Tag Archives: Sexyloops

The Fast Smudge

for those who know him and are familiar with his tying skills… the very idea of Paul Arden talking about flies and fly design would have most chuckle through various forms of politeness and the hard-core tier would probably just:

tumblr_mn2wg7perm1qbqhhuo1_400

but !  keeping in mind that Paul continuously travels and fishes the World and catches a lot of fish with his heretic flies, in a very special moment of ‘Enlightenment’, the man has shared some well-weathered and quite interesting thoughts on this matter and most particularly, by introducing his ‘Smudge’ philosophy.
the avid tier/fisher will notice that this is basically the same idea as the ‘scruffy’ vs ‘nice and neat’ schools of  fly design, however the approach and description make this a real gem well worthy of consideration. enjoy !

” I’m going to pick up on a topic that Bernd wrote about sometime ago, mainly “How to design a great fly”. It’s a topic which many of you will think I know absolutely nothing about, and there is a great deal of truth in this, because I believe that it’s the fish that design great flies, or if they don’t actually design them – because how, or indeed why, would they do that? – then they are responsible for the continual tweaks that we make. All flies I believe are works in progress and it’s only after a very long time, and many fish, do they become somewhat stable.

I also think our background roots in flyfishing have a great deal of influence on how our flies look. Mine was stillwater trout fishing, as virtually everyone knows. I was extremely active in the mid-late 80s when stillwater dry fly started to evolve in the UK. Back then no one I knew fished dries apart from a few regulars who occasionally fished dry sedges. What was waiting to unfold was pretty much a revolution.

I started fishing dries because of my mother! She had visited a tackle shop while on holiday, and presented me with some river dry flies and a can of spray floatant. I was given these in September – they didn’t float very well – but they caught a hell of a lot of fish, and moved a hell of a lot more, and I couldn’t wait to try them the following year. This was at a time when almost everyone stripped lures for trout, the occasional wet fly and there were a few switched-on guys who were fishing buzzers.

It was the next year that I discovered Gink. I’d never seen it before and as far as I know it was new in the UK. Gink changed my life – and everyone else I knew too, so much so that Gink became a verb – to gink, ginking, ginked! I started using damp flies; a Hare’s Ear picked out and I had a fly similar to a picked-out Amber Nymph which I could gink too. I also had Skues’ Little Red Sedge and I was nailing fish on dries! It was around then I met a chap called Dennis who fished for Grafham, he was fishing dries too, and remains to this day one of the best anglers I’ve fished with. Dennis actually tied the first Hopper – a shortened up Daddy Long Legs with an orange body, had some interesting experiments going on and brought dry fly to the competition scene and from there it became known.

The Shipman’s came out soon after and that was a far better fly than the Amber Nymph/Dry that I was fishing and I started tying suspenders too, or maybe I was doing this before, anyway I’ve jumped topic…

So back to the subject! I think a great fish catching fly works for many reasons, the first is it can suggest the life that the fish is eating, which normally means no hard outlines. Imagine the difference between a doll and a human. If I was to present you with a smudge that looks humanish it would be difficult to determine if it was a doll or real. So smudges are good.

A fly that has inbuilt mobility has to be good. It will work for us, just by sitting there. Seal’s fur, soft (hen) hackles, rabbit are good examples of great materials that will move and catch fish even when we’re not pulling them.

Colour is a huge trigger. You can indeed present just a colour – orange for example – and it will catch fish and can be the only answer. Sometimes the colour to fish is not the colour of the naturals. In small flies, I think claret is better than olive for example, certainly when it comes to buzzers. But mixing colours is the best. I try never to use one shade of olive for example, but instead mix two or three different shades. Fish prefer this. Which makes sense when you think of hard outlines. One shade of a colour is the equivalent of a hard outline.

So that’s my philosophy, don’t try to imitate the natural, try to suggest life by presenting a smudge.

Paul's RFU emergerish' thing

Oh, there’s more: A great fly should take between 60 and 120 seconds to tie. There are very few flies I fish that take significantly longer than this. Muddlers (Minnow), Invictas, some nymphs, the RFU and Terminator style flies do take longer – hell I often have flytying competitions with mates, where we tie flies that take literally hours to tie – but the best flies in my opinion should be quick. Ten in twenty minutes would be normal for my best flies.

So we’re talking a fast colourful smudge. Perfect! “

that thing above is Paul’s notorious ‘RFU’  or Royal Fuck-Up. the more you look at it, the more you accept and embed yourself into it, the more you’ll see what makes it such a special fly !
‘Scream’ gif via Tumblr

Related articles

strike-fight-land

one of the more interesting activities of the Sexyloops Gatherings is the demos we give to the group. most participants are casting instructors, guides, and fervent fishers of all levels and fishing specialities but more importantly, friends. this last part means we can get and give honest constructive feedback on each others ideas and demonstrations. it’s not just the usual clap, thank you and walk away.
the learning curve goes way high in these situations, specially after a while of consideration and testing and adapting and incorporating or not what has been learned to our own ways.
this year i did two demos, one on striking, fighting and landing fish using the rod’s potential to its maximum while maintaining as close-to-possible perfect tension on the fish and another on casting Tenkara rods.

strike-fight-land demo SL Gathering 2013
photo: Al Pyke

the SF&L demo has been part of all my courses for the last year and the Tenkara was mostly to share this ‘newish’ style of equipment to several people who hadn’t had the chance to either see or try one out. it was an extremely easy demo because outside of exploring a different dimension of fly fishing there’s absolutely nothing to learn casting-wise because it’s just another fly rod. most where blown away however by seeing how easy it is to have extremely nice drifts with these rods in fast waters.
speaking of waters, i’ve been close to Glasgow for the last few days where the waters mostly come from above, it’s not so warm and i only managed three salmon yesterday on river Tay but those salmon happened to be babies that fit in my hand.

related articles

gathering |ˈgaT͟HəriNG|

noun
1 an assembly or meeting, esp. a social or festive fly fishing and fly casting event or one held for a specific purpose: the Scottish  Sexyloops Gathering.
2 a set of printed signatures of a book, gathered for binding or: for the purpose of letting you all know why there won’t be a whole lotta posts on The Limp Cobra in the next few days.

