On Blackwater, the fish are wild and hungry, and in the faster running riffley water a large, bushy dry fly will usually be met with a confident and quite violent rise. In the interests of simplicity, my selection of flies are also easy to tie, another bonus if, like me, you can’t be bothered with over-complicating something that’s going to get wet, bitten to shreds, or lost in the trees.  

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.