Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 27 May 2015
Not much detailed information is available about fly fishing for these two species of fish! For quite some time now I have been studying how to fly fish for them. One of the main key factors was in designing a fly being able to be fished in between rocks – without getting hooked up to the rocks of course!
I tried a lot of different kind of weed guards, but none really worked when fishing directly in the rocks. Especially pike perch love to stay in the rocks. So in order to catch them the fly has to be presented exactly in the rocks since pike perch hardly like to rise for a fly. Instead they love to suck it in just after it dropped down to the bottom right in front of their nose.
Finally I had the idea to add “rock guards” in front of the fly its head. I used 0,60mm nylon and formed (different sized) loops. With the help of UV-glue I was able to get them perfectly in position. You may check the pictures below to have an idea of how such a fly looks like.
At the moment I am testing how wide the loops have to be for best protection. For sure they do a very good job! Of course there is no 100% protection from getting hooked to a rock – besides fishing without a fly that is. ;) Adding such kind of rock guards to my flies really was a huge step in catching pike perch and perch as well. It simply allows me to fish with the best strategy. That is allowing my fly to drop down into the rocks – exactly where most of these fish are!
For the past days I was fishing different waters around my home. Today Marina and I will be heading towards Rügen island (Germany) in order to chase pike perch in some of Rügen's hot spots. Rügen for sure offers great nature and a serious high quality fishing for pike perch. Yet I haven’t seen anyone fly fishing for that species at Rügen. So I guess someone has to start it!?
If you see proper usage of “rock guards” when fishing for any different species of fish, I would be very happy to read about it on the board! I am pretty sure such a fly can be a significant improvement for many species of fish.
Proper fishing to all of you!
All my best
Bernd
p.s.: If you miss the hook in some of the flies below... Those are tube flies. Fishing in the rocks easily can result in a none sharp hook. So tubeflies work perfect here.