Flies!

Over this Winter season it seems like a good idea to head down one of the local rivers (probably the Waimak) and practice my casting.  This 'good idea' was given to me by one of the local fly fisherman down the pub the other night.  Rather than using my usual dry flies it seems more sensible to at least use something that may actually catch the odd fish so I can justify the time spent practicing.  A quick trip to the local tackle shop here in Kaiapoi (Blackwells Department Store) and I ended up with these two fine lures.

I've no idea what they are called but they look cool and no doubt deserve to be fished by someone that knows what they are doing, but it's worth a try.  Over the last few months my grand total of 6 fish have mostly be caught on a silicon lure.  This bad boy caught 5 fish and I've used it in two ways.  The first, which to be fair is the simplist and probably the laziest way to fly fish involves casting it down stream in one of the local streams and simply playing it up, down and across the flow.  This has proved fantastically effective and is great when your learning as your casting skills are not so important.  The second method is casting out across the stream and gradually pulling in the lure until it's come back to my side of the river then casting it out across again.  This caught my biggest fish and the only one that was worth keeping.  I was casting it just above a tree branch that was slightly submerged in the water, it got a few bites until success and a good size trout was landed.  This lure is pictured below.

I imagine I shall use this one again in the spring when the whitebait are around as it's a great wee lure and is good fun playing it in the flow.  I had 4 of these initially but due to some shameful casting am now down to the last one.  Next time I'm near the shop that stocks them I shall get a few more.  

The plan for the Summer is to use more dry flies as the skill involved in catching a fish this way, seems like a real challange.  I did catch a small trout on a dry fly this year and it was some serious stalking and hunting the fish that eventually landed it.  Hopefully in future updates of this blog I shall be able to share some of the fish I catch this way, until then, I imagine if any fish come my way they will have been caught on lures.

Knots!

new leader

The leader that came with my kit has got shorter and shorter over time.  Mainly due to losing so many fly's and not using a tippet to begin with.  I now have a new tapered leader.  Words such as tippet and tapered leader were meaningless to me a few months back.  I now find I can talk for hours on the subject of which to use and when to use them down the pub (although some would say I can talk for hours down the pub on any subject after a few jugs!)

So, now I have this fantastic new leader that will obviously let me catch a load more fish and become a master fly fisher, I face a new and somewhat annoying problem.  How to attach the thing to my floating line!  The RIO Trout leader rather handingly has a hoop on the end to attach it the the fly line, but my fly line has no such handy hoop.  So, it just a case of using a fancy a knot to make a hoop, never that easy, and hoop making is slowly turning my loopy!


I chose the perfection loop.  It should be easy, but with my fat fingers and dodgy eyes it was anything but easy.  Now it's done it means I can attach the leader via a loop to loop connection which sounds like it's easy so I shall not go into that in too much detail






Next problem, attaching the tippet to the leader,  I did this with a double blood knot.  Looks easy, is said to be very easy, but I found it harder than it should be.  Hopefully the more I do the easier it will get!

Fly Fishing

A Christmas present to myself this year was a Fly Fishing Kit.  I can't fly fish and it's something I've always wanted to do so it seemed like a good idea at the time!  Several hours of playing around and watching a teach yourself DVD as well as all the How To's on youtube and I was out fishing.  It may not be the best cast in the world and I've lost more flies than I dare admit, but it's good fun.  As Winter is now here I'm not doing much, after all, who wants to be stood out in the freezing cold (it's snowing as I type).  In warmer winter days I shall be out trying to perfect my cast.  I've included some pictures below and plan to keep this blog updated to share my fishing adventures over the next few years.  Hopefully we can all see some improvement, and I may actually provide a regular fish meal for the Whanua!

The first fish I caught on a fly

The first fish I caught that was worth keeping