Red Tag, Yellow Tag

Having tied up a few more dry flies specifically for grayling I decide to have a another go for them today. The first fly on was one that I have no idea what it's called. Tied on a 16, with yellow tag, peacock body and cree hackle, I just have it in some old notes. It did, however, work as fish after fish attacked it, but failed to hook. Which was not surprising as they were some of the smallest grayling I've ever seen, only 3-4" long, their distinctive dorsal fin showing clearly as they attacked the fly.

Moving upstream I found a small shoal rising, to what I couldn't see,  just below a riffle. I managed to fool three of them before they disappeared. It was a quite a while before I found more rising, again I couldn't see what they were feeding on. Again tiny little grayling were the first to the fly, a change to a red tag produced the same result. There were larger fish swimming about below the smaller ones, so I decided to persist. Changing to he good old John Storey had the desired result. It was all but ignored by the smaller fish, and occasionally one of the larger ones would rise up through them to take it. Out of interest, I cut the yellow tail off one fly and tried that. As I hoped it was ignored by the smaller fish and taken by a couple of the larger ones, in fact the largest of the evening. I think the little uns were just seeing, and attacking, the tag .