Fly-fishing techniques, tips, equipment, casting, and presentation.
Timely and useful extracts from articles in our 'tactics' database:
Carping: After all, they eat the same stuff as other fish do, including mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, minnows, tadpoles, small frogs, crayfish, leeches, grasshoppers, ants and terrestrials. With the exception of the egg stage, which is fine by me as I don't tie caddisfly egg patterns, carp will hit all parts of an aquatic insect's life cycle. You can catch them on nymphs, emergers, crippled emergers, semi-crippled emergers, semi-crippled emergers with a twist of lemon, spinners, duns, and the rest. In other words, many of the patterns you use for trout will work for carp, but remember what I said earlier about carp being uberselective: you will have to fish the flies more carefully than you would when fishing for trout or grayling..... More >>
Trout, Fry, & Stillwater: A quiet note of warning, this isn't especially easy sport. Trout feeding on young baitfish become preoccupied with their prey. Taking one of these fry feeders can be as difficult, if not more so, than hooking a trout sipping tricos or midge. These require the presentation of a suitable dry fly at the end of a fine tippet. All you need do, is make a drag free presentation down the appropriate feeding line. "Yeh, I know, that's no mean feat!" All the same, a fry feeder can behave in so many ways that presentation and pattern selection are even less straightforward. If you're up to the challenge, I think you'll find the rewards worth your while.... More >>
It's Sedge Time!: A good indication that fish are taking adult sedges is a splashy rise, so keep your eyes open. As for tactics with dry sedges, most usual dry fly tactics, i.e. upstream, will work, but there is another tactic, downstream. Yes I said it, downstream. The waking fly! Many British traditionalists reading this, may now be falling off their chairs in consternation, e-mailing complaints to the editor... Chill out guys! It works, more importantly, its good fun!... More >>
Super Sized Smallmouth: In many waters, where 17-inchers were rare specimens 20 years ago, nowadays they're common catches. And even bona fide 20-inch, 4-pound smallmouth are increasingly numerous. Just as good, the adaptable smallmouth bass swims across an increasingly large portion of North America. Nearly every American state and most Canadian provinces have the species. This includes over 2,000 different rivers and thousands of lakes... More >>
Chironomid Tactics: Chironomid larvae are also an important trout food source, especially those of larger species as they can easily reach almost an inch in length. In most feeding situations trout cruise along the lake bottom and literally suck out the larvae from their tubecases. It is quite common to do a throat pump of a trout and retrieve live larvae and remnants of their muddy cases. Larval densities can be very high and they make easy meals. There are also situations when larvae will be seen floating on the surface of the lake or suspended in the water column. These occurrences often coincide with the completion of spring or fall turnover... More >>
Casting with Sue Macniven: One of the faults most commonly cited in fly-fishing could now be occurring. If at this stop point you haven't bent the elbow enough so that the forearm is still at an angle other than vertical and you allow the wrist to cock back, letting the butt of the rod fall away forward from the forearm you have created the dreaded wrist break (Figure 4). The effect of this is that the thumb points backward, the rod tip follows this trajectory and the line heads towards the grass and you have a wide open loop of line flopping down behind... More >>