Botham on the Fly - Flies on the River Tyne

" On the river, there was in the eighteen hundreds a lot of flies that seemed to have a good proportion of yellow in them, with the option of a change pattern being red, or claret. Then, as it moved into the nineteen hundreds"

" in particular, designed his own patterns, which where still hard a little bit of yellow in, but he started to use silver bodied flies, and claret flies as well. And then, as we move on to the late nineteen hundreds we are seeing more modern hair wing patterns such as Willie Gunn, and Stoat's tail. I found, the fly size seems to have changed dramatically. Certainly, when one looks to attempt what I was using twelve years ago, in relation to what I use today. I'll just take out these two patterns for example, that is what I fished with twelve years ago, and that's what I used this morning. And I wonder whether this has got a lot to do with really what salmon are feeding with naturally out at sea. But the fact is that fatness of size doesn't seem to ring the bell for the fish where as that size, and smaller certainly works, and this is a case for many, many salmon fishers on the river"