With the season fast approaching ones thoughts turn to tactics and although the wooden devon and now the Flying C are often first choice in early spring those of you to who the 'how' you catch is more important, especially now that catch and release is the norm, ones thoughts may well turn to the early season fly.
Those of you who might have bought Gary Welchers fly tying book well now be trying to tie your own.  Practice is the secret and bear in mind and that there has never been a fly tied, no matter how horrible it looks, that wouldn't catch a fish sooner or later, so don't despair.

Tubes are probably the easiest starters and lashing a few coloured hairs on a hook with various coloured bodies means you can be original if you wish. With catch and release in mind singles are becoming popular and a good size 4/0 hook gives about the same size as an 1 1/4 to 1/1/2 tube.
The fly can be dressed as heavily or sparsely as you wish and hair length too can vary enormously.

Below are some 4/0 singles dressed on reasonably strong heavy hooks which, although not as heavy as a brass tube give far more weight than aluminium tubes and get down well.  Its often better to use a floating or intermediate line with a fast sinking tip, short leader and a lightish fly that can work in the current to get the flies down.  Wye fish are good takers in the spring and you don't really need to be scraping the gravel to get some interest. Below is descending order are  Garyy Dog           Junction Shrimp,Comet, Willie Gunn, Black and Orange. Cascade, Black and Yellow and Allys Shrimp.  All have three or four strands of twinkle in the wing and jungle cock cheeks.  Does jungle cock make a difference?  Well I think it does but perhaps more to the angler than the fish.  Not likely a fish with a brain the size of pea rises to your fly and suddenly things 'Hang on. there's no Jungle cock on that' and turns away. However j/c  may well be the thing that grabs the fishes interest in the first place, as it often does the angler when he opens his fly box to select one.

Above are some tubes on 1 1/4 aluminium tubes.    Garry Dog, Wye Thunder, Comet
Tadpole,Willie Gunn  (2 of each) With an Ally's Shrimp and cascade on the bottom row.
Cone heads are also popular and can give extra weight where needed. especially the tungsten ones.
Fairly expensive so no need to permanently fix one to each tube.  Just mount a cone head of some liner tube, slide up the line before you tie on the fly and slide down to the head (as in second down on the right. Or simply slide on the line the conehead itself before you tie on the tube. Single double or treble hooks can be used on the tubes
The choice of fly is your but try and suit it to the conditions of the day, Colour, river height, temperature etc. The colder the bigger and slower/deeper you fish the fly and as temperatures rise and colour and flow drop out then scale down a little.
Long winged flies such as the Sunray Shadow and Dee Monkey are also popular nowadays but more of those later.

Amazing how we used to catch fish in the 'old' days with fully dressed singles but of course it can still be done..  When I first went to the Nyth single 4/0 5/0 Black Doctors, Yellow Torrish and Jock Scott's were the favoured patterns.  On of my enduring memories is out in a boat near the Cafn Rock ghilling for Micheal Robinson on a coloured and rising river.  I had been told to tie on for him by owner John Robinson a size 9/0 Jock Scott which in itself had seen better days. It looked like a butchers meat hook and cast like one too. However a fish showed . it was covered and I have to admit to my amazement it took.  Some time later I was able to remove the 'hook' from the scissors of a fish I think went 18lbs.   You could do that sort of thing in those days.' there was always a fish or two somewhere in the beat