selectafly.com

Goodbye Black Friday, Hello Happy Monday!

It's rapidly approaching that time of year so let’s get straight into the spirit of Christmas with three great offers for you, our lovely customers.

Christmas 2025 Special Offers

Offer 1 - Spend £50 or more on flies and receive a Fulling Mill Pocket Flybox, worth £12.00 FREE! Or spend £75 or more to upgrade to a free Monomaster waste leader tool worth £18.99!

Offer 2 – Buy 3 Fly Selections (Top Performer, Essential or Fulling Mill) and get the cheapest FREE! (via immediate card or PayPal refund)

Offer 3 – 50 carefully chosen still-water trout flies in a Fulling Mill Stealth Box for just £50! Rather than 50 random patterns the flies in the box have been carefully chosen to cover all the important approaches for success on any still-water, including Snakes, Dries, Fishing under a Bung, Nymphs, Tadpoles, Blobs, Damsels and more. To buy these flies and the box separately would cost £78. Sensational value and a superb gift.

A top quality box packed with top quality flies. From Buzzers to Blobs and Damsels to Dries all the main still-water approaches are covered by this great selection.

Here's a few of the flies in the box to show off the fish pulling power it contains!

All of the above Christmas Specials are on offer from now until 31^st December (and, for offer 2, if you prefer to just pay the ‘after discount’ amount, complete your order, proceed to payment (so we can see the order details) don’t pay but call us on 01753 883366 and we’ll take the payment over the phone) Do also give us a call if you want us to put together a special selection for a special person.

Flies for the weeks ahead

Why not plan a winter Pike patrol? Have a great river or lakeside walk, stay warm by keeping mobile, sending a few casts into each likely pikey hidey hole. If there’s one there that’s in the mood your tempting, fluttering offering will get a reaction – and the take will often demonstrate clearly, sometimes almost alarmingly!, why pike are described as an ‘ambush predator’. Do fish your cast out completely – big fish will often be lurking virtually under your feet. Take a good-sized net and a pair of pliers – but do be gentle, they may look menacing but they’re actually quite delicate beasts. Fly recommendations are the Clydesdale Gold Perch, the Flashtail Whistler or the Top Performer Selection which gives you a good range of fly sizes and colours, as well as an, all important, wire trace.

Grayling are another much loved target for these colder months. Whilst on the warmer days they will still come up for a well-presented dry fly, it is nymphing that forms the mainstay of our winter fishing. If the world of Czech and Euro nymphing, or just the right set up for nymphs under an indicator is unfamiliar territory, there is a wealth of material available on YouTube etc. to show you the way – and as usual the reality is not quite as mysterious as the terminology! To get a great selection of the flies you need go straight to our Grayling Top Performer selection.

Many still-water trout fisheries, nowadays including the big reservoirs, remain open for most if not all of the winter months and the fishing can be very good indeed – as has been evidenced recently by shoulder to shoulder action on the Grafham dam with prodigious numbers of big fish keeping the place very busy indeed. Of course you should always glean as much recent local knowledge as you can and choose your approach accordingly (a Black Booby has been super effective there in the past few weeks). However, in the absence of more specific advice two approaches stand out for the weeks ahead – firstly Snakes in all their sizes and colours (the last few weeks have seen us sending plenty of these out) and secondly, for fish that are a bit fickle, something small and static, under an indicator, often fished quite high in the water. We offer Top Performer Selections for both Snakes and the Drop Back Bung to ensure you get a good, balanced range of flies.

Why not prepare yourself for winter action across all of the above by investing in 3 of our Top Performer Selections for the tasks in hand and, using Offer 2 above, save yourself at least £22.45!

And if you’re lucky enough to be heading off for some winter sun, perhaps with a fly rod packed ‘just in case’, we also have plenty of flies for the fish you might find there. Do call us if you need to talk things through – if we haven’t been there ourselves we can almost certainly tap in to the knowledge of someone who has!

Here's one of the many beautiful big brownies caught from the Grafham dam over the past couple of months, this one on the Black Booby (fished on the top on a floating line) as mentioned.. Well done Philip Sorensen! The fishing there is still far from over

Review of the Year – what did we learn?

Here's just a few quick thoughts on this theme to share with you

1.      Results can be achieved even when conditions are tough so don’t wait for the perfect moment – they don't come around very often. One Scottish salmon beat I know quite well ended on 98 for the season – below average but better than might have been expected given the prolonged dry conditions. I know this number because the beat owner called me last week to tell me that 23 of the 98 had been taken on our Blue Flash Cascade!

