Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Fly Fishing for asp often asks for the highest possible amount of action in one's fly. Otherwise the asp will refuse nearly all of the time! One way to increase action is to learn the best retrieving techniques. The other (very important) way goes down the road of fly design.
During the past week I was into fly fishing for asp - lots of innovative fly design included, for about (almost) 24/7! During the days I was fishing and in the nights I was tying, retying and throwing away those flies, which didn't bring the movement, which I was hoping for. Not too easy to design a fly offering strong action instead of just following the retrieving path like most flies do.
You may find some of the new flies I shaped in the pictures below.
Luckily I did catch some nice asp as well. At least one was in a decent size. Of course Paul will now tell you, that catching that asp wasn't in my fly design to have worked out, but me fishing the Sexyloops Hot Torpedo 6wt. rod. ;) Truly that rod matches perfectly well for catching asp.
If you have any ideas for flies, that come with a lot of action/movement please let me know about it. I am very interested in finding new flies helping me to decrease the number of asp still refusing to take my fly. Yes, there are still some besides I have improved to catch them a lot over the past years.
My number one fly yet is a fly coming with a Balsa shaped head and a very thin rabbit stripe behind it. That fly shoots left, right, left, left, right, right on all retrieving speeds. Truly brilliant action. Also using funnels in front of the fly or tied to the tail are doing a pretty good job. Then I was testing some flies, which have a tube based body twisting around a piece of nylon. Not bad either!
All asp focused flies by the way are fishing very well for perch and Zander as well!
Fishing wise I focused a lot on where exactly the asp would look for bait under different water levels (fishing tidal water). I set out a lot of marks and then checking the precise water level in the moment the asp came in. Pretty interesting though, lots to learn in these details! A significant key to catch asp is in forecasting WHEN and WHERE he will hunt. When he starts hunting your fly needs to be in the spot in exactly the next 2 seconds, so you gotta be in the (very) ready position always!
The next days I will check out some new spots on the large German river Elbe to catch big asp.
I will let you know how it went in my next fp next Wednesday. Thanks a lot for all the fine feedback on my last front pages! (I may not always manage to answer my emails in the same day, but for sure you'll get an answer!)
Great fly fishing week to all of you!
All my best
Bernd
Some pictures of my last days...