by Karel Křivanec

There are many fishermen in France who fish only "with eyes" and some of them use new types of tiny painted lead nymph, whose tying and the use I was shown by Stan Freyheit. These nymphs in size 18 - 22 are very efficient for careful fish and because they are used mainly by the best French fly fishermen, there are still lots of secrets.

They are really good for several reasons:

To tie them is simple:

1. Around the hook you make several winds with lead wire of 0.6 mm in diameter.
2. The first layer we paint with white colour and thus we create a clear background.
3. Second layer we paint with diluted required colour and thus we cause the changing of dark and light stripes.
4. The head is painted with black or in different shade.
5. Finally, we have to coat it with resin, which enlarges ribs.

To harden the resin we use UV radiation which women use for painting nails and the hardening process takes 8 minutes. Regarding the coloured range of these nymphs, the most often colours are gold-olive, chocolate and creamy, but for graylings it is possible all from blue, pink, purple and gold and simply we can combine colours which you like and as you like them! Special French colours Vitra from the company Pebeo are used and for the second layer you dilute in the ratio 3 drops of colour and 1 drop of water.

These nymphs are really good for trout fishing, because they look very realistic. French trout is probably the most experienced fish in the world. Rivers, such as Albarine, Loue and Ain are very heavily fished and painted lead nymphs in size 22 on a ten-meter long leader are often the only solution to fish for a big trout. New nymphs are the most often used for fishing “with eyes” in clean water with the only one fly on the leader, but they can be combined even with a Czech nymph on the dropper or we can use also a suitable strike indicator. It is clear that this style of fishing requires also fine end of the leader and a corresponding rod.