| Recycled
Flies: You can recycle flies, which have been
chewed, or otherwise look a little ratty. A great
fly fishing tip and money saver would be to razor
blade off old material then just re-tie new flies.
Now if I can just find a way to retrieve flies from
trees without having to cut down the forest, and
it makes fly tying a new art form.
Floating
fly boxes however much they are a good idea,
beware on fast moving rivers. To my cost on opening
day 2002, my box fell out of my pocket while crossing
the river, all I could do was watch it float away!!
Always
Cast to a Target! When practicing your cast,
don't just blindly cast into the air. Pick a target,
use a small piece of yarn on the end of your leader,
and try to get your yarn to land in the target each
time you cast. The target can be the classic hula-hoop,
a rock in the pond, a bucket in the garden, a hat,
or just about anything. This will help you develop
the eye/hand coordination necessary to get your
fly on target consistently. Another good exercise
is to practice opening your loop up at various heights
by casting at a tree. Try to tap your yarn on branches
at the bottom, mid, and top of the tree. Mix it
up. You'll be surprised at how little movement it
takes to accomplish this and how quickly you will
become proficient at it. If you let the cast fall
to the ground, you'll also notice that casts to
different heights result in different amounts of
slack in the leader when it falls to the ground.
Having
difficulty tying your fly to the tippet? The
next time you're on the water with the light failing,
the fish rising, and having trouble fly tying, try
holding the fly up against a light single-coloured
background. A good candidate for this is the sky
overhead. It is one of the last things to go dark
if it is not a terribly cloudy day. Even if it is
cloudy, you can usually find a cloud big enough
to use as a solid colour. Sometimes the solid glare
from the low light on the water does the trick.
Look around. It might be solid colour leaf that
does the trick. Using any of these backgrounds makes
it much easier than trying to see and tie on a fly
against the multi-coloured, multi-edged background
of stream side vegetation. This is not a cure-all,
but it helps and it sure beats not fishing!
Fly
tying Finishes: The secret: when you're
done tying the fly and tie it off by your personal
preference is to place a thick piece of fishing
line through the eye, then use your head varnish,
even if you do cover up the eye, you can pull
the line out. Alternatively use a spare hackle and
pass this through the eye.
Top
tip submitted by Ian Finylas
when
the fish are smutting freely, they tend to slip
into an almost trance like state and rise to a set
pattern. This will vary from fish to fish. Some
might be every 8 secs, some might be every 20 secs
etc. When they get like this they will tend to ignore
anything that passes during the interval between
rises. So if you see this happening, time your presentation
to coincide with with the rise pattern.
My flies
are tied on either 18's or 20's. Going any bigger
than 18 greatly reduces the chances of success.
I have even tied the same pattern as small as 24,
but at this size apart from being buggers to tie,
the hooking to rise ratio falls to about 1:6. Still
I keep a couple in the box as they will sometimes
tempt a bigger fish when all else fails.
Tight lines
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