I’ve always had a bit of fascination with any living thing I encounter during my time afield. Growing up fishing and exploring around Yellowstone might do that to a person. Or maybe I just have an innate interest in other living creatures. In Yellowstone’s wilderness, fishing comes with the legitimate chance of encountering creatures as diverse as chipmunks, marmots, bison, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, elk, and pronghorn – just to name a few mammals. While not every angling setting offers up the chance of a grizzly encounter, every place I have fished does have its own unique ecosystem to enjoy. And in my experience, every fishing spot is also home to at least a few species of birds.
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Some may remember that I mentioned the sonar I got for the pontoon boat/float tube/kayak a while back. I got the Deeper Sonar, which is a great device that lets me see depth, bottom structure and fish! I don't use it all the time, but it's always in the bag.
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I am still writing and editing "Fly Tying" ... during breaks I tied some more flies. The boxes for nest season start to come together.
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This is going to be a very short FP to wish you all a great new year, I hope you catch lots of fish, tie great flies, make long casts (and fancy ones) and generally enjoy yourselves in the coming year.
We’re currently in North Wales for Christmas and the New Year with our families. We did fish the river Dee a few days ago but we were not particularly successful. The river looked perfect, coming down from a high and running clear. Setting up with nymphing outfits my optimism was high after connecting with a grayling on my second cast (lob). However this optimism was mis-placed and I only had one small brown trout, which hung itself as I was talking to Tracy with the flies trailing downstream, for the rest of the day. We’ll be back though.
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Ashly, Flavio and I have settled nicely into Miena, on the Great Lake in Tasmania. This week we have a good weather window starting today and ending Thursday, and so we will make the most of it, put backpacks on our back and head into the Western Lakes region, camping, fishing and trying to fish as many as the 1000-4000 lakes as possible. (No-one knows how many there are exactly, so we will endevour find out).
The fishing has been good locally, with a nice fish on my birthday and 5 fish each of the following two days -despite the wind - some with polaroiding and others during hatches, but the real fishing, the fishing we have come over for, is out West. Consequently Ashly and I hitched down the mountain back to Launceston for a big shopping yesterday - sleeping bags, stoves, camping food, whisky...
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Like last year, I stay away from all the Christmas chaos and enjoy sea trout fishing in Denmark. The most important thing Lars explained just in his post: stay warm! Specially in the first days it was really cold and not easy to stay in the water for a long time. And it seems that not only me is freezing, also the fish are quite rare. But we could catch some really nice seatrout. Sadly there was again a lot of rainbows getting out in the ocean...
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We're back from Rügen, which was a really nice trip - what a fantastic area to fish. Great atmosphere, amazing birdlife (we saw the sea eagle many, many times) and we'll definitely be back. The fishing was slow - really cold water and a rise in sea level (which according to Bernd is really bad a salinity increases), but we caught a few.
But I thought I'd use the opportunity to give you my experiences in stay warm when wading in really cold water (and weather). I've been winter fishing along the Danish coastline for over 20 years, and I've learned a little.
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I am very busy writing "Fly Tying" which will be released on iBooks (iTunes) January 2018. I work about 12 hours a day on the project. Tying, filming and writing. Fly Tying will be a multimedia release which can be read on iPad, iPhone & Mac computers.
The last 2 weeks I must have tied about 5 million flies or so, filmed several gigabytes of material and took a bunch of stills ... all of that will be condensed down to 80 pages and 18 essential pattern for the trout & grayling fly fisher. It's great fun working on the iBook, which has become a true sexyloops project. There's a global team proofreading and commenting.
To relax from all the fly tying & editing I tied some more. About 2 dozen streaking caddis for example ... that's a lot of deer hair flying around.
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Ok, perhaps irrelevant is a little harsh and I’m sure that IGFA do a lot of notable work, but their records list is, in my opinion, a relic of past times when attitudes and behaviours were different. To me an IGFA record is synonymous with the ‘hero’ photo of an angler on a sun scorched wooden dock, a once beautiful big fish strung up by the tail, dripping blood and desiccating in the heat, next to it - a chalk board declaring the name, weight and tippet class etc. The ultimate prize for killing the fish? – the angler gets their name on a list, alongside all the others who have also caught a big fish but on a different tippet.
This must be a very significant document for the IGFA disciples, however as far as I’m concerned my weekly shopping list holds more importance. I wonder how many fish have met their end as a result of anglers targeting a mention (e.g. page 8 of the 2004 edition, about three quarters of the way down, do you see it)? For every ‘record’ fish there must be dozens weighed in that don’t quite make the grade, how does that go – “just sling it over there for the bull sharks, we’ll go and try again but this time with a lighter tippet”?
In my 35 years plus as a fly angler I’ve met a lot of fellow fishers from all over the world, more so in recent times with the advent of the internet, and in that time my perception of the level of interest, amongst the fly fishing community, in IGFA records is that it’s virtually nil – can you name a single one? I know I can’t.
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At the moment I am fly fishing for Zander in my home town. Fly fishing for Zander yet doesn't get the attention I think it deserves. But that may change soon!?
