Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 12 August 2015
I published that question on my facebook site. The answers were as multiple as some of us like to have hooks in their one fly!
Some years ago a German fly tier sent me one of his flies for Sea trout in order to test it. That fly included no less than 5 hooks tied in a row. I had that fly in my box for several years but never had the courage to test it. Or was it that I indeed had the courage to not test it – even though I was pretty sure it would work well in terms of hooking Sea trout?
I am NOT going to tell YOU what is fair or not. But for me it always was and still is a challenge to find the one fly which the fish – whatever species of fish it might be – will seriously TAKE. Of course I spent a lot of time on designing my flies and positioning the hook in a proper way. In a proper way mostly meant to get as many fish hooked as possible. Fly fishing for pike and pike perch this sometimes was a small hook hanging almost an inch behind the fly. Such a hook often worked really well.
Once I tried to fish a fly offering two hooks in a row. An excellent Swedish fly tier sent it to me for testing. Immediately a pike loved that fly. Unfortunately he took it hard and I had serious trouble to get the fish removed from BOTH hooks. Both I and the fish were significantly bleeding afterwards. Gladly (I think) the fish survived. No retesting… happened!
It is fair to say I (for long time now) have been in the lucky position to spent a hell lot of time on designing, testing, redesigning, retesting and so on… many flies on many different species of fish. It seems easy to understand why one would want to fish a fly including two (or more) hooks in order to catch as many fish as possible when having only a few fishing days per year.
But then again I still believe that it is not the fish that we want anyway, but the feeling to have nailed down how to catch the fish as a bonus of all facets of fly fishing. Now this may sound arrogant coming from someone fishing more than 300 days a year. But as long as you need a fly including multiple hooks to catch the fish you are nowhere near having cracked the code for catching that fish. And isn’t that what feels always best in the moment we release (or take) the fish?
Only YOU can answer that question!
I am looking forward to more answers here on the board. ;)
Back into fishing for pike, pike perch and perch – still waiting for some mullet matching weather!
All my best
Bernd
Some pictures from last week... 