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 [...]
You're standing right above them, on a bridge, the water is crystal clear and about a metre deep. Its flowing quite strongly and the carp are sifting along the bottom, nose into the oncoming current. We've all been tempted to drop a fly off a bridge somewhere along the line, we can see fish clearly [...]
Having to channel all my fishing desires into fly tying like many others in these strange times I have been honing some pattern ideas for carp. One fish food source that is abundant in most freshwater bodies is tadpoles and around here they are about all year round. Like many creatures, hundreds are born to [...]
When Frontier Fly Fishing brought out a bunch of new rods from their in-house brand Horizon, we stuck our hands up to conduct some long-term reviews. There was definitely an element of nostalgia behind such a magnanimous display of selfless volunteerism. Many of us still have or have had Horizons. It’s been around a while [...]
Everyone should be well aware that carp on fly is now entering that ‘booming’ phase - that exponential growth phase in popularity when most trout anglers discover just how nice and challenging it is to catch something else on fly, like tarpon...While reading up on the carp fishing history in our country I realised that [...]
I recently bought a spey rod, not for searuns, steelhead or salmon, but for carp on fly...You see I live in South Africa and we can cast across most of our trout streams with a 3 wt (and we don't have any searuns, steelhead or salmon). While I'll definitely also be hurling flies into the [...]
A story of two smallmouths and water under the Gouritz River bridge by LeRoy Botha in issue 19 of The Mission "14 November 2012. It’s incredibly hot and the wind is shunting. I’ve come prepared for a day or three’s fishing: food, tent, beer, gear. The Upper Gouritz River at this point is a wide, [...]
"My approach to split screen fishing imagery is based very much on a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach. I’m typically fishing and shooting at the same time so, while I would love the time and luxury of hauling around a big beautiful DSLR and a full size housing to try and shoot the best [...]
Here is a little carp home movie I recently made - special thanks to Andre van Wyk and Tudor Caradoc-Davies for their contribution with camera work. The theme of the movie is 'Carp Giant' because they are not celebrated as much as they should be in the fly fishing scene - carp are in fact [...]
In the previous post, ‘As long as it’s black and red’, I discussed the use of a fairly light-weight hook, the Dohiku #12 wet fly hook (type 644) to tie relatively sparse Zulu’s with variable sink rates – I have more recently also started using the Hanák #12 stillwater & wet hook (H 260 BL) [...]
