Glossy, durable, flexible and perfect for fly tying. In Pattex 100% Platon Trakoshis believes he has found the ultimate fly tying glue for building baitfish heads Glue. It’s always such a big question and discussion with fly tiers. “What did you glue the eyes on with? How did you make that head? What are you [...]
I have often wondered when the original art of fly tying will finally be replaced by its modern incarnation, as fuelled by social media and the fly fashion show: fanatically dressed lures for fishing on fly rods. Much as I admire modern ingenuity and engage in hours of toil behind the vice in order to [...]
So one of the upsides of lockdown has been a lot more spare time on one's hands to fuck around at the vice. I think since March I have tied enough flies for a dozen trips or more. Having the creative outlet at the vice has certainly done a lot to stave off the darkness [...]
I dig fishing big dry flies with long 'legs' or rubber appendages for extra movement. The bigger flies are more buoyant and therefore also highly visible, they float longer than tiny dries and they can work charmingly well as 'indicators' when a dropper nymph is attached (I prefer 'New Zealand style' for this). Big dry [...]
The idea to trim thick, palmered Cul de Canard (CDC) to shape a juicy abdomen was inspired by Tom Sutcliffe's DDD - simply pronounced as 'Triple D' (see previous post...). Tom made the 'DDDs' that he tied famous in South Africa - there are several forms (deerhair with hackle feathers, klipspringer hair with hackle feathers [...]
This post comes from Tom Sutcliffe's website (www.tomsutcliffe.co.za) and it will link with the next post (Triple CDC body flies) on Feathers and Fluoro: A useful dry fly for lake and river fishing, a good DDD needs some care and attention to tie properly. It also needs practice and it’s not easy to just sit [...]
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?
From body-boarding to skateboarding, exploring the Vaal River and its tributaries for amazing yellowfish action, or inventing fly patterns like the brilliant Papa Roach, whatever our issue 21 Lifer Herman Botes does in life, he does at full tilt.
In issue 21 Tim Leppan wrote about 'The Foam Dungeon,' his go-to articulated streamer fly pattern for largemouth and Clanwilliam yellowfish. Here's Tim with the Step-By-Step. "After sharing this pattern with a group of mates, I received a lot of questions back about how one ties it and how to fish it. In saying that, [...]
Perhaps South Africa's most renowned dragonfly pattern, Herman Botes's Papa Roach has accounted for a lot of trophy stillwater trout, plus many other species in between. A year or two back at the Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Expo, I shot this Step-By-Step of Herman tying his pattern. For more on Herman, check out 'The [...]