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Last week was cool. Well, by South Florida standards anyway. I’m sure most folks around the world would say the mid-40s is nothing of note, but it threw a switch that will color our fishing for months.
But counter-intuitively, I did not go fishing. While the air temperature was wonderfully comfortable for being outside I knew from experience that the water temperature would follow a step behind and our semitropical fish would seriously take notice. I’ve found in the past that my usual target fish act a bit dazed when the water is in that first significant drop. The weather will no doubt rebound. It is South Florida after all, and it is quite common for Christmas day to be in the 80’s. The fish sometimes respond to that rebound warming with gusto and may go on a feed like bears before hibernation. You can bet I’ll be there for that!
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I've just completed a fun weekend casting course with some of the lads in Perth, WA. The course was organised by Graeme Hird (at short notice) and he managed to fill it, which impressed me no end - in fact we had to turn a couple of people away. Great fun hanging out with Graeme; we managed a little fishing, a lot of casting, some technical tackle research - weighing fly lines - and finally on the last night Graeme demonstrated how to make the Graeme Hird Leader. (I will be buying splicing needles and hollow Spectra in the near future).
Thanks Graeme for great times - Ashly and I are looking forward to seeing both of you in Malaysia.
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A while back I was asked to contribute a couple of my steelhead fly patterns to be included in a new book called, aptly, Modern Steelhead Flies. Written and researched by Rob Russell and Jay Nicholas, and published by Stackpole Books, it’s available currently at awesome flyshops and by the usual internet means. You can even get it on Kindle! Being included in the book among so many truly great tiers is a humbling experience for me, and something I’m proud of. It’s even been getting some really good reviews despite my inclusion. This fly is one of my patterns included in the book. The Railbird 2001.
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short and painless ... the most affordable and compact form of storing and sorting hooks is ... (drumrolll)
- the pill box. Thanks Konstanse - I have not looked into the medical direction when thinking about a solution for the ongoing problem how to store and sort those hooks. She did ...
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My annual foray into competition fly fishing did not go at all well at the weekend. I’m not sure what position I finished in as they didn’t embarrass me by publishing the full results sheet, but I must have been near the bottom in a field of 20 odd.
Things actually didn’t start too badly. I wasn’t overly enamoured when I arrived at the first peg that I’d drawn at random, it was a shallow bay which, on a freezing cold day, I’d normally walk past due to the lack of accessible deep water. However whilst getting ready I saw some fish move, and my newly found optimism was bolstered by a take on the second cast. Unfortunately I lost this fish after a few seconds. I started with a hare’s ear pattern on a long leader with a floating line, this tends to be my default setting on small still-waters unless something obvious makes me kick-off with some other tactic, e.g. hatching buzzers or seeing fish taking dries etc. Not long after the lost fish I got a nice solid tightening which resulted in a fish in the net, but subsequently I pulled out of another, annoyingly right at the net. I quickly added a second fish landed, however again this was followed by a distance release. So three fish lost and two landed, whilst telling Tracy about my bad luck (she wasn’t fishing as she’s still suffering with her injury – plus she doesn’t really do ‘cold’) I also managed to miss a solid take, which probably serves me right for not concentrating.
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Last week we were still fly fishing for pike on Rügen island, Germany. Fair to say we had an excellent time again!
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Down here in South Florida the seasons have finally changed. The summer of 2017 was not kind and I personally am glad to see it leave. It was a hot summer with rainfall totals that had not been seen in decades and then we were treated to Hurricane Irma. Finally, this past weekend we got some cooler air come through and the air temperatures dropped down to near 40 degrees F. It appears the cooler air will stay around for the remainder of the week.
It this was a normal year I would be hopping up and down with excitement. Cooler air means cooler water and that changes everything in the Everglades. Fish move all over the place when the water temperature drops. Some species move off shore to the reefs while others move into the backcountry. Those that move back are the ones that I really appreciate as they create a fishery that I find to be perfect for sampling with a flyrod and a canoe.
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Viking Lars had an idea yesterday and was a good one. He had the idea that we should start a page on different leader recipes. I'll kick the page off with a couple of "different" formulae that I'm using here in the jungle. As well as the current Snakehead leader I'm using I'm also experimenting with a twisted leader that was shown to me by a Singaporean friend, Qwek. Flavio made one up that was fantastic and so I'll repeat this and post that formula later sometime when I'm in Tasmania.
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A busy week with flytying demonstration in a shop and fishing for grayling without any success. The time in the shop behind the vise was really nice. All the customers we're friendly and there are a lot of passionated flytyiers around. I was tying only Tubeflies and here is another short step by step tube pattern, this time a simple and cheap pheasant streamer. The Grayling fishing the next day was sadly without any sucess but with a lot of snow :) have a nice sunday
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simplicity to the max ... maybe a contradiction in terms, but hey. I´ve always been fascinated by spiders ... noooo - not the eight legged creatures - North Country Spiders that is. Traditional flies used by the forefathers of flyfishing. I learned those from Mike Connor. These things are very simple. They have been written many books about these flies and there is a million plus one variants all with funky names and very specific tying instructions ... like a grouse shot by a virgin the first Wednesday after easter and so on. I have not have had the chance let alone the intention to find out if all these specific requirements are true, but I know that the very simple ones I tie catch fish in those "impossible" situations. So I always have a few in my box and regret every year that I haven´t fished them enough ...