gather |ˈgaT͟Hər|
verb
1 [ no obj. ] come together; assemble or accumulate: a crowd gathered in the casting field.
2 [ with obj. ] bring together and take in from scattered places or sources: we have gathered  all the  fly casting instructor/geeks we could find. hopefully all this will happen without any intervention from the police or fire brigade.
• pick up from the ground or a surface: they gathered up their fly rods after tea.
• collect (cookies or other  chocolate-filled foods) as a harvest.
• collect (coffee, chocolate-flavored energy bars, etc. because it’s all too easy to forget these vital things when you’re in the swing of things) for food.
• draw together or toward oneself: she gathered the fly rod in towards her shoulder to initiate the back cast.
3 [ with obj. ] infer; understand: her clients were, I gathered, a prosperous group of casters.
4 [ with obj. ] develop a higher degree of: blimey ! i had a feckin’ blast ! 
5 [ with obj. ] summon up (a mental or physical attribute such as one’s thoughts or strength) for a purpose: he lay gathering his thoughts together before he gathered himself  enough in-the-groovness before trying to perform a VooDoo cast at the gathering.

apart from a lot of fishing on the way and back down (and testing a new tenkara rod given for review with the goal of landing a salmon with it !) , a lot driving on the left side of the road, kilt & scones shopping and tons of coffee, that about sums up the next two weeks for me and the casting part at least will be happening here-
(weather looks nice and clear and all’s green, not white. good sign)
gathering 2013
with the hope there will be a decent internet connection to share some picks along the way as well as a few Scottish jokes (just kidding, we all know there is no such thing as Scottish jokes),  i bid you all a great day. see ya soon !

cheers,
marc

Fly Casting Styles

by Bernd Ziesche via today’s Sexyloops Front Page

some very wise words by one of the World’s top fly casting instructors/fishers.
they’re straight, simple, to the point and in a way, put an end to all these endless debates over which casting style is better, cooler, more efficient. regardless of one’s style, it’s the basic elements common to any fly cast and not ego, nationalistic pride or hero-worship that make it successful or not.

this is a real gem geared towards any fly fisher who wants to be a better fisher and not just instructors. hopefully it’ll open up a different mental approach, opening up a myriad of possibilities all leading to what i like to call: free casting or simply, having the essentials down so well, the required cast to fit the situation happens by itself . enjoy !
 
 
Right now you may want to ask: What is a FLY CASTING STYLE about?
That indeed is a question I’ve been asked very often. The reason for that question is based in many books, magazines, DVDs, websites, courses and demos each referring to different fly casting styles. This for example may be the TLT style by Roberto Pragliola (Italy), the Andersson style by Göran Andersson (Sweden), the Gebetsroither style by Hans Gebetsroither (Austria), the elbow on the shelf style by Lefty Kreh (USA), the 170 style by Rick Hartman (USA) or the Loch style (Great Britain) just to name a few.

I like to give a quick overview in my fly casting lessons about styles and why some of them have become so well known. At the end of that quick excursion I always point out the intersection of all styles: The 6 essentials I am going to teach during the lesson. If you like you may call them to be the substance of good fly casting:

1. proper line tension*

2. proper timing (waiting for the line to unroll)

3. proper acceleration to an abrupt stop

4. rotation at the right time

5. adjusting arc + stroke to a) line speed, b) trajectory and c) rod bend

6. keep the rod in plane during acceleration and deceleration

All of the above fly casting legends simply learned how to control these essentials in their (very characteristical) own style, their own way of casting. Peter Morse once told me: “Style is how your technique looks.” I like that short definition pretty well. The important word in it is “YOUR”!

In the end STYLE to me is the most over estimated word in fly casting. To me it’s the essentials which matter and then everyone has to find the best way for him/herself to control them and to fit them into many different situations.

Those who use all kind of styles and just choose the one that fits best to a given fishing situation are the true great casters to me!

I hope I could inspire you not to think too much of styles and instead stay open minded and find your own way to control the 6 essentials in order to shape your loops and match line speed + trajectory to present your fly to the fish.

And who knows you may even get a strike. I have done it myself a few times. Good luck!

All my best

Bernd

*Thanks Will Shaw ;)

and thanks Bernd ! :wink:

Ordnung muss sein!

loosely translated, in german that means ‘there must be order’ or ‘everything in it’s place’, ‘get your shit straight’ or maybe simply: How to put the rod in the Sock

here’s a most often very neglected tip from Ákos Szmutni via Sexyloops. brilliant.

“This may sound very trivial (the answer is: Who cares?) but if you have ever put together your rod and heard the sound of sand or other debris rubbing in the joints, you may be up for some good advice.

Whatever you do, however careful you are, sand or mud will get on your rod sooner or later. If it is on the rod, it will get into the rod sock. If it is in the rod sock it will be in the joints. I have seen rods where the joints were so scratched that all the paint came off from the male part. This is not just a cosmetic issue, it endangers the integrity of the whole joint.

There is a very easy way to avoid this problem: If you use a four piece rod, put the upper 3 sections with the male part down – female part up. It is very logical, but most guys I see do it exactly the opposite way.

akos & his toothbrush

Some may think it is pretty girlish thing to keep your rods clean. Well, there is a river in Slovakia that is so dirty that after a 2-3 hour long fishing session even a TCX is totally grey. You can imagine how good the line shoots if the rod blank is covered with dirt. Even in rivers that look clean the rod shaft will gather particles from the water and that can significantly restrict your casting distance. So I would recommend you clean the rod every evening with some soft cloths. You can use an old toothbrush to clean the rod in between the legs of snake guides. If you don’t have an old toothbrush you can use your fishing partner’s if he or she is not there.

Another very valuable advice: don’t leave your toothbrush unattended.”

Cheers,
Ákos

The Urinal Cake Theory

by Bob Wyatt via Sexyloops

urinalcake

” The older I get, and the longer I keep at it, the more I become convinced that the first and really only important thing you need for good fly fishing is feeding fish. This season down south, I had my nose rubbed in that proposition more times than was necessary. The way it works, by my reckoning, is that a trout’s activity is simply wired to its food supply, to the degree that it takes the presence of food to awaken its predatory behaviour. In other words, trout aren’t always in a predatory state – for much of the time they are switched off. No amount of good tactics, presentation or excellent fly tying is going to make much difference. Despite our homocentric view of things – that what we do is the most important thing happening out there – it’s a feeding fish that is going to take the fly. 

