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Monday: Paul Arden
Tuesday: Harps
Wednesday: Bernd Ziesche
Thursday: Mr T.
Friday: Ray
Saturday: Viking Lars
Sunday: Bruce Richards

Ronan's report

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Most sharks can smell a single drop of blood from up to 1 mile away. In fact the Great White shark can smell it up to 3 miles away. Now you may think, you will never cast your fly to a Great White anyway. But maybe one day you will drop your fly just next to a bonefish!?

I have seen bonefish swimming straight into a few small pieces of shrimp Ð which the Capt. just positioned in front of the boat (locals would have called it "chumming") - coming from 200 (and more) meters away. Yes, they too have an incredible olfaction available. And that without doubt is the same for most of the fish we are fishing for!

Back to the bonefish they took the pieces of shrimp, but many times ignored my fly dancing in the middle of those pieces of bait. Once I changed the smell of my fly, they took it immediately. And it's fair to say: That always was an aggressive take, a perfect strike, if you like.

Now you may want to know, which smell I put on my fly though. Simply I stored my flies in fresh shrimps during night time just before my fishing day started. I tried that for some days and it always made a huge difference. Anyway I soon decided, this would not be my way of fly fishing.

In fly fishing we don't use any flavours or add any form of smell to our flies, right!?

WRONG! We always add a lot of smell to our flies. Just think of all the different chemicals being used to produce all our fly tying materials. It's a hell lot of different UNNATURAL smells!

So we use all kind of smells, but not natural bait smelling ones! Crazy, isn't it? We add the wrong smell always.

The past 10 days in a row I have been studying the reaction of mullet to a lot of different flies. I offered tons of presentations to them. Well, I could provoke a few strikes and could successfully land one again. Only one? Yes, just one, which I think to be a huge success!

Now I am wondering how easy it might be for a mullet to smell my fly to be foolish!? The interesting thing is, most mullets I caught, haven't seen my fly before (the first cast, is always the best cast). I clearly can summarize, that the more often my fly has passed the fishes eyes, the smaller the change for any reaction will be.

But again throwing some natural stuff like pieces of shrimps, bred and other stuff can provoke a reaction far more often than any fly can (no matter how long I was casting to them already).

Still I have a voice in my mind telling me not to put my fly in shrimps or any natural bait during night again. I am wondering, why that is and, if it makes any sense at all.

What do you think - natural smells instead of chemical ones or not?

Would it still be fly fishing?

All my best,
Bernd

Pic Of Day