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A character who I forgot to mention in last week’s FP (Recognise Anyone?) was the one who insists that it’s impossible to hook a fish on fly gear beyond 75 feet, thus adding to the chorus of ‘distance casting’ being a waste of time and effort. This opinion is undoubtable based on their own experiences; they’ve probably missed a couple of takes when their wind-assisted cast made it out further than they normally manage and, as such, they’ve decided that getting a positive hook-up at distance is highly unlikely. Telling them that I regularly catch fish at distances beyond their ‘limit of plausibility’ falls on deaf ears (I caught a schoolie bass in Jersey this year at well over 100 feet), as they’d much rather hear from similarly minded individuals who also like to bash the ability to cast well. This is a perfect example of observational bias.
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After just having caught the flue and not being able to fish for 3 days (yeah, that was tough indeed!), I am back into fly fishing for pike again. This pike-season we had guests from Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Italy, France, Hungary, Lithuania and of course Germany. Fantastic for me to absorb all the different fly fishing techniques and strategies all our guests are bringing in.
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This past weekend I finally got out in a canoe to observe the backcountry impact of Hurricane Irma. As curious as I was, I was not in a hurry, as I expected the conditions would be pretty bad. I was correct and although patient, I thought, I, in fact, jumped the gun. It is going to be a long and torturous time before I can access any of the far-back places I have learned to enjoy.
A buddy and I launched his two-man canoe from a very popular spot. I thought, erroneously, that maybe the park service would clear the path through this often used and short creek that is a main access point for paddlers. The creek is only about ¼ mile long. We entered with optimism. About 2 hours later we emerged from the backside, tired and torn, into a large bay. The number of fallen tree trunks that we had to straddle as we muscled his canoe over were too numerous to count. Not long into the creek we discussed turning back, but instead pressed on. Surely, further on, it could not be worse! It was. Once we finished that first creek we both agreed that we would take a longer but easier alternate route on the return trip, even though it would require one of us to hitch a ride back to where our vehicle was parked. This was a Friday, so there might not be anyone to hitch a ride from, but still, we agreed that walking the ten or so miles back to the launch vehicle would be preferable to trying that creek again.
I wish I could say the fishing was worth the effort, but I cannot. Anywhere the water was stagnant due to low tidal currents the water was opaque yellow and smelled of decomposition. Fallen branches, if pulled from the water, were covered with surprisingly bright green algae, but it was completely impossible to see even that bright green color only inches below the surface. In the fetid zones there were zero signs of mobile life below the water surface. Even the large bay, which in past times was almost guaranteed to offer some action from juvenile snook and tarpon, seemed vacant of fish. The water there looked to be in the early stages of an algae bloom, and the once lush weed beds, where visible, seemed to be in decline.
I wish I had better news.
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And we will you help fix it!!!
In conjunction with the Video Manual that Sexyloops in the process of publishing (18 video lessons so far - out of an initial set of 64) - and as well as the Sexyloops Academy that we are finalising this week (it's only taken 18 years!) - I've realised it would be a great idea to offer flycasting advice to you freely on the Sexyloops Board!
If you would like for your cast to be analysed by us, then shoot some video of your casting, upload it to either Vimeo or YouTube (I'm working with on idea that we can either host it on the Sexyloops server, or possibly a Sexyloops account within Vimeo, one of which I'll organise later this month in Tasmania), join the discussion forum if you haven't already, and start a new topic and ebbed the video.
Ideally, to begin with, all we need to see is the top half of your body - your "style" as it were, and if you haven't had a formal lesson, then I would like to see how you cast at targets. For distance casting advice I would like to see your entire body, but we still don't need to see the loop. There will be a time in this process where we need to see your loops, particularly when it comes to specialist casts.
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I’ve been under the weather for a few days now with what I’m claiming to be the worst cold of all time. My lack of energy and focus made this a perfect weekend to bring in a guest author to my front page slot. I don’t know anyone who is more passionate about steelhead angling and conservation than my friend Josh Mills, of Spokane, WA. I recall that we met first on some desert river many years ago, but I may be wrong. Josh runs a blog called "Chucking line and Chasing Tail", which is inspired by his angling and conservation efforts as well as his devotion to his awesome family and their adventures afield. So, with that intro, I turn it over to Josh.
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I'm quite the Oliver Edwards fan. I've had the pleasure of meeting on no less than four occasions on flytying courses. Apart from a fantastic flytyer and a generous and funny man, he's an excellent teacher. I've taken many of his ways of teaching and used them, both in my own flytying courses and even in casting courses.
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Maybe one of the simplest of all nymphs, but certainly one of the most effective patterns ever. It´s specifically famous amongst competition anglers.
That should not stop you though.
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