2.      More and more people are discovering the joys of saltwater fly fishing here in the UK – and once they’ve taken it up they don’t stop. If you haven’t tried it yet yourself, put a Saltwater Starter or a Bass & Mullet Combo selection on your Christmas present list and make a New Year’s resolution to not let another summer slip by without dipping a toe in to the briny!

3.      When conditions are tough on stillwaters something small and static can save the day. That’s why we sell so many specialist ‘Drop Back Bung’ patterns (and the bungs themselves). There was a time when the fishers of the big reservoirs hadn’t really latched on to this approach – but they have now! – and this technique is especially effective in the colder months.

4.      Even when they’re not actively rising to naturals river trout can often be tempted to come up for a big, juicy mouthful. A traditional favourite for this task is the Herl Bodied Daddy but, as I’ve said before, I also like a Proctor’s Flip Flop or a Stimulator.

5.      In a not dissimilar way, with the exceptional water clarity now often experienced on big reservoirs, fish which are not actively feeding on the surface will come from several feet down to take a dry fly. You may not get as many looks, follows or bumps as when pulling a lure but they do tend to ‘stick’ rather better.

6.      Finally, embrace and enjoy the fact that we don’t always succeed in our piscatorial endeavours - it can be hugely frustrating sometimes and it wouldn’t be so much fun if it wasn’t!

Snippets

·        Update on my ‘Surplus Tackle Clear Out’ - All things considered, the exercise was a great success, with eBay finding new homes found for 31 things ranging from rods and reels to lines and fly boxes – no longer taking up space in the house and producing a useful chunk of cash (which will, of course, be wisely re-invested!)

·        End of Line - Additions to this popular part of our website just keep coming – Fulling Mill are doing a fair old bit of ‘tidying’ which has prompted us to follow suit – so do watch this space for flies that haven’t stopped catching – just become amazing value. We’ve added dozens more in the last couple of weeks – all half price or less!

·        Silverware for the Selectafly team – Once again in October Martin joined the contestants on the Kennet and Avon Canal at Kintbury vying for the honour of lifting the Brian Fratel Gudgeon Trophy. With a very modest level of skill and a large slice of luck he won!

Finally, back by popular demand - it’s the Selectafly Christmas Quiz!



Maybe see how many you can get before you reach for Google.

Send your answers on an email to support@selectafly.com. All correct entries go in to a hat and the prize for the lucky winner is this year’s Christmas Special fully loaded fly box – or a £50 voucher if stillwater trouting’s not your thing.



Here we go….

1.     Which UK river is regarded as being the only one to have a population of wild breeding rainbow trout?

2.     How many tails does the mayfly (Ephemera Vulgata) have?

3.     Who is regarded as the father of modern dry fly fishing (primarily on the chalk-streams)?

4.     Measured by volume in cubic metres per second (cumecs) which is the UK’s biggest river?

5.     How did the Frances salmon fly get its name?

6.     Which Welsh rugby legend caught a record pike of 45lbs 6oxs from Llandegfedd reservoir in 1990?

7.     What is the name of the - predominantly snail eating - trout for which Ireland’s Lough Melvin is famous?

8.     From which river did the UK record grayling, caught in 2019, come?

9.     What sort of a fish did Izaac Walton, in The Compleat Angler, refer to as a chavender?

10. Name the two species of shad found in the UK.

11. What sort of bird is a ‘loon’?

12. By what two letters is Caranx Ignoblis commonly known?

13. What is the minimum landing size for bass in the UK?

14. In which English county are the UK’s most northerly chalk streams?

15. Who is generally acknowledged as having popularised fly fishing for mullet in the UK?

16. Which famous singer and musician owns Lakedown fishery in East Sussex?

17. For about 20 miles the river Tweed forms the boundary between Scotland and England. Is salmon fishing permitted there on Sundays?

18. The largest lake/loch/lough in the British Isles is Lough Neagh – but which is the deepest?

19.  In 2018 a collection of 47 salmon flies was sold at auction for £22,000. Who tied them?

20. If an ancient Roman had tied a Lagopus Lagopus Scoticus et Viridis on his leader what fly would he be using?

It feels a tiny bit early but, since we never bother you more than once a month, this will be our last newsletter of the year so - Thank you for being our customer in 2025 and very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you and all your family,

Jessica and Martin