This Fridays SFTS is about another flytier I admire. His name is Hans Weilenmann. I have met him in person on several occasions, mostly on fly fishing shows where is sat hours after hours tirelessly explaining his flies to the audience. His very calm and extremely patient attitude - mixed with a real good sense of humour makes listening and watching him a real pleasure.
Hans and I agree that the biggest development of or for of fly tying was, and still is the internet and digital photography. The opportunities of learning from each other and sharing information have exploded. It has become really amazing ... and Hans played a big role right in the beginning of this development. He was one of the first publishing, not only his own - but other fly-tiers work. His website was one of the first places showing high quality closeups of flies. Hundreds if not thousands. He has put a lot of effort into that website and I visit it often to look what´s and even more who is "new".
Hans is also known for the "CDC&Elk" pattern. A rather simple pattern, but that is the genius behind. Tying simple but effective flies, Please refer to the attached video for the tying instructions.
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The best way to get to know your area and your waters is to get out there, explore and fish, fish, fish. However another skill that’ll likely help that learning process is to apply the knowledge you’ve learned somewhere else to that water/situation. A friend put this one to me, along the lines of “What have you learned abroad that translates to fishing at home”
My answer is almost everything!
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The (COASTAL) Sea trout often is called to be the "fish of the one thousand casts". For me it's not anymore.But when starting to fly fish catching Sea trout easily may become quite a serious challenge.
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Another excerpt from my upcoming casting book that got left out due to page count issues. This time, the story is one of my well-worn personal fishing tales: the jelly-water puzzle.
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I was away for the weekend, celebrating my mother's 80th birthday, which is why Paul covered for me on Saturday, and which is why I'm now convering for him today.
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As Sexyloopers (a diverse, extremely clever, and good looking lot if there ever was one), our lives can all be described in terms of many different things, including fly fishing. And since this is a fly fishing website, I don’t feel bad talking about that here. It’s crazy for me to think that I first flung a fly into the water something like 33 years ago, and that I became devoted to the idea of fishing as much as possible something like 20 years ago. In that time, I’ve been truly fortunate to have fished in so many amazing and inspiring places with so many friendly and wonderful people. I’ve come to know more than a few of those places as my home waters, and I’ve forged some of my most cherished relationships around angling.
Blah, blah, blah. Right?
Sorry. Hang on. I’ll get around to it.
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This week's topic will be about learning to cast with the non-dominant hand. However before I launch into it, I've been asked if anyone is interested in fishing for the amazing Trout in the Kola Peninsular on the 2nd-9th August. The cost is £2100 for the week, not including flights to Murmansk. Depending on where you are in the world the flight should cost approx 6-800 GBP. Visas will be organised for you. This is somewhere you must fish before you die, and better sooner rather than later - just in case. I visited a couple of years ago and experienced the finest trout fishing I've had in my life. The average weight of the brown trout in this particular river system is 5.5lbs, they are native and look like leopards. One particular night I had my best night's trout fishing ever, and probably will ever have. After a two-hour spectacular Northern Lights show, that stopped me fishing, I had ten trout to the net, 8 on surface wake-flies. My last two fish took subsurface and the final fish of that incredible night has been my largest brown trout to date, 11.5lbs. So if you're keen to fish Russia please let me know as soon as possible, there are a very limited number of places and this could be a Sexyloops gathering like no other! Apart from the fishing, it's just amazing to be inside the Arctic Circle. And the one thing I remember most, was that when the wind dropped completely, you would hear absolutely nothing at all. I believe that this is the best trout fishing in the world.
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Todays SFTS is about the “beast” - Gunnar Bingen´s “dyret”. It was originally meant serving as a caddis emerger, but has proven it´s overall usefulness in many other occasions. To me this fly together with the snowshoe emerger and the shipment buzzer are what my flybox for trout fishing is build around.
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It'll be a quick one from me this week I'm afraid. Not too much going on in my fishing life, haven't been out for the new season yet and that's a month in.... need to address this very soon! In other exciting news I've got a month off work in December to get back to New Zealand, it won't all be fishing unfortunately but I will have time to harrass the trout in some old haunts and maybe some new ones. Paul might be there too which will be fun, competitions a plenty.
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At the moment I am pretty busy fly fishing on Gotland, Sweden for coastal Sea trout. So this is going to be a short page. ;)
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By Daniel Le Breton - Merlin
First part: overcoming the air resistance of the fly
The purpose of fly casting is clearly to send a fly into the distance. If we try to cast a fly attached to some monofilament line by hand, we immediately realize that this is an unrealistic way to do the job because flies are highly sensitive to air drag. However, fly fishermen found the solution to overcoming this air drag phenomenon a long time ago, likely by trial and error, by using a thick line. When you have to send an air-resistant object somewhere, one solution is to provide it with a “tank” of energy that will be consumed during the flight; a similar strategy is used to send a satellite into space with a rocket. The advantage here is that we can recycle the rocket (fly line) many times. Logically, then, we would choose a fly line depending on the size and air resistance of the fly.
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There are some really good conversations on the Board at the moment, in the Flycasting Tech section - who knows maybe a consensus is in the wings? Wouldn't that be something! I've just had a week in the city of KL. I won't be doing this again! While it was fun meeting up with friends, I'd rather fish with them. Tonight Ashly and I drive back up to Belum, where my outboard is fixed and waiting for me. As I posted on Facebook, the first things I'll be doing is swimming in the lake, catching a couple of fish and having a kick-arse campfire. I can't wait to get back to the real life!
