Damselfly adults

[Johnno]

Thread is red, Tail is GP fibres, body red thread or floss ribbed with peacock herl, wings are pheasant wing, hackle of red cock and grey Partridge on a long shank hook. Old school pattern.....

[Johnno]

This may be better pic..


I’m not that fussed with the image posting facility on this board as it doesn’t really reproduce the pic properly.

[Maniototoflyfisher]

Did my little "trial" today with a "Daves damsel" and a Cochy tied off the end. Had had 10 minutes before the wind arrived and the jumping stopped. Had 2 takes and 2 hookups on the DD - to be fair to the Cochy while there was occasionally a damsel alight on it there weren't heaps flying around. Will try again next time - hope the Cochy starts to pull it's weight and justifies Johnnos faith in it!

[Johnno]

To be fair, The Big O seems to have more damsels than anywhere else in the country ... (but I did use the tactic in Sth Westland last week and it worked a coupla times..)

[Dave]

I must confess I have not actually caught a fish on this damsel myself. Obviously I need to find somewhere with trout rising to damsels and catch some!
Dave

[Southshore]

The body I used for the Lk Lyndon damsel was a thin red extended biot tied down with red cotton. a light coloured palmer hackle the first 3rd of the body tied flat and the whole lot smothered in line floatant.
The trout still preferred the humpy though (wonder if damsels were using this as a landing pad?). The pattern was consistent - didn't work in Lks Pearson Grassmere Sarah Hawdon or Marymere either.
Does fishing drive us mad or are we born that way ?

[Andy W]

Does fishing drive us mad or are we born that way ?

The former...

[mitchell300]

I use Fun and Games chairman Monty Wrights pattern. Chop up some pale coloured floating flyline and colour it red with a sharpy. Tie it to the hook front and rear. Add two hackle tips tied spent and a turn of black hackle. Quick and easy works good. Several decades ago when the magazine southern fishing was alive Monty wrote a few articles mentioning some of his own patterns, including the Monsun's bully, a juvenile lamprey pattern for winter sea trout and a couple of other gems. I used to try and squeeze him occasionally and he coughed up some interesting ideas like adding a band of yellow to nymphs behind the wingcase to imitate coloburiscus nymphs and trying yellow waterboatmen and diving beetle imitations in the maniototo.

[Dave]

Finally I have caught a fish on my damsel dry. At North Mavora today there were a number of fish taking damsels and I finally managed to catch a fish on one.
Dave

[Maniototoflyfisher]

Good to hear Dave - it's my number one fly here in December/January