Article - Dropshotting with Flies

By Anthony Wood

If you have followed my pages you will have seen that last year I caught some perch using flies that had been specifically tied for using on the dropshot.

Recently I was reading an issue of Anglers Mail and lo and behold there was an article on fishing the dropshot using flies, also before someone comes out with horrible comments I’m not saying someone copied me or even that I came up with the idea as I’m fully aware it has been used many many times before I used it. The article did however rekindle my interest in using flies on the dropshot. I have been looking at a company called ‘Trout Flies UK’ a lot lately as I am thinking more and more about learning to fly fish as it is the only style of fishing I haven’t done yet. It is a family run business and they produce some brilliant looking trout flies such as the damsels which I thought would be absolutely perfect for dropshotting as well as fly fishing.

Looking on their website I found ’24 damsel flies in a water tight trout box’ (boxed damsel-trout-fishing-flies) which looked absolutely perfect for the job and at only £12.99 for 24 flies and the box I thought it was a bargain. Having got in touch with the company they were extremely helpful and also recommended trying some of the hothead flies that they make as well. So now I knew what flies to get and waited for them to arrive. The package arrived really quickly and upon opening I was extremely surprised at the superb quality of not only the trout box but the craftsmanship of the flies. Considering the price of these flies the quality is simply stunning, after taking out the cost of the trout box (£6.99) the damsels work out at just 25 pence each!!!!!

If you run out of flies the box will also be highly useful for storing jigheads in too.

Okay so I don’t have the right tackle yet for fly fishing so these flies were destined to be used on the dropshot. I tied a couple of the colours on and I was going to start with a yellow, then changed my mind to a hothead, then an orange, finally settling back on the yellow.

The weekend I was fishing arrived and if I’m honest I didn’t hold out much hope as it had been seriously raining the day before and the canal I was fishing with some friends was highly coloured (I couldn’t see the lures/flies under 1? of water) and carrying some extra water.

I started out with the yellow fly on the dropshot but due to the colour of the water didn’t get any bites. I moved onto some of my soft Relax Lures and managed five perch but I still really wanted to get a fish on these damsel flies.

About half way through the day I found some water that was a bit clearer so I put an orange damsel on and cast out my dropshot rig.

Within a couple of gentle twitches my rod hooped over and line started coming off my reel, either this was a good sized perch or I’d managed to hook a jack pike.

After a few minutes of reeling in and then losing line when the fish did a run I had a nice little jack pike in my net. As the wind picked up and the rain started again the fish turned off and I didn’t get any more fish for the day. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and the company, I proved to myself that I can catch fish on these brilliant flies from Trout Flies UK and I will definitely be using them again.