As self-evident as this may seem, it isn’t as obvious or widely accepted as you might think, and I know that this will rile those who believe otherwise. Plenty of anglers insist that by good technique and good flies you can ‘work’ a fish up. Their interpretation of occasional success reinforces this idea. Carl Mc Neil (Bumcast) has something similar in mind. He reckons that you can stay on a fish until it takes, and there may be something in this because it seems to produce fish for him. George LaBranch famously wrote a book based on his belief that you could create an artificial ‘hatch’ by repeated casting to a fish. That idea was reheated more recently in that poetic ‘shadow casting’ nonsense in A River Runs Through It. Well, I’ll bet the pink slip for my 4X4 that old George would have shadow-casted himself into a coma for a few days on theWaikaia last January…. “

as always, Bob’s writings on fly fishing tactics is straight to the point and bang-on right. click the cake pics for the complete article and an explanation of how men’s room deodorizers and trout fishing go hand in hand…
and speaking of cakes, the pic below is of a massive urinal cake hatch i witnessed a few years ago in Norther Ireland. enjoy !

irish urinal cakes

Ha, Take That !

by Will Shaw via Sexyloops

i’ve said it before and i know i’ll say it again in the future but in the meantime he just gets better and better and this is Will at his best.
too good not to copy and share here in full, here’s a few ideas on well, a lot of things…
read on and enjoy !

Take That-

“The Klinkhammer settles softly on the water surface and starts its drift. Five feet downstream the brown trout sees it coming. It swings across a few inches and then with surprisingly small beats from its trowel of a tail, moves forwards and up to the fly. As it rises in the water refraction does its weird thing and the fish changes size as if you just turned the zoom ring on a telephoto lens. This is a nice fish. Eight inches away from the fly, the trout’s lower jaw drops a little. It’s going to take it.

At seven and three quarter inches from the fly the fish is decelerating. Stopping itself from overshooting and leaving the water. Slower still, now, the trout is coming to a graceful halt one inch beneath the fly. The lower jaw slowly closes as the fish turns its head and lazily returns to its lie, its nose against a grapefruit-sized rock in the middle of a fine gravel run.

The Klinkhammer sails on. And in the background, crouching and barely hidden behind a large tussock, you hear me exhale with a loud groan and see me slowly topple over on to my side. Like a felled tree.

Bugger.

That was the fifth drift. It looked perfect to me. I’ll switch flies. A Deer Hair Emerger perhaps? Wait until I’m sure the fish is back feeding well. Maybe five minutes.

First cast with the DHE and it’s an action replay, only this time the trout goes that extra inch and casually eats the fly, as if to say “what else were you expecting me to do”. Minutes later it lies quietly on the meshes to have its portrait done.

I knew it. The trout didn’t like the starburst of the Klink’s hackle on the surface. It’s happened over and again. If they don’t take a Klink. they’ll usually have the simpler profile of the DHE. I know this to be the case. Fact, in fact.

It’s amazing how often I find myself talking this kind of bollocks. Usually to an audience of one: Me. If it’s not about Klinks and DHE’s, it’s about leader diameters or fly line colours; rod actions or fishery management.

You have to form a point of view don’t you? Come to a conclusion. Define a rule. “Bright day – bright fly” sort-of-thing. These rules are great, and the world is full of them. But, and I take a deep breath here because I can hardly bring myself to type the words, ninety percent of these rules (yours, mine, and everyone elses), aren’t rules at all. They are pure supposition.

Most of the time the best we can really do is to say such-and-such a tactic may work now and again. It’s really rare that we know the reason why.

I can hear some of you mumbling to yourself, “it’s nothing to do with the difference between the flies, you probably just got a better drift on the sixth cast.” You could well be right. Others will be shouting at the screen “Poppycock! The fish took because you rested it while you were changing flies”. These people could be right too.

The problem we have in developing hard and fast rules in fly fishing is three-fold. Firstly we have to deal with the fact that we humans are hardwired to see patterns where no pattern exists. We like to make links between possibly unrelated things (a change of fly pattern and a fish rising, say) and create stories around them (the presence of a starburst or not, in my case). We tell ourselves that as this has happened over and over again, the linkage must be correct. The problem is that the frequency “over and over again” is usually measured for us in the tens, rather than the more statistically significant thousands. Even full-time anglers struggle to replicate conditions for long enough to come to statistically valid conclusions on their own.

The second problem is one of a high number of possible variables. We’ve already mentioned three variables in my Klink vs. DHE story (fly, drift/drag, frequency of casting), and we’re only scratching the surface. How about light conditions, water colour, water height, invertebrate drift, multiple hatches, the fish’s mental state. I could go on. Each of these is a multi-condition (possibly random) variable, so the possible combinations probably run into the millions. And you want me to accept your hypothesis based on a few successes?

The third problem is that nature can be pretty random, and randomness is a funny thing. Did you know that a winning lottery number of 12345 is just as likely as any other five-digit combination (i.e. not very)? I bet not many of you have that sequence as part of your weekly lottery purchase. Also random events tend to cluster and we see these clusters as part of a non-existent pattern. How many of you have worried that your iPOD, set to shuffle, is on the blink when it plays two Take That songs in succession? If it’s a random selection of songs, and you have roughly an equal number of songs from each artist, then the odds of the next song being Take That is the same as for any other artist. (Note: With the Take That thing? It’s not the iPOD that’s on the blink. Just Sayin’…).

But we’re so keyed up to spot patterns that if 12345 did win the lottery there’d be a huge inquiry, and if you got three Take That songs in a row you’d take your iPOD back (no, really, take a look at yourself first – sheesh!). In angling we only need to see a fish do the same thing a couple of times and we think we’ve cracked the meaning of life. You have to admire our optimism. Luckily the angling gods have a habit of bringing us back to earth very quickly and with a bump.

There’s a post on the board this week asking how many fish a fly should catch before you give it a name. Estimates vary from 50 to 1000. The idea is that there’s a certain threshold above which a fly justifies being christened.

Imagine if we adopted such a practice. There’d probably be about five named flies in the whole sport, and the world would be a much, much duller place. You can also bet that some people would just take their flies to a fish-farm to get a quickie christening.

I say, christen your fly whatever you like and whenever you like. Straight off the vice if you want to. Tell us all about it and we can then tie some and make our own minds up irrespective of how many fish it has caught.

Just don’t, whatever you do, call your new fly Take That.

