A Message from Alan ...

Fly dressing and fly fishing have been my passion now for more years than I can remember, or care to count. Within that broad spectrum I specialise in wild brown trout in small streams.

Mechanical engineering is the area I trained in but have had a go at most things.

That included a spell as a production fly dresser. I learned a lot about dressing flies in that time. Most of all I learned that you really can't make a living at it here in the UK!

When I was first taught to dress flies the instructor constantly repeated the same rule to me. Get one stage right before moving onto the next. Good advice I have used to build my fly tying on.

My approach to tying is not that of "exact imitation" but to create the impression of life in the fly. Having a background in engineering, I find that I can design solutions to fly tying "problems" based on sound, design principals.

On the rivers I could be described as a presentationalist. Presentation of the fly being much more important than pattern.

However, sometimes I have come across the situation where a pattern does makes all the difference; I have pleasure in presenting some of these here on the Spiders Plus website ...

Many of you will have heard that I have been working on a book for some time. Well at last it has been published and is again available here on the Spiders plus website.



Kind regards and Tight Lines. Alan Bithell, Yorkshire, 2007

P.S. For details of the Rapala Knot I recommend when fishing my USD Dun, click here....