A golden olive back porpoised in the wind rippled surface. Then another, and another. The surface was alive with barbel tucking into dinner. We had found them. Finally. The small balbyter ant plopped near the action. Within seconds pale lips loomed through the surface film to sip it down. A light lift of the rod [...]
"You won't land that fish", said Piet. A sense of finality from the first glimpse of the huge shape passing under his canoe. The most bitter sweet fishing event I have experienced. A family trip floating down the Orange river is magical. Relaxed, social, happy. The fishing pretty good too. The water was ultra [...]
Illuminated subjects, dreamy shadows, texture and pitch-black background looks cool. Low key photography is a genre of photography that caught my interest. What would flies look like shot this way?
Snip, snip. Hack, hack. A fluffy spray of fibres and thread peering out over the hook eye. Familiar? How easy is it to sharpen fly tying scissors? YouTube has many videos on how to sharpen kitchen style scissors with a sharpening stone. It looks easy. But I could not find the same for delicate [...]
A wide 'side-on' profile provides a big silhouette of a struggling baitfish. Easy pickings for a pike or ambush predator. Yet, getting a wide profile deep quickly without much weight is a challenge. Enter the silicone flank jig. Paul Clydesdale and Gunner Brammer inspired the flies shown here - check them out on Youtube. [...]
Manually spooling 300m of backing off and back onto a fly reel after every saltwater trip is painful. But essential to prevent corrosion. A fence wire spooler and a cordless drill offers an easy solution. Fencing spools come in a variety of diameters. This 30 cm version gives you almost a meter per crank [...]
Flames erupted. Fur, plastic and flash morphed and blackened. Smoke everywhere. It stank -the whole house. But the DIY fluff incinerator worked. Next time I will wait for the glue solvent to dry - duh. My fly tying is usually scruffy. I never leave enough space for the head. I forget to add weed guards. [...]
A large wake rippled after each slow strip. The fly settled into the mud. Calf deep. The pike approached, fins flared. Fanning. A twitch and it almost took, darting forward. Bobbing under the rod tip, I moved the baitfish pattern left and then right. Paused. Dragged it in circles, dipped and jigged. The 80 cm [...]
