Dry Fly!!! How many do you need!!!

I see many a post and blog that hammer on about different flys colours shapes size, you name it there are thousands of different patterns that come up every year claiming to have the new killer fly...
Well i am far from any 'expert' in these lines but all i can say is what i have learnt and what i have seen in my fishing situations on the river..

There are two split differences in fishing the dry... you get the lads who just stick on a attractor pattern eg a big sedge and fish everywhere hoping for a trout to smash it through its instinct..

Then there is the lads who will wait for a rise, select the right fly ( match the hatch) and then then catch the trout by its feeding match..

I have found that the lad using the attractor pattern will catch a very good fish from time to time, due to the size of the fly used..
But on the other hand the lad who 'matches the hatch' will catch many more fish over the season
What is the best i dont know but i have done both and use them at different times throughout the season..
I do prefer to match the hatch as you feel as you worked for your goal when it comes off...but this is where i see millions of flys being tied for each and every dry fly, and in my view this is where most fail...

For me i only use 5 flys for all of my season, if someone is in any hatch i find i have it all in these 5!
Every one of my flys i use will match any most hatches but most of all the SIZE matters.. every one of my patterns will have at least 5 different sizes...

I shall be blogging all my flys but for now my no 1 LTD SEDGE....
This is a fly i tied a few years back and its nothing really flash but has worked no end for me and others who have used it on the Derbyshire Wye..
You could say it can be a attractor pattern and yes its superb for that but when the sedge are out i have used no better..Woody has used it and loves it, infact i tied him the emerger and standard pattern and he had unbelievable results on both..some days emerger and others standard...
We used this in Islay on the wild lochs and a very small size 19 was just the job, any bigger and we would not even get a rise to it!
This is where i come back to the size thing....i fished the Wye in Derbyshire and the famous black sedge were coming off in huge hatches, the tricky Grayling were Cooley sipping them down, i could not get the ltd sedge to work on a size 17 until i went down to a 19!! now you might think this is bullshit but the river keeper Jan Hobat saw it happen..Grayling will not hit anything unless it looks like the real thing and you know you are fishing well if you hook Grayling in a hatch..
When tieing this pattern i make sure i build them to the size of the hook, i see many fly tiers do them on a size 19 when really they have tied the build on them like a size 15!! so when they choose a smaller hook they are still fishing the same size!!! Big mistake
Click on the link below for the step by step
Nice one
Glen

http://glenpointon.blogspot.com/2009/07/ltd-sedge-pattern.html