Still on the fly

I planned to fish the fly more this year as last year i didn't fish the fly rod much at all. I wanted to try and introduce more of it into my fishing so i was fishing about half lure fishing and half on the fly, however i seem to be enjoying allot more fly. Ive kind of been obsessed recently with trying to 'lure' a carp on fly. By this i mean i wanted to catch a carp by tempting it to take a subsurface fly that I'm imparting action into. Ive caught a few carp on surface flies but Ive always wanted to catch one on a craw fly or damsel fly. Ive come quite close recently and i am getting nearer to getting the result I'm after, i will talk about that more in detail when i get a result.

So the other day i wanted a break from the carp so went to try and find some perch on the fly instead. It didn't really go to plan and there just didn't seem to any about. My first fish came in the form of a small pike which really surprised me as Ive fished the venue probably over 100 times with lures and never had a pike yet.
My first fish came in the form of a 2lb perch which really pleased me as it made up for the lack of smaller fish. It was an odd looking fish as proportionally its head looked far too big for its body.

The flies Ive been catching perch on are tiny bait fish streamers, these are great little flies and catch loads of different species of fish too. I tie my own but it was my mate 'Mart' that came up with the original idea of using Jig hooks and tungsten beads to create a kind of tiny jig head, combine that with funky fibre and you get a really nice flowing effect in the water, when slightly jigged the funky fibre undulates in the water which looks very enticing. You can find out more about the flies and even order yourself some from MScustomFlies

I could still not find many perch but was gutted that I'd left my other fly box at home as there was fish everywhere just under the surface, id have really cleaned up if I'd have had some dry flies. Amongst all the roach, bleak and dace i spotted a slightly bigger fish which i suspected was an ide. A quick route around my box and i found a slightly smaller bead head fly, probably too big for the roach and dace but i knew ide were a bit more aggressive and i wasn't wrong. As soon as the fly hit the surface the ide was on it and turned around to hammer it, they really are aggressive little things, i must go fish for them on a small drain i know of where big fish up to 8lb have been caught in the past!