Will

“That’s about as big as a fish that big gets”

i have no idea who the author of that quote is but it fits this fish and it’s story quite well.

smallest fish for the last couple of years over on the Sexyloops forum we’ve been doing an annual challenge on who will post the biggest, ugliest, deadest (found dead, not killed by the angler), prettiest and just about anything ‘est’ fish you care to post. two years ago i had won the ‘smallest’ category and had gotten a really nice Rio 4wt LT line as prize. cool. the fish was a cute baby yellow perch but catching it was a byline of trying to catch something a lot bigger.

sl 'smallest contest

now, last year i decided to turn things around and tried to catch the smallest fish i could but this time on purpose and this turned out to be the hardest fishing challenge i’ve had so far… i was living in Sweden at the time and this little creature and all it’s billions of sisters and brothers are extremely abundant in any lake and there’s millions of lakes in Sweden. probably more. (i don’t know what species it is. someone once told me what it is in swedish but that of course, like anything else in swedish, is impossible to remember… )
anyway, the hard part was actually hooking up to the fish. getting strikes was very easy and just a matter of plopping the fly near a pier. most of the time i could see dozens of them fight for it. the problem was the shape of the fish’s mouth and how regular hooks designed for ‘trout-type’ fish where incompatible so it meant reshaping the smallest flies i have with tweezers until i could find the right shape. i can easily state that it took several hundreds of strikes before i finally hooked this one fish. it took three months.

the fish was approximately 55mm long and the fly was a size 30 chironomid rusty-red nymph made by my great friend Andy Baird.
even though it was the smallest fish of the year i didn’t win anything but that’s ok, the prize was pretty lame, a dorky looking Sexyloops cap that i already have safely packed away who knows where.
this experience was a very interesting one and i’m glad i did it. it is however a ‘been there, done that ‘ affair and i’m quite certain i won’t be doing this again and will stick to targeting big fish, they’re easier.

The Long Route

by Will Shaw via Sexyloops

another lovely Sunday read from Will today leaving us lots to think about.
(i’ll never advocate the use of tea… but prepare your tying kit and a fresh pot of coffee and enjoy !)

After tying the body, rib, and thorax, I just needed to add a hackle and the fly would be done. On the table in front of me were almost half a dozen of the same pattern, surrounded by the debris of an around an hour’s worth of tying: Spools of thread, spools of wire, odd clumps of fur and hackle feather, a dubbing needle, two pairs of scissors, a small bottle of Hard as Nails, and an empty tea-mug.

This last fly would complete the half dozen I needed to restock the fly box. Finish this and I could get up, stretch my legs, and have another mug of tea. Might even have a biscuit. Then I noticed the ribbing. It was slightly off.

It wasn’t a disaster, just a little uneven. The fly was fine. Really. I could easily have tied in the hackle, whip finished and had the kettle on all inside two minutes. The fly box would be fully stocked with half a dozen serviceable fish-catching flies.

But I surprised myself by carefully unwinding the thorax (picking off stray dubbing hairs from the thread), and then re-winding the ribbing to make sure the turns were properly spaced. Then I dubbed on a new thorax, completed the hackle and finished the fly as planned.

As I sipped my fresh mug of tea I got to thinking about that last fly. It’s not like me to be picky. In general terms I think of myself as a pragmatist and not a perfectionist. I try not to sweat the small stuff and focus on functionality more than dotting i’s and crossing t’s. My fly box is by no means a collection of exhibition-level tying, and I’d hate for you to look at it under a magnifying glass. So why did I bother unpicking that last fly to redo the rib?

There is a satisfaction in doing anything well. Painting a fence, parking a car, hitting the waste paper basket first time from across the room. But with this last fly it was more than that, I almost felt that I had a responsibility to myself and to the fish to make a better fly.

Very odd.

We spend hours, days, months, and years trying to tie better flies, cast better loops; learn about myriad insects, rivers, lakes and fish. This huge investment in time and effort isn’t all simply about trying to catch more fish though, is it? It’s more than that.

I’m tempted to say that trying to do all these things well is an outward demonstration of respect. Respect for the fish, the environment, and for ourselves. But the fish doesn’t care a fig whether my ribbing is uneven or not, and the piscatorial understanding of the concept of respect is probably somewhat limited. So what’s going on?

When we talk about respecting our quarry we mean something else. Respect for the fish is an outward demonstration that we understand the consequences of what we’re doing. We take away their liberty and sometimes even their lives, and that is something that we must not take lightly.

As we get deeper into our sport we come to understand that the more effort we put in, the more we value the end result. That old saw about starting off wanting to catch all the fish and finishing up wanting to catch the hardest fish is repeated so much that it has us yawning with boredom, but it is repeated so much because it contains a grain of truth.

We seldom value things that are easily had, and here in the developed world lots of things are, actually, had very easily indeed. So it does us good to sometimes take the long route. To walk rather than drive. To cook rather than get a takeaway. To tie rather than buy.

To re-rib the fly.

Will

Sunday November 11th, 2012

A Fly Rod Rating System

although not unique, Steve Parton’s explanation of how rod/line weight rating can be achieved is as good, and in my opinion better than any static measurement system out there. (the key word there is ‘static’ whereas in actual use a rod is used in a dynamic manner)
methods as the CCS (Common Cents System) and others may be fine for putting a specific numerical description of a rod’s action but the static measurement  doesn’t take into account the user’s ability, style, tastes, preferences and most important, how they ‘feel’ what’s going on when using that particular rod and line configuration.
to not be misunderstood, i’m not at all against these static measuring methods and as with anything that tries to explain fly casting in less than archaic ways, i’m very happy they exist. it’s just that some of the results are more confusing to the average angler than the confusion that preceded it.
as Steve so correctly points out at the end of his article, nothing replaces testing rods and lines yourself because you are the one that will be using them.

i’ve highlighted the most relevant text below, click HERE for more of Steve’s insights in the full article on Sexyloops. interestingly, we’ll notice that outside of weighing and measuring line belly lengths there are no numbers or graphs and charts but rather a good use of what we all have, the brain.

“It isn’t that easy a job because there are no set written rules anywhere that relate flylines to rods. There are very specific rules which govern the manufacture of flylines to AFTMA standards which are universally applied worldwide – but even they are somewhat outdated and in danger of becoming increasingly so in these days of fancier variations of Forward Tapering involving longer and shorter bellies.

What I actually have over in the Shakespeare Factory at Redditch is a set of Forward Tapered Traditionally Constructed Flylines 30′ in head length each and all of them exactly weighing into the dead central weights of each line size. A set of perfectly standard flylines, if you will.

