myth which I believe to be false about the stocking of Loch Watten with trout from Loch Leven.
1... Take trout from Leven put them into a black peat hag with no indigenous trout population and , lo and behold in no time at all we have typical highland tarn trout which are stunted, red spotted and as black as your boots.
2....Take stunted, red spotted black trout from an unproductive water anywhere in the Highlands, put them into a productive water such as Leven and Michty Me, in no time at all you've got fit silvery trout that would grace any basket.
Like I say have just started looking through this book and I like what I have read so far. My attention was drawn to the chapters concerning Scottish wet fly patterns and it has been like a whole new world of understanding has opened up before me. . These dark nights of the winter are not going to be so bleak, now that I am being enlightened by Stan.

Fishing For Poetry

Over the years I have become a fan of the poems of Norman McCaig. My first introduction to McCaig was by way of a book of his poems borrowed from the local library. Inside the book was a rather splendid CD of a collection of his poems recited by the great man himself which I like to listen to sometimes on my mp3 player especially when I'm fishing at a remote highland location.
You may have noticed a few months ago on my blog I did an article about Andrew Greig's deep and meaningful book The Loch of the Green Corrie. Well then such was the popularity of the book and the subject matter there in the BBC have got to be praised for producing a couple of excellent programmes for radio and TV. The subject of the programmes is of course, Norman McCaig arguably Scotland's finest post Burns poet. The radio programme was broadcast last Saturday morning and is still available on iplayer here. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vrwvn/Out_of_Doors_06_11_2010
The TV production titled ,Fishing for Poetry is broadcast tonight on BBC2 Scotland at 9pm. I hope they release a DVD of this programme as it's going to be the most interesting thing I have seen on TV for some time and would like to watch it over and over at my leisure. There is no need for me wax lyrically about the content of the show as the BBC are good at that kind of thing as you can see for yourself here where there is also a short video clip on Billy Connolly.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vtxh2
Just thought I would give my readers and followers a heads up on these programmes as I am certain that anyone who enjoys poetry and fishes in wild places such as the Scottish Highlands will really enjoy the radio and TV shows. Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the show.