Recent comments

Mike,

I'm definit

Mike,

I'm definitely not trying to dis other kinds of fishing with a fly - be it Tenkara or using a float. People can discuss that till they are blue in the face for my sake.

The purpose of this article is to explain to the non-fly-fishing angler or reader what fly-fishing is in general, and I don't think I need to draw the whole sectarian discussion of the definition of "proper" fly-fishing into the game.
To me fishing with a fly is basically fly fishing, but I do know people who think that even fishing a weighted fly is sacrilegious and not "real" fly-fishing.

I'm not going there...

Martin

Awesome pic Lukas

Awesome pic Lukas

I would also add tha

I would also add that a fair amount of what passes for saltwater flies are lures. There is no fur, no feathers just glue and plastic. You can super glue rubber baits to hooks and fish those with a fly rod. Is that fly fishing? Nope.

Ahhh not so fast. Th

Ahhh not so fast. This debate is going on the Tenkara sites. I would also had fly fishing involves casting a flyline with a fly rod and reel. Tenkara is not fly fishing because there is no flyline. You can cast flies with a spinning rod and a clear bobber but that is also not fly fishing. On many waters Tenkara is not allowed because there is no flyline. Pack up those crappie rods son, 'cause it ain't fly fishing.

Some need to touch t

Some need to touch the catch. Some need only to see the fish up close (old eyes you know). I play "how long can I keep the fish on" using my broken hook! Use for evening and winter fishing. Makes releasing much easier.

Fantastic striped bass fishing

Being from Maine myself I can attest to the fantastic striped bass fishing. Try off of Scarborough marshes in early July, olive/white 2/0 clousers slay em, I personally have had many 30 fish mornings and multiple 40 inch plus fish every season, spending 100 days on the water every summer, tight lines and come catch some of my states awesome stripers.

The photos of the fish in this article are stunning

First of all, Martin - the photos of the fish in this article are stunning. Wow! What a thrill it must be to encounter fish like those. As for numbers - I just don't measure up. I get out maybe three times a month during Spring, a couple times over the Summer, and maybe a few in the Fall. What's that - twenty? Enough to keep me happy, but hardly enough to be an environmental impact. 2500 fish? Not in my lifetime. And that's ok with me. I'm easily satisfied.

Rene,

Rene,

That sounds like a very decent kit. I would fish with that without any objections.

Martin

Thanx for this info

Thanx for this info, A. Ames. The o-ring drive belt on my Sully "dually" broke today and I had no idea how to replace it. The specs you provided are extra helpful. Now all I need is an ancient hardware store, or maybe a hydraulic cylinder overhaul shop with a huge selection of o-rings.

gillnpete,

I have

gillnpete,

I have no idea where Davie McPhail buys his quills, but a good source is Polish Quills who has an online shop with stripped quills in a large assortment of colors.

Martin

Where does Davy Mcph

Where does Davy Mcphail buy is wonderful quills for herl bodies, they are amazing, my peacock quills are nothing like this.

Peter,

You are ge

Peter,

You are generally welcome to use our material in instruction sheets and club newsletters etc. as long as it's non-profit, which I guess your tying club is.

Martin

Great Pattern,
I am

Great Pattern,
I am compiling a set of instructions for our fly tying club which consists of about 20 members.
The idea is we illustrate a pattern, a demonstrator does it at the meeting, then we all tie the pattern with any help from the experienced members.
Will you grant me permission to copy the diagrams and instructions please? Not for profit, illustrations only distributed to the club and not for publication outside the group. Thanks in anticipation. Please do not publish this request as this is a one off request. Reply to e-mail please

Great info! Thanks

Great info! Thanks for sharing!

This is the fine art

This is the fine art of fly tying of course. Have a look on Roman Moser's Kavex Dun.
You tie the top of the CDC, rear of the feather down to the hook, down at the eye and 1/3 back to the point. Make a loop back to the eye and you get a similar shape.

Tight lines
Axel Voges

Pictures and/or trustworthy witnesses

Pit,

Pictures and/or trustworthy witnesses does it for me too!

I have a couple of times heard fantastic stories and seen the pictures, and I have no reason to doubt people there. The problem is those guys who casually in a conversation over a beer mentions how they can "easily catch 30 fish in a day".

That always makes my alarm bells ring, because I have personally never fished with anybody who single-handed caught 30 fish in a day - and I have fished with many skilled anglers in many places all over the world where there were MANY fish. Even in British Columbia, wading knee deep in pink salmon that go up the river in millions, catching 30 fish in a day would take some work.

Again: it's not impossible, it just requires fish, skill and luck.

Martin

A professional fisherman

Hallo Martin,
this man was obviously a professional fisherman. He is usuall fishing in a boat with a net behind. He did not mentioned how he catches fish. He could be a man that plays throwing and catching one seatrout with his friend. So you can catch a fish a hundred times a day easily. Once I have met a guy at the river Rhine in Cologne. He told me he could catch 20 to 30 pike-perch within a few hrs. I did not believe him and he offered a bed. I accepted and I lost a barrel of beer. He took me to a place when water was still high. Some Baby pike-perch were caught in a little puddle. with the smallest lure I have ever seen he caught these 2baby pike-perch 20 times within an hour. Since I dont bet any more on numbers of fish caught. I ask for pics and witness.

thight lines and my Story is not a lie.
Pit

Excellent video! Ver

Excellent video! Very informative.

