Recent comments

I personally have ne

I personally have never used any form of gadget or contraption.
I can see the advantages as well as the disadvantages Martin has pointed out. Nice article and I love the very first picture (top right: foot in coils).

All in all, the best item I can see is Sören Essebo's towel hook. I tried this some time ago and got it to work a treat.
As for line baskets, I have always thought they look strange and kind of silly and rates right up there with most other useless junk on the fly fishing scene you can do without.

I agree with Hans Jacob..."tangeling is part of the game". No one said that what ever you do and how you do it should be problem free or easy.
I have stood in the salt at Andros Island, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Tortola, Denmark and even the Falkland Islands in calm mirror like seas to a howling, bitter, blue finger, nose dripping nightmare in winter. I get coils and knots and other impossible tangles but have never let it get to me. It's part of the game.

I like these articles. Good and bad sides and some pretty "fine and dandy" alternatives. You decide but don't get sleepless nights and waste your money.

Last but not least...Don't buy what the fly fishing scene or some expert says you should have.

Shake a leg and get rid of those coils!!!

Rip Van Winkle.

Hi Martin
There is

Hi Martin
There is another even more obvious natural alternative to the bathtubs: simply pick up the line coils with your left hand fingers ( if you are a right hand caster of course). With a little practice its possible to handle a lot of shootingline with your fingers.

Using your fingers gives you several advantages. First, and maybe most important, you do avoid to buy, pack and carry another gadget. With the fingers its easy to keep the line clear of wawes and current, it gives you freedom to vary your stripping, it allows you to hold your rod and strippinghand where it feels natural and when the coils is slipping through your fingers it gives you better possibilities to add resistance to the shootingline to form those tight and sexy loops you need in windy conditions.

How do you avoid tangeling of the line? Well, as you all know tangeling is part of the game no matter if you use fingers, basket, tray, stripper or whatever fancy gadget. But if you want to use your fingers first of all use a minute or two to stretch the shooting part of your line so it forms nice even coils. Then you should mix between large and small coils as you vary your stripping and put the first one or two coils round your index finger, the next ones around your f*ckfinger and so on. If you use thin monofil shootingline like flatbeam, let the lower third of the coils be submerged in the water. When fishing short distance from a riverbank with brush and other obstackles I normally carry 10 meters shootingline (plus the shootinghead) in tight coils around 30 cm diameter. When I wade fishing longdistance I carry 15-20 meter shootingline in 5-7 large coils.

So gentlemen, save the money and effort and enjoy when the line is whizzling through your fingers into that murky water.

Thight lines and again and again......

Hans Jacob

Coming to my backyar

Coming to my backyard! Fantastic! :D Let me know if you want ideas for October because I have lots. Most visitors tend to limit themselves to the Fraser Valley, which is too bad because there are so much more to see. I'm coming back to DK on May 4th btw, for two months. :)

This is FANTASTIC!!!

This is FANTASTIC!!! Love your website. I am from California, 56 years old. My wife and I love to fly fish.

Great Review, The bo

Great Review, The book is also available from www.irishflytying.com

yes, yes...good work

yes, yes...good work, bud no CZECH style nymph, clear SLOVAK style nymph, show my photoalbum...

aloha from SLOVAKIA :-)

das Tubular Toolz...

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well...
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and now...
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Aloha! We guide for

Aloha! We guide for NervousWater Fly Shops at times. I guide occasionally, but my son Joaquin is a very savvy guide, and excells in sight fishing and spotting fish for our clients. We have a small boat, and our rate is $ 350 a day, close to half of what some new guides are now charging. We are second in experience here only to Ollie Owens. I have been guiding over 40 years. My website is www.louiethefish.com and we really know Oahu's best kept secret spots, and we have a number of very special flys we have invented that work when all else fails, and we easily have the very best catch rate for bonefish on the fly in all of Hawaii, hands down!! Hope to see you here.....Louie

Hey,
What the heck

Hey,
What the heck is in its mouth??

Labas,

Graži n

Labas,

Graži nuotrauka Tadai. Top marks from me.

Never tried Suktinis. The wife says it's good.

Iki
Ripley

Thank you ;)

Thank you ;)

Hi Mike,

Hi Mike,

one of the best DVDs about spey casting & techniques I can recommend is the "Rio´s Modern Spey Casting" with Simon Gawesworth. The DVDs show what it takes to understand that way of casting, standard casting, trick casts as well as techniques in all details and the know-how, also bio-kinetic movements. This is pure technique!

Lykke til and Tight Lines,

Frank

Dear folks,
You hav

Dear folks,
You have a superb site. I have tied some of the patterns and they have proved most productive, especially the massawippi smelt and the songo smelt. Cheers and continued good work.

Not bad for a beginn

Not bad for a beginner...

Absolutely perfect!!

Absolutely perfect!!! These flies look like live.

Very nice looking sh

Very nice looking shrimp fly!
What kind of spey hackle is used? I'm not familiar with tying Spey flies and the hackles used for this pattern look much nicer then the Shlappen feathers I have tried. Looking to order something different but not sure what. Thank you for any input!

Hello
I like this p

Hello
I like this photo :-) I will put it as my wallpaper.
BR
tom

How much does Eumer

How much does Eumer vise cost?

i really like this f

i really like this fly ,simple and i bet effective ,i look forward to using it during the summer nights on my local.
i will let you know how i get on with it.

Its fairly simple to

Its fairly simple to tie and has proved to be the most effective egg-type pattern I've ever used. I fished the fly at numerous locations last winter and it proved successful at every one of them. Thanks to your fly, I managed to bag an extra 80 or so trout last season alone bringing my total of last season up to 371 fish.
Cheers

Thomas,

Thanks fo

Thomas,

Thanks for your very thorough advice. I returned now, and caught a single fish and hooked one.

Martin

Hi,

I am happy yo

Hi,

I am happy you like the fly.
The efect of it is the best when it is knocking onto the water surface very hard, just like a little stone is falling on the water with a loud noise. This seems to afect the fish and they get irritated of the fly and grab it even from a depth.
Sometimes befor I start fishing on a new place, a new river that I have never been before, I just walk for a little while around the river bank and throw little pieces of twigs in the water. If there are any chubs nearby they get on the surface and try to eat them because just as you said they are very curious.
In fact the chubs are on of the fish species that eat almost everything - worms, frogs, fish, aquatic insects, bread, maize, corn, any kind of terrestrials, differnt fruits like mulberry, plums, grape. I think it is in their nature to expect somthing to fall on the surface of the water above them.

If you can not find little sizes treble hooks then try to search in your local shop for little spinner lures for spin fishing in sizes about # 00, # 0 , # 1 , # 2, they have little sizes of treble hooks from # 10 to even # 16.

Greetings from Bulgaria!

Rado Akulata

Hi,

Hi,
You should stay close to Kolding and fish the island of Fyn for seatrout.
All you need to know is at http://www.seatrout.dk/.
Claus

Like the article all

Like the article allways liked using soft hackles,try tying with a wire body like a copper john with a peacock or hares ear thorax works great,the one pattern I use a lot is tyed as follows TMC 200R,brown thread 6/0,mylar tinsel back,hares ear (light) body,copper wire rib,hares ear or peacock thorax (dark brown),molted brown hackle two or three turns and thread head simple use on a dead drift or swing during a caddis hatch a hold on works for me.