I've thought about it long and hard and taken into account my woeful level of ability. I can hardly lecture on tactics and the like in such illustrious company. I'm a crap fly-tyer and hopeless caster so my subject matter is pretty limited. I have decided therefore to give the best advice I can in the form of two words.
Now these two words are equally applicable to those who fish freshwater or salt, small ponds, expansive reservoirs, rivers large and small and whether you live north or south of the equator. I could use three words, but two will suffice. If I had to choose and my life depended on it I would pick brown, but you might prefer green or black.
The words that I give to you first came to me over the Atlantic in the shape of a bargain deal on eBay. Since then I have fished them upstream dead drift for trout and chub, twitched and stripped them for both those species as well as pike and perch. Fished down and across on a ghost or sink tip they will take grayling and find trout of a size that that you never believed were possible from that water. They are the only fly that will take chub over 1lb fishing this way. Normally big chub turn their noses up at anything that is dragged, but they'll take these especially in the first few weeks of the coarse season. Skate them across the riffles in spring and watch the trout tear after them. In still-waters they can be fished deep and slow and will invariably take the bigger fish. Brownies love them. Fished over sandy bays and in creeks flatties will mistake them for ragworms and blennies.
I am of course talking of the Woolly Bugger!