Mike this is a great

Mike this is a great post. I paddled white water for years and sold my boats a few years ago. I have had the bug for a solo flat water boat to fish out of for a while. I'm going next Friday to pick up my new boat. I really like how you have your boat set up....very user friendly.

You are so right

Mike,

You are so right: it depends on what you fish for. I have been fishing on streams, for grayling especially, where I couldn't do anything wrong, and was able to hook a fish in every cast in periods. I have seen streams where a better dry fly fisher than myself could pull out brown trout by the dozen and I have see small cuttthroats cruising in mountain lakes so consistently that you could catch a fish every five minutes for a whole day with an ant pattern, some patience and a bit of skill.

And on such waters a 10-20-30 fish day is absolutely possible and actually quite likely if you know how to take advantage of the situation. If you have access to a place like that on a regular basis, there's no doubt that you can produce a pretty high number of fish per trip, and if there's enough trips in a year - and in a decade for that matter - 2500 fish is easily reached.

But in my part of the world, when fishing for sea run browns in the salt, I can't in my wildest fantasy imagine an unbroken row of 20 or 30 fish days. One really fantastic day now and then, but not regularly, even if you live close by the best water and can fish often. Weather, wind, seasons, water conditions and the fact that the fish have a whole ocean to disperse in makes that an unsafe bet.

Talk to salmon and steelhead anglers, people who pursue permit and tarpon or other more fickle fish, and I'm sure you will hear a similar opinion, but on a pond full of panfish, a spring creek stuffed with rising brownies or a Norwegian stream with schools of grayling... bring it on!

Martin

So much depends

So much depends on what and where you fish. I can trout fish and catch 10-15 fish most days. I can smallmouth fish and catch 3-5, maybe 8 fish? Bluegills? I can almost always catch 20.Then again, I have been fishing the same lake off and on for about 10 years. I can go salmon fishing and I think I caught an exact total of 9 all season. Some years salmon fishing. Nothing. I have fished soft hackles and had days of 40-50 trout, those are very, very, very few.

One day I think they must have stocked some jack salmon. I caught a ton. I literally lost count. They were all exactly the same size, 5-7". I kept fishing. I caught dozens and dozens. I also fished only a dry fly. I've never done that before, after or since.

One of my friends hit it right on the Beaverkill with his brother one day. They both caught like 2 dozen fish. One brother wanted to go, the other said," No way! This river owes me. I'm staying until I fall over or they stop biting."

Getting skunked sucks. I had a few good days this summer on the Norfork in Arkansas. I think I caught 20-30 on dries one morning and maybe 30-40 on soft hackles.

Have to find the fish and keep fishin' if they are biting. I once got 20-25 smallies in a day. I got to 15 and wanted to quit, I figured I better keep fishing because I will not do this again anytime soon.

My seatrout outfit is a Sage

My seatrout outfit is a Sage VT2 #6 9Ft and a flyreel Lamson Konic with
a Scientific Anglers GPX floater and Guideline coastalline slow and fast intermediate.Works fine for me casting and fishing as well.

Greetz Rene V.

I remember one trip

Martin, I remember one trip to west coast of Sweden. I caught 20 fish per 6 days, one guy caught the same number and this guy landed more than 100 fish. Really, no lies, I fished almost directly next to him. In previous post I talked about Denmark.
Vanuz maybe knows him, he can confirm it.
He is very skilled flyfisher and performs very well on local water too. To be honest, these very high numbers of fish cannot be caught whole year, as I mentioned before we usually arrive in the best periods of the year and fish whole day.
It makes sense in the less productive part of the year we can be happy if we catch for our five fish per one week trip.

Ps: I am always very happy if I land 5 or so fish per four days :-)

sounds like a true adventure!

Pike,

60-80 sea trout in 4-5 days sounds like a true adventure! If it's per angler it's simply out of this world. If it's between them, it's still a very decent result.

I'd sure like to fish where these guys fish.

As I write in the article, I have a very accurate log of fish caught during the last 10 years. The log holds solid data for 6-8 of the guys I fish with, and has statistics from 1224 coastal fishing trips amounting to 3583 full fishing man days if you multiply by the number of anglers that were on each trip.

On these almost 3600 fishing days the catch was 2973 fish (all included, not only bright sea trout, but also small fish, kelts and garfish). So that's less than 1 fish per man per day and a little more than 2 fish per trip no matter how many guys were fishing on the trip.
In the 10 years I recorded our fishing, we have two "best" days with 27 fish - one day between 4 guys, the other between 5. Then we have a couple of 20 fish days, a couple with 18 and a couple with 17 and so on. In 10 years.
And it's worth noting that more than a third of all the trips were skunked trips with no catches at all, no matter how many we were, trying to lure a fish from the ocean.

Now, my friends are not novices or inexperienced, but generally know what end of a rod to hold on to and know what they are doing. When sea trout are around, sea trout are caught. It just so happens that quite often sea trout are not around...

As both you and I say, it's certainly possible to have constant record catches if all factors are in your favor. It's just very unlikely, even if you have the time to spend, which only few people have.

I am not saying that your friends are lying or exaggerating. I hear stories from people I trust about such trips every year. But it's different stories from different people from different years and not the same person repeating the stunt trip after trip, month after month, year after year.

Martin