There is a little additional subtlety in this choice because the vast majority of flyfishermen are far better served with 30′ headed Forward Tapered Flylines. This is because they are average performers only, in purely casting terms. They are the mass market we serve as a trade generally – not specialists, not aggressive young professionals or veteran casting heroes with arms like steel bands and the technical mastery of a Steve Rajeff!

When testing a flyrod I test cast it with at least three different lines to see how it reacts in correct load, slight underload and slight overload.

Test casting is a bit of a black art because it is useless for any highly competent caster like myself to just go ahead and rate a rod for my own ability. I cast very well and normally want to use any flyrod in slight underload because I hit the cast hard and double haul as a matter of routine – I am still strong and very rhythmical physically as are most good casters.

When I test cast I deliberately attempt to cast like an average flyfisherman without double hauling. I try to be as like the average as possible and the average flyfisher is around 50 with a wife and 2.4 kids, a mortgage, well stressed and probably living a life of quiet desperation. He goes flyfishing at most 15 times a year. He may well also have slight tennis elbow and an imminent hernia!

And of course whilst I’m swinging the variously loaded rods about I am making hard mental notes about the actions – usually with a view to eradicating the hyper stiff or mega sloppy ones one very occasionally encounters these days. If I have a sensible comment to make about rod actions generally: it is that these days it is almost a rarity to encounter genuinely bad ones – the Koreans and Chinese learnt really very quickly what not to send!

What we have done in some years at Shakespeare’s is to use two independent rod raters and compare results and views on the products. Once I worked in tandem with the good Paul Arden himself some years ago and it was most interesting to see how very closely we had independently agreed on almost every single stick!

Technically a rod works best with a specific weight of line to load it given that the line is moved sufficiently fast to keep it sensibly airborne. Nobody I know in the game tests at very fast linespeeds because it is very counterproductive as Mr Average Caster can’t speed lines up anyway.

The problem most folks have as a result of line ratings is that the wholly unskilled marketing department in the joke company they bought the product off has had the rods marked without reference to professional help in the matter! That’s just me being polite about thoroughly cowboy operations and there are a fair few still in business and you probably know them at least as well as I do.

As ever the rule for practical fishermen is “Never Buy a Pig In a Poke!” In other words you buy your rod after you have tried it and not before unless you are duplicating a system somebody owns that you’ve tried yourself.

And that has its problems too because it is rare to find a batch of blanks in which there isn’t one odd stiff one and one odd soft one – carbon fibre blanks aren’t entirely identical, statistically they all fall into a normal distribution. So the average will be good but don’t forget about the three standard deviations in either direction that this implies – but that’s the way all engineering and mass production always was and always will be!”

Carry On Crimping

by Will Shaw 

Will’s article was inspired by  this thread on Sexyloops.

to be honest, having someone who has the title of ‘scientist’ go on and publish these kind of absolutely ridiculous notions that barbed hooks are better for fish than barbless ones is nothing short of criminal.
now, when we consider that this person is a respected member of Trout Unlimited we can all start to worry not only a little but a lot. as such his influence can have a major influence to many anglers and the angling industry but it doesn’t take much to realize right away that it’s a bad influence.

true, barbless hooks are not the only way to preserve fish stocks, proper fish handling comes first. what many don’t realize is catch and release isn’t a last second affair but a global approach to fishing planned way before reaching the water. just because a fish is alive when it’s put back doesn’t mean that it will stay that way. careful preparation ensures to the highest degree possible that they stay alive, reproduce, get big and are able to be caught again and again and again. yup, that last part is selfish but it’s a selfish with minimal effect to the ecosystem.

having opinions and sharing them is normal and good. however, here we have a clear case of sheep-like, blind following the blind of a ‘scientist’ without ever taking into account that there are good scientists who have a broad point of view and work for a ‘greater good’ and bad scientists with narrow vision who work for their egos and personal interest.
i don’t need another’s informed opinion to know that barbed hooks are not only completely unnecessary but more damaging to the fish and the careless or unlucky angler.

oh yes, this subject pisses me off because selfishness, pride and stupidity  pisses me off.  please take the time to read the Sexyloops thread and it’s adjacent links for the full story. this kind of idiocy needs to be stopped in it’s tracks, please pass it on.

if you can’t find factory barbless hooks to suit your needs crimp on folks, crimp on !

now for Will’s more eloquent, more tolerant and less pissed off opinions on this subject… :mrgreen: enjoy !

” My mate runs stocked rainbow trout fishery. He runs it exceptionally well in my opinion. It’s really well kept, stocked with high quality fish, in a nice part of the world. Like most fisheries he offers a variety of day tickets to meet different angler’s needs in terms of hours and whether or not you want to take any fish home.

So the fishery isn’t 100% catch and release. I suspect most people take a fish or two and then switch to C&R for the rest of the day. There aren’t too many rules to worry about and the atmosphere is pretty relaxed. The exception to this is the rules around fish handling.

If a fish is to be killed it must be killed straight away, no messing about. If the fish is to go back then the first principle is that the fish doesn’t leave the water. You can use a landing net or grab the leader, the choice is yours, but the fish mustn’t be handled or lifted out on to the bank. The only way to ensure this is for anglers to fish with barbless hooks.

The fishery owner is really careful to explain these rules to everyone who turns up, and checks that they understand them. He also says “if you have any problems or concerns over handling a fish, keep it in the net and in the water and call me over”. It’s a small fishery, he can see all the anglers, and with his quad bike he can get to them in a few seconds.

The point is that he tries really hard to be clear as to what to do. But most days he sees bad fish handling, and people struggling to get hooks out of fish. It seems anglers either overestimate their fish handling skills, underestimate the fragility of stocked rainbows, or are just too embarrassed to ask for help.

High among his problems is people not debarbing their hooks. It’s easy to forget, I’ve done it myself. So now I debarb before the hook even goes in to the vise. But he suspects that lots of guys don’t debarb because they fear losing fish and think he won’t notice if they stay barbed. He says it’s dead easy to tell when someone’s not debarbed as they spend ages trying to get the hook out. He then wanders over and checks their hooks. Busted.

The consensus on the board is that barbless hooks are a good thing. Our experience tells us that they reduce fish handling and damage to the fishes’ mouth, and also that they are a lot easier to remove from your hand, ear, head if things go awry.