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Queensland can be a hard place to fish in the wet season with hot days and normally squally rain and lots of wind. I was sitting at work in January and came up with a plan to fish the runoff at the start of March. The months ahead were hectic, a lot of preparation to be done making sure everything was ready and set for a week of epic fishing. We had a pro staff trip the following weekend so I decided to head up early and get some pre fishing done. The day came and I embarked on my Journey to the North, The area had a lot of rain in the days leading up to my arrival and a late wet season rain depression had flooded the north, my plans were shot on the first day. The crew I was staying with said they had 800mm over the past few days and the fishing was looking grim. I had spoken to a few Barra Guru's and a plan was made to hit some of the local impoundments for a few days in the hope I could salvage my trip.
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Today the Danish salmon rivers open, and I'm not there. That's alright, though - the season is six months long and I'll get my fair share of (or at least shot at) salmon and sea trout. I've dug out the tackle though, and today I'll be loading up the fishing vest, going through the fly boxes, checking the lines, preparing a few leaders and so on.
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The DHC is maybe the most fished dry fly pattern ever. The famous deer hair caddis. It´s not exaggerated to say that one can get away with fishing only this type of fly in various sizes and colours almost exclusively. It represents all and everything ..... However, tying with deer hair takes a bit of practice before one gets it right. It pays off to learn the pinching loop.
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The bow and arrow is the king of simplicity and the perfect last ditch solution for where you have absolutely zero casting room however there are a few other tricks, tips and neat casts that can help you make a cast in a tight spot.
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When you want to improve your fly casting skills choosing a proper fly line is quite important. As a fly casting instructor I have many different fly lines available in order to support every student's progress best possible.
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This is technically an excerpt from my upcoming casting book, but due to page count issues, I decided to leave it out. Maybe it will re-appear in some future edition or in a different project. In the meantime, here it is for SL readers.
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My outboard's impeller needs replacing this week, and it will take a week because no one else has a Honda 4-stroke in Malaysia! It should be ready to go by Tuesday and I'll be fishing again by the end of the week. What it has given me however, is a chance to catch up with friends in KL, pick up some replacement rods (my old HT8 no4 has been fixed as has one of my 6WT blanks - can't remember which one). I get these today - which is great news because I had a pretty rod-destructive start of my Temenggor trip this time around. My plan now is to fish here in Malaysia until early June, and then fly over to Europe for the rest of the summer, for teaching, fishing and of course the Fly Casting World Championships in Estonia.
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I enjoyed hearing about how some folks like to clean and store their flylines. Of course, Lars has a label maker. Don’t worry, mate, so do I. This sort of cleaning and maintenance is critical to maximizing the life of a line, the price of which seems to go up every day. But the reality is that flylines are a product with a limited life. Under regular use, a couple of seasons is a typical life. Under hard use (think fishing guides) lines typically won’t even last a full season.
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There was a question on the Board the other day about storing fly lines, and we've already had input from Bruce Richards himself (as if he ever needed to store a fly line :-). Here's my 2-cents on the matter.
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Following up on the foam extended body fly from last Friday. The concept originally began with Oliver Edwards Mohican Mayfly, which featured deer hair and a regular cock hackle aside from the foam body. I tie them with CDC as well.
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There's been some good casting pages this week and last so I thought I would follow on with my own. It's easy to cast 40', fairly easy to cast 60', bit more challenging to cast 100' and an absolute bugger to cast 10-20'!
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Not that long ago when joining the AAPGAI I was told Spey casting cannot be done on stillwater. Also when joining the IFFF and the EFFA it was several times questioned, if teaching fly casting on grass - and especially running fly casting instructor exams on grass - would be a proper choice. In particular I was told the roll cast to be very different on water compared to grass. My own experience is somewhat different though!
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Horizontal tracking errors during the casting stroke can result in problems with accuracy and efficiency. In some cases, where the tracking follows a distinct (and undesired) curving pathway a skewed or swinging loop can result. A skewed loop can create an unintended curve cast of sorts, which is not what you want when you are hoping to aim straight.
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Lars wrote an interesting FP on Saturday about leaders, and having posted it on Facebook, and the reaction it had, I can see that this is an interesting subject for many people. And so I'm going to tell you all I know on the subject! Which is not a hell of a lot to be honest but there are a couple of key points that I'd like to discuss. Perhaps the most important thing of all, is that if you wish your leader to completely straighten then the best way to achieve this is to check the shoot, i.e. catch the line just before the loop has fully unrolled - we even have a "check haul" which ensures this (mostly - although you can also use it to collapse the cast, which is another important topic in its own right!). So check the shoot, or - if you are casting into the wind - the "Triple Haul", which is really just a tug on the line as it's almost completely unrolled.
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I took up fly fishing about 7 years ago. I had spent a decade or more targeting billfish on standup, and saltwater sportfish (mainly Barramundi, Queenfish). I had read about bonefish. The claim was that catching a bonefish on fly was better than sex! It was explosive, it lasted forever, you could take photos and share with your mates, and there was lots of them. I was hooked. All I had to do was learn this fly fishing thing.
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I find that a lot of flyfishers generally pay very little attention to their leaders - and the importance of them, which is a pity, because there's much to be gained from using the proper leader, which I find is at least as important as the right flyline.
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So last Friday´s SLFTS theme was extended body flies. I made a point advocating extended body dry flies. Most are simple to tie, I think. For one, the size and shape of the hook is not too much of an obstacle in the flies design. The abdomen of the insect imitation looks more natural. The hook sits under the fly like a keel of a boat, and so stabilising the fly on the water. I think this type of fly hooks very well too. .... Originally I had planned to show you the construction - there is no better word for it as it is quite a construction - of a Mohican Mayfly I tie with CDC. ..... In the process I got our Malaysian agent. He needs to conquer one of this tricky jungle fish, which feeds on Dragon flies. ....
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