An excellent yet long forgotten fly
Old and new, the Cirillio Yellow Grub. Photo by Einar Falur.
An extremely good fly, hardly ever seen of late is the Cirillio Yellow Grub. It would probably be unheard of in the fly fishing echelons in Iceland had the well known angling author Bjorn Jonsson Blondal not offered it a whole chapter in his local classic Hamingjudagar (transl. Days of happyness). Blondal fished in the early decades of the twentieth century. Several years ago we decided to give the fly a new leash of life.
We aquired an old much used Cirillio from Blondal himself years ago when we had the honor of fishing with him twice at his Svarthofdi beat were Reykjadalsa and Floka enter Hvita to make one of Borgarfjordurs outragiously prolific junction pools. We had already read about the flies conquests but he added to it that one summer he had hooked and landed 82 salmon using flies. 80 of them took the Cirillio Yellow Grub. He had no idea of the flies origin and no knowledge regarding the name. He though did point out that a fly called Humblehorned was similar in some ways. He also told us that as the years went by, much of the flies magic seemed to abandon it.
Some five or six years ago we decided to have a known local fly tier, Orn Hjalmarsson make a modern day Cirillio. We also asked him to remake several others that Blondal and his contemporaries used, for insatnce the Connemara black, Black Goldfinch, Golden Parson, Gordon Ranger among others. Well known flies but rarley seen and/or used these days. For fly fishing in Iceland at least.
Every one of these flies has given us salmon and sea trout. The best of the lot turned out to be the Cirillio Yellow Grub and the Connemara black. Both have proved to be outstanding salmon flies, especially used very small and for stripping during early mornings and at dusk. Stripped at dusk they are often devastating!
The photo showes our original CYG, the one plucked from its box by the man himself. We kept it for a long time, hardly daring to use it as we were afraid of loosing it or damaging it or something like that. Finally one day on a small westland river, during low water sunny conditions, we put it on and a 3 pound sea trout met it in midair on the first cast. Having landed the trout and having also to kill it as the Cirillio was imbedded deep down in its throat, we cut the fly off, rinsed it and placed it back in the fly box. And it hasn‘t been touched since!
When trying out the modern day CYG, we stripped it at dusk on a slow moving pool on the upper Gljufura in Borgarfjordur. We took three salmon in quick succession! Ever since we have often had great success with the fly.