However some people do think there are problems with barbless. Some people think they can penetrate too far, move around more, and cut through flesh more easily. The carp fishing world is very ambivalent about barbless hooks and many fisheries ban them because of fears that they increase mouth damage.

I’m happy to accept that the relative benefits of barbless hooks could vary from species to species, and between fishing methods. But I don’t think that any issues with barbless hooks should mean we all meekly go back to using standard barbed hooks.

If a barbless hook is found to move around more, manufacturers could put a bump on the point where the barb was (a la debarbed?); if a hook is found to cut mouths more, make the wire thicker on the bend. If a particular method is resulting in deeper hook-ups, change it. The point is (ugh!) if we think a hook is regularly doing more damage than it should we should look around for solutions, not go back to something worse. It’d be nice to see hook manufacturers offering guidance, solutions and advice here, but I won’t hold my breath.

Me? I’m happy that the debarbed hooks I’m using, for the fishing I’m doing, cause minimal damage to the fish I catch. I’ll carry on crimping.

Will “

The Wariness Scale – part 1

by Carlos Azpilicueta

one of the more interesting fish-behaviour concepts i’ve ever come across, an ever-present approach i’ve adopted no matter what species or water-type fished.
this goes a lot further than the simplistic and typical “Pattern vs Presentation” that most authors have re-hashed over centuries. something the dedicated angler should most definitely consider to add to their ‘bag of tricks’.

”  Imagine the following situation: a brown trout feeding near the surface in front of you. Moreover, it’s large (this requires some imagination). You have the perfect imitation. You know that because, during previous hatches of this same species, this pattern worked consistently. With a careful, accurate cast, you make a perfect presentation. Drag-free, it drifts into the trout’s window at the right place at the right time. Everything is perfect. It couldn’t be better. But… (now you don’t have to imagine anything, just remember the many times you’ve experienced this) it doesn’t take your fly. So, what do you do now? You tie on a different fly, and then another and another. You lengthen your leader to see if it’s that darn micro-drag. You carefully move into a different position and cast at a different angle. Zilch.

During the two last seasons, I’ve verified that there is one more parameter that we generally don’t take into account or we simply don’t pay enough attention to. Consequently, we don’t deal with it as something separate from the other two. I’m referring to the trout’s degree of wariness in such a critical situation as feeding on the surface. Conditioned by a heap of circumstances, the trout passes through states in which its feeling of security or awareness of vulnerability vary constantly. These states enormously condition the trout’s willingness to take your fly, independently of the pattern or the presentation.”

posted years ago on Sexyloops but still one of it’s ‘hidden treasures’, click HERE for Carlos’ complete article.
Part 2 will follow shortly, enjoy !

Sweet Sorrow

from Will Shaw via Sexyloops

a great read with a lot of interesting insights. i like that aftertaste, what do you think ?

It’s getting late. The light has pretty much gone, the fish have stopped rising. There’s a high probability that your fly is tangled but with this light, no torch and no glasses, you aren’t really in a position to do anything about it. You said you’d be home half an hour ago. The midgies are biting and given that you haven’t eaten anything since that sweaty service station sandwich eight hours ago, you are hungry.

Better start thinking about the last cast.

I say “start thinking about”. That’s about as far as you can go just now. Actually committing to the last cast of the day means that in just a few seconds you’ll be turning to the bank, slowly picking your way across the stream, winding the fly line back on to the reel as you go; suddenly noticing the chill, and trying to remember where you put the car keys.

You can’t just go around springing the last cast on yourself. Jumping from the intense close-up of fishing focus to the long-view panorama of work, family and friends is quite a leap and you need a bit of a run up, so-to-speak.

We need to do a bit of circling before we come in to land. Just easing the thought into our minds. “Another half hour and I’ll start thinking about packing up” is a decent first step. Then we can actually move on to maybe thinking about it, and subsequently we might even go as far as saying we’re into our last twenty casts, or so. Give or take. Approximately.

Even if you are a regular fisher, on the bank every other day, it’s always a wrench to leave the water. The fact that the next cast could be the one, the cast where the fish of a lifetime at last hangs on, is enough on its own to keep us on the bank for another couple of hours. You never know. We never know.

But big fish almost never take on the last cast and the fishing day seldom ends on a rising note. The crescendos usually come throughout the day and even if they do happen late on we’ll usually linger longer and mostly our days on the water fade to a sustained minor and melancholy refrain.

That last cast moment, though, is a big moment. It has a finality to it that is quite out of proportion to the event itself. There is a sense of mortality in finishing the fishing day. This could be The Last Cast. You know, ever. Who knows what life has in store around the corner? Who knows when you’ll be back? So we hang on. Drawing the day out like a taught length of catgut: 7x or finer, as fine as we can manage without breaking our connection with the non-fishing world.

In the final minutes of the day you find yourself trying to force the sights, sounds and smells of the waterside into your memory: The sound of the stream, the smell of the water, fields and flowers, and the shimmering shadows of leaves and branches as they creep across the water. It’s all too beautiful. You can’t take it with you, can you? You have to let go.

Our long-term affair with the water and the fish isn’t too different, then, from loving our significant other. One last kiss. Then another. Holding their gaze and trying to remember what it feels like in this moment, to have them near. Promise to come back soon.

This is a fine distillation of bittersweet and we must learn to savour the flavour.

Will

bouncy-bouncy, boing-boing !

here’s an interesting topic from a thread i’m participating on Sexyloops.
since this subject has come up quite a lot in recent courses i’ve given, i thought we could talk about it here as well, hoping it might help those who have similar issues.
i’ll be doing some copying/pasting from the thread.

