IMPORTANT
SITE UPDATE:

Visit the relaunched
Fish & Fly at fishandfly.com

DAPPING

Our June 1999 contribution from Jon Beer

I was fishing in Co. Kerry last week, at Gougane Barra, a magical spot hidden in the fold of the mountains. The lake is surrounded by towering walls of rock on three sides. An island by the shore was the spot chosen by St. Finbar at the end of the sixth century for his first monastery. It is small and rather mysterious.

Much the same could be said of the trout. We were staying at the hotel, fishing the Caha mountain lakes during the day but there was always time for an hour or so on Gougane Barra before breakfast and after dinner. Especially after dinner. We ate sumptuous meals and watched fish rising all over the lake. And then we went out and failed to catch them. They were tiny fish - around 5 inches - taking tiny midges. We would pick up the odd one on traditional loch flies but it had a distressingly accidental feel about it. Until the last day. On the last day, in desperation, I brought out the persuader, the seventeen-foot dapping rod I always carry on such a trip. I tied on a huge dapping fly and set the thing tumbling across the ripple on a light breeze, more in hope than expectation.

Within a couple of minutes the fly disappeared in a flurry and a fish of eleven inches fussed its way to the boat. It was twice the length (and hence eight times the heft) of anything we had seen so far. Two more followed in short time, each a fraction larger than the last.

So the real mystery is - why don't we dap more often?

OK, you need a dapping rod. But dapping rods are cheap, the cheapest fly rods on the market at around £45. The problem will be to find someone who stocks them: Shakespeare make one and so, I think, do Diawa but they common. And you will need a spool of dapping floss - about £5. And that's it.

Here's what you do, starting with the fly - the bigger the better. In Ireland they dap with natural flies - mayflies and daddy-long-legs - but an imitation of these or any bushy fly works just as well. I found a big G&H sedge ideal and it does not easily sink (small trout dearly love to drown a big fly before turning and taking. This can be annoying. We do not want small trout: go away). Tie this fly to the leader.

The leader can be manly. It will not be seen by the fish so there is no harm in something stout: 8lb is normal and very reassuring. About four yards is tied on the floss "blow-line". The stuff is the very devil to knot: I use a tucked Fishermen's Bend to join to the leader and that works tolerably well. You will need another at the other end of the three yards or so of dapping floss, where it joins the monofil backing. Ten yards of this backing joins onto whatever you care to fill your reel with.

Hold on to the fly when you extend the telescopic rod or you will never get the thing down again. Feed line off the reel until all the floss is beyond the rod tip and then let the fly waft away down-wind. It is a magical moment. By lowering and raising the rod the fly can be made to dance across the water. Do this. Don't worry about the fly flitting away before a trout can grab it: it will and it drives them mad. They will follow a dapping fly for many yards under the surface before it touches down again. Quite often they don't wait that long: they will hurl themselves a foot or more from the surface to take the fly in the air.

This is splendid, exhilarating stuff. A dapped fly disappears in more interesting ways than in any other fly fishing I have found. Sometimes it is simply sucked under the surface or it goes in a swirl or the trout porpoises over thing or chases on the surface. Or it leaps - and if it misses it will turn and try again.

A last thought: this summer I am teaching my small daughter to fly fish. But first I will let her dap. It is the perfect introduction to taking fish on a fly: it needs no casting skills, she will be fishing for herself straight away and any fish she catches will be hers alone. And with everything happening at the surface - and sometimes well above - it is exciting and fascinating fun. It is the only form of fishing that make me laugh out loud.

So try it, why don't you?

If you have your own information to add please drop us a line.

Jon Beer contributes regularly to publications including Trout & Salmon and The Telegraph. If you have any comments, do not hesitate to get in touch or use the message board.