Thanks for sharing these flies. Could you tell me how to fishing these Spider flies, please? Should I cast it upstream, then drift it or cast cross the river and drift it. I tried a lot last year, but couldn't contact the fish. I guess I did something wrong, 
Cheers. 
Hi Mark,
Way more experienced "spidermen" on here than me but as a reformed "swinger" (of the wet fly !) I can share a couple of ideas. Firstly, all methods upstream, across and down even the "dangle" (
) will all work......yes I once took a 1.5 lb wild brownie from the Fife Leven on the dangle and a few taken on the retrieve whilst getting ready to recast
What I like to think about is the context eg. how the fish are feeding or not, and what they are feeding on too ! If trout are bulging to emergers then upstream would be my choice - here you want your spiders to fish almost like dries, in the surface film or no more than a couple of inches below the surface. You will see the fish take and you tighten. You could use a short sight indicator, but most folks don't. Short line tactics are preferable and this may mean wading (which rules out some stretches). Ideally only fish one or two rod lengths and raise the rod/let it drift past you over your shoulder as the spiders drift back towards you (others may not do this). If the trout are giving splashy rises to Duns then same tactic should work but you can also try fishing across stream (at a slight upstream angle) and let the flies drift drag free.
If you turn up and no fish are showing/not feeding on surface then you could fish 'across and down' as a searching method. Here the spiders can be manipulated to fish deeper with multiple mends, so you can really control the depth they fish (a bead head nymph on point can help). The crucial bit is often "the swing" where the belly of the line pulls round from 45 degrees down stream from you to directly below you. This causes the flies, which will be fishing deeper, to 'lift' through the water column and is often when a fish will grab one. With this method the fish often hook themselves but try to fish as short a line as you can to limit how many you drop - this takes discipline as you can really empty your reel with this method when giving line to mend etc. The skill with this method ( yes, there is some !) is in knowing where fish will be lying by reading the water, and of course fishing your flies through that area in the correct part of the water column.
Hopefully one of the guys that really know what they are doing will pitch in too.
Lindsay