Q – ” When I look at videos of instructors online, I notice that the bottom of the loop always follows a nice straight line when it’s unrolling. I do have that with my back cast but with my front cast the bottom of the loop is always wobbly/ wave-like.  I think it must have something to do with my stop on the front-cast but can’t get a good grasp on it. “

A – try relaxing your hand immediately after the stop. you can try this right now. grab a pen or just a rod butt section and pantomime the FC.
once you’ve squeezed your hand to make the stop, relax that squeeze. the idea is to hold the grip just enough to neither let the rod drop on the floor :mrgreen: or let it torque (the reel swings left or right along the rod’s axis)

later, do this with the full rod, (no line !) and look at how the rod reacts.
if you continue squeezing hard after the stop the rod keeps on boing-boinging up and down.
had there been a line cast all those boings would make corresponding waves in the rod leg.
if you immediately relax the grip, the rod stops it’s movement much earlier and we get a lot less waves. we call this ‘damping’

and this is what the effects of an un-damped and damped grip looks like. from friend and colleague Lasse Karlsson’s series of great videos helping us understand how fly casting works through high-speed video. (and some pretty good casting… :wink: ) thanks Lasse !

and just to to clarify this leg business, a casting loop has three parts:
Rod Leg- the amount of line between the the rod tip and the Loop Face
Loop Face- the curved or pointy part !
Fly Leg- the amount of line between the Loop Face and the Fly

some narrow-minded old-schooler instructors call the legs ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ but that can only be of use for vertical casting. they get completely lost and usually fall over when it comes to explaining roll casting, speys or simple side casts as they have to stand upside-down or lay down to not contradict themselves…

What are Biots ?

by Ben Spinks via Sexyloops

they’re these things,


“ For most people they barely rival the discovery of a wad of bellybutton fluff in the grand scheme of things. In fact many would go so far as to call them boring, uninspiring and completely sexless.  But why are we so keen to neglect this most wonderful of materials? Do they attract giant man eating Asilidae and no ones told me? There most definitely seems to be something wrong.

The ideal fly should be quick and easy to tie. That doesn’t mean rough, sloppy or fragile, it just means simple.  Biots epitomise simplicity, but unfortunately their reputation for being rather unwilling and stubborn eclipses this. Shameful indeed, as most problems are nothing more than by-products of the way in which the material is initially treated.

Get this right and the results are so realistic you may wet yourself.   Segmentation is exceptional, durability is abundant and sexiness, well, it makes the playboy mansion look like Chatsworth house. “

hard to disagree with Master Ben, specially when it’s so eloquently put  !

if you’re ready for a Biot-Bingo moment, click this pic for the full article.  enjoy !

enlightenment

an extract from the movie with the same name, here’s fly fishing like you’ve probably never seen fly fishing before.
this is Paul Arden, this is Ronan Creane, this is Enlightenment, this is Sexyloops…

good knots

it’s been brought to my attention lately that good casters never make ‘wind knots’.

that’s a load of bull,  it’s just not true. i regularly have the great joy of meeting and casting with what are referred to as some of the best fly casters in the world and i can assure you that it’s quite rare to see a ‘clean’ leader, specially during distance casts.
heck, i even specialize in figure-of-eight knots! (above and below)

these knots are a good thing. a blessing. they teach us.
they’re here for us to remember that we can always improve and do better, but mostly to remind us that fly casting is an activity that no-one will ever truly master.
that might be a hard one for some to swallow. too bad.

the one below happened to me during a course.
i had a dozen or so beginning students in front of me, i lifted the line to demonstrate a cast, the leader or fluff got stuck in some mole turds (see the mounds in the background), jerkiness happened (i jerkied) and what happened next took around five minutes to undo.
of course this isn’t supposed to happen and of course it’s entirely my fault !  (i hadn’t taken the mole turds into consideration…)
however, what happened was all of a sudden, the dozen or so people smiled with even a few polite and well deserved giggles.
what happened was all of a sudden, the pupils and the teacher where on the same level and all of a sudden, the whole group was more confident and less intimidated. the day finished wonderfully and most left with enough to go out and catch a fish or two.
a big lesson there for both sides.

just like the Sexyloops sticker says: “sometimes it’s good to fuckup… “

Related articles

“Words mean things”

found on the Great Lakes Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers Facebook page, i’ve shown these fly casting definitions here before but i liked the introduction so much i thought a little rerun wouldn’t hurt.

” Words mean things, especially if you’re trying to discuss or teach something. Some guys I know, have put these forth in an effort to get everyone on the same page. The FFF didn’t see fit to adopt these, so they have nothing. These are the ones I use, and lots of people I know use them also. You might find them useful, or at least you will know what the heck I’m talking about. Cheers!  ”

source: Sexyloops

THE FLYCASTING MODEL : Core Definitions

Magnus Angus, Paul Arden, Lee Cummings, Ben Dixon, Grunde Løvoll,
Stefan Siikavaara, Walter Simbirski, Mark Surtees.

THE WHOLE CAST

Stroke (or Overall Stroke): A coordinated series of movements which includes a Casting Stroke.
A Stroke starts when the rod hand first moves in the direction of the cast.

Casting Stroke: When the rod applies force to the line in order to form a loop.

Pause: Period between Casting Strokes.

THE CASTING STROKE

Casting Arc: Change of rod-angle during a Casting Stroke.

Casting Stroke Length: Distance the rod hand travels during a Casting Stroke.

Drag: Rod translation during the early part of a Casting Stroke
Drag establishes momentum in the direction of the cast with little or no rod rotation. (Not essential to all casting styles.)

Loop: A moving length of line delivered past the rod tip, formed when the rod tip curves the line under or over itself.

Static Loop: A length of line formed into a D under the rod tip.

ROD AND LINE POSITIONING

Drift: To position the rod between casting strokes.
Moving the rod to adjust Casting Arc, Stroke Length or Casting Plane. Drift applies little or no force on the line.

Slide: A form of drift where the rod is moved along the line towards the line hand.

Sweep: To position the line.
Sweeping or pulling the line into position.

Mend: A form of Sweep after the Casting Stroke.
A mend may be made, either while the line is in the air (aerial mend) when the caster moves line in the rod-leg of the loop, or later when the line has straightened or fallen.

Lift: An upward Sweep.
The primary purpose of Lift is to begin to clear line from the water prior to a further line positioning movement or Casting Stroke.

FAULTS

Creep: Unintentional movement of the rod in the direction of the next Casting Stroke.
Creep is a persistent casting fault where the rod is unintentionally moved so the Casting Arc and/or Casting Stroke Length of that cast are reduced.


Chupa-Bobbin-Chups !

a tasty tying tool holder idea from a friend over on the spanish forum ‘El Foro de Sexyloops‘. with this feature he assures me that there’s no longer any need for thread wax as (add a warm latinish accent for the full effect) “The sticky sugar deposit left on the tongue is better than any wax any day, give it a good lick and and it’s like super glue ! “

“upstream wetfly kicks arse over downstream wetfly any day”

Upstream Wetfly by Paul Arden

“Another thing to try doing is to watch the water where you think your flies are swimming. Since we are using light spider patterns, on a short line, in fairly fast water, the fish hopefully will have to bulge the surface on the take. With big fish you may actually have to delay your strike, but generally you should set the hook fairly quickly on these takes.

