For this small stream, I use just five patterns. After the hard work of hiking into these wild and beautiful places; after creeping on your hands and knees into a suitable casting position and, if you’re lucky, have avoided spooking every fish in the pool/run,  it’s nice to be able to just relax a little and to be able to choose a fly from a simple collection and just know it will work. The micro-environs of our small free-stoners don’t usually have the volume of hatches that the main stems do, neither do they have the same fishing pressure. 

Consisting of four dry flies and one nymph, it’s possible to tie up a full box of my favourite patterns in just one evening spent at the vice; these are a Klinkhamer (in black or light-tan), a CDC & Elk hair caddis, a shuttlecock/chironomid emerger, a generic paradun, and my only nymph, a tungsten bead-head pheasant tail-style nymph. That’s it, nice and simple.