I recently received a few flies from a friend, one of them being a rather tasty looking 'Mallard & Silver'. It looked to me like being a great allrounder, effective in most lighting conditions, and vaguely suggestive of a good few items on the trout's menu - small fry, sedge pupae, corixae etc. A good optiion for any position on the leader, although it screams middle dropper to me, but I can easily see it doing a turn on top or tail. I set about knocking myself a few up, but decided to sub the mallard for groundhog hair to introduce a little more mobility, translucency and contrast. Really looking forward to giving this one a swim on Malham and Stocks, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it travels well too - I can see it working well on Midlands waters as well as lochs.

​