The best approach, however, is to enter a trance. Through intense meditation practices it has been proven that you can hook the impossible fish by leaving your worldly body, and becoming one with your mind. Wearing shoes with natural soles, or perhaps travelling barefoot, will help and is to be thoroughly recommended. What you are trying to attain, without trying of course, is a feeling that something is just about to happen and that you should do something about it and strike.”

sound good ? click Paul’s pic for more reading on what’s strangely enough, a somewhat obscure method of fishing outside of the UK.

 Paul in his WC Stewart outfit:
“Be stealthier than Stealth !”

Snap-Lift Switch Cast Sequence

here’s a really cool photo sequence taken from a casting movie Paul Arden, “Mister Sexyloops” filmed several years ago. originally he had named this a ‘Snap-Lift Single-Spey’ but a lot has evolved in fly casting understanding and terminology in recent years so i changed the title because a single spey is a change of direction cast and this one doesn’t change directions ! it’s a Switch Cast (or Jump Roll) with a Snap Lift instead of the more traditional Lift and Sweep normally associated with the Single Spey.

a fun thing to do is to focus the eyes on one area of your screen and scroll down with your mouse or trackpad to sort-of see it as a film made in the early days of cinematography. i’m a sucker for watching fly lines dance in the air so that makes it specially nifty but it’s also very informative as we can easily see how the line evolves from varying rod tip movements, enjoy !

via The Limp Cobra : Snap-Lift Switch Cast.

more on catch and release

i often hear the counter-argument “I don’t care about C+R, it’s my right to keep fish, we’ve done it since the beginning of history, it’s in my legal rights”, etc, etc, etc. blah, blah, blah…

ok, so you want to keep fish and as far as i’m concerned as long as you stay within reason and local regulations then i guess go ahead and reduce a worldwide dwindling fish population a little more. you’ll have guessed that i do not kill fish any more than i would kill a horse after riding it or a dog or cat after playing with it or, as Mel Krieger once said to a young woman when asked about C+R

“If i had the great pleasure of making love to you i wouldn’t kill you after… “

‘nuff said, my point isn’t to tell people what to do. however, even if you’re going to keep fish, learning proper C+R methods is an absolute must, here’s a few reasons why:

- all of us often catch undersized fish. these little fish are fragile and can’t put up with improper handling. if they don’t go back in good shape they won’t live to reproduce and make a lot of other little fish that will become bigger fish that will make tons of other fish. easy math.

- although stronger and they can generally put up well with being caught, the same basic ideas can be applied to the larger specimens. if they got that big and healthy is because they have a very strong genetic structure. these fish will make more and better fish if they are allowed to continue reproducing.

- sometimes we’re fishing for one species but another takes the fly. they can be out of season (from varying reproduction periods that differ from one species to another) or an ‘undesirable or un-tasty’ species. either way these must go back properly. there is no such thing as a ‘trash’ fish and i feel sorry for anyone who would use that term. every single element of an ecosystem is as important as another and complements the whole.

here’s a really nice article on C+R i hope you’ll find informative from my good friend “Lineslinger“ Will Shaw.

CATCH AND RELEASE FOR TROUT

the title says ‘trout’ but the methods are pretty much the same for most species. there will be more on this subject later as i’m slowly putting together with several other authors what i hope will be an accepted reference in this matter.

Will writes the Sunday Front Page slot of Sexyloops, be sure to regularly check out his articles. here’s an archive for past articles. enjoy !

The Sexyloops Fly Casting Model

first published on the Sexyloops Board a few years back as an effective and logical approach to define fly casting terms, i thought i’d post them here as well in an attempt to share this set with a larger public. there are other models within the fly casting community around the world but this one in my opinion surpasses the others in it’s thoroughness and compatibility with all styles of casts, not a particular school.

this model will also serve here in the future as a reference point for our readers.

THE FLYCASTING MODEL : Core Definitions

Magnus Angus, Paul Arden, Lee Cummings, Ben Dixon, Grunde Løvoll,
Stefan Siikavaara, Walter Simbirski, Mark Surtees.

THE WHOLE CAST

Stroke (or Overall Stroke): A coordinated series of movements which includes a Casting Stroke.
A Stroke starts when the rod hand first moves in the direction of the cast.

Casting Stroke: When the rod applies force to the line in order to form a loop.

Pause: Period between Casting Strokes.

THE CASTING STROKE

Casting Arc: Change of rod-angle during a Casting Stroke.

Casting Stroke Length: Distance the rod hand travels during a Casting Stroke.

Drag: Rod translation during the early part of a Casting Stroke
Drag establishes momentum in the direction of the cast with little or no rod rotation. (Not essential to all casting styles.)

Loop: A moving length of line delivered past the rod tip, formed when the rod tip curves the line under or over itself.

Static Loop: A length of line formed into a D under the rod tip.

ROD AND LINE POSITIONING

Drift: To position the rod between casting strokes.
Moving the rod to adjust Casting Arc, Stroke Length or Casting Plane. Drift applies little or no force on the line.

Slide: A form of drift where the rod is moved along the line towards the line hand.

Sweep: To position the line.
Sweeping or pulling the line into position.

Mend: A form of Sweep after the Casting Stroke.
A mend may be made, either while the line is in the air (aerial mend) when the caster moves line in the rod-leg of the loop, or later when the line has straightened or fallen.

Lift: An upward Sweep.
The primary purpose of Lift is to begin to clear line from the water prior to a further line positioning movement or Casting Stroke.

FAULTS

Creep: Unintentional movement of the rod in the direction of the next Casting Stroke.
Creep is a persistent casting fault where the rod is unintentionally moved so the Casting Arc and/or Casting Stroke Length of that cast are reduced.

This Thin Shell

a wonderful contribution today by Eric Wonhof

” Are mermaids cold-blooded? They’ve got to be since they’ve got gills, right? Or maybe their hair is some sort of wierd respiratory filament like the little breathers on aquatic bugs. Either way, their blood flows by water acting as a gas and heat exchanger bringing both blood and water to thermal equilibrium. If you get lucky with a mermaid, try not to looked shocked when you plant a kiss on those clammy cold lips! ”

read the rest of the article here

the Sexyloops Front Page is one of the best reads to be found each day (or almost each day, it is Sexyloops after all and organization isn’t well… ) with a different writer from around the Globe sharing his or her’s thoughts on fly fishing. be sure to bookmark this page.