Leaders; - Fly Fishing Tip

I learnt a lesson the other day, a pretty simple one really, after spending time fishing in windy conditions with not much success with fish being easily spooked we got a day with no wind! - But we were still spooking fish, not getting the hook ups - time to do something different.....

With no wind we could lengthen the leader substantially by adding longer and lighter tippet sections. Watching the results the leader was landing much more softly on the water and a long way ahead of the fish while the floating line was also well out of the way.....end result was we started catching fish again.

Several little clues to what has happened here;

Firstly the weight of the leader landing on the water appeared at times to be spooking fish. We had been using shorter heavier leaders to help cast into the wind on previous days.

Secondly the fish seemed to be seeing the floating line at times if the cast wasn't spot on. That had certainly been the case on the windy days when accuracy was difficult - time and again the fish moved away after the cast. So the longer leader gave more room for error

Another little thing that I've noticed is that if you get a bit lazy when retying tippet, as the leader shortens with each replacement the diameter increases, this puts the heavier butt section closer to the fish once again and that extra weight landing close to the fish can be enough to alert them. Easy enough to fix, just tie in some intermediate weight tippet so that you keep the leader tapering down in small steps.

The last little message to take from this is - Don't be afraid to try different things, experiment, work out why you're not catching fish - it makes the success even sweeter when it comes......

From my newsleter archive

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

fly fishing shop - whats happening about the scenes

Image
Been a rough little period weather wise, strong NW winds with heavy rain in the mountains plus a good dose from the south too has seen all rivers rise and become dirty. Local fishermen will be heading for the vast array of lakes we have locally, then there's the newly reopened spring creeks which stay clear and fishable most of the time. The wind makes it difficult regardless, so finding a sheltered spot on the leeward shore of a lake helps, but for the spring creeks you need to pick your day as they have little shelter. Heard of a few salmon seen in the Rakaia Gorge! That's good news and apparently some have been caught in the lower river, if that is the case people are keeping quiet about any successes so far... River will be out of action for a while with more rain up the back today, but once it comes right I'd suggest it would be worth a look A pretty Spring Creek Rainbow Xmas is getting closer so a good chance to get stuck into the Xmas shopping, and I know just the
Read more

FUSH Fly Rods

Image
Pleased to announce the launch of a new fly rod range - though these New Zealand made Fly Rods are a little different as they are also made by me!! FUSH Fly Rods The action on these rods is a smooth medium  fast making them an ideal general purposed rod for NZ. The blanks are made in NZ too by CTS who have a reputation for producing high quality blanks and are rated up there amongst the best in the world. There are two models to start with; a standard and premium model, the premium comes with high class componentry from some of the best names in the business. It's been an enjoyable challenge to make these rods, the end result I'm very pleased with, hope you'll get the chance to cast one soon...
Read more

Missing Strikes - Fly Fishing Tips

A recent question: I have noticed that I am missing a few strikes lately. Am i striking to hard???? Or maybe too slow?? And it sometimes goes like that and you can miss strikes for no apparent reason. Sometime the hook just doesn't connect, or doesn't connect with anything very solid and pull free. If you’re using an indicator strike as quickly as possible because it dips when the fish has the fly in it's mouth and any delay gives it time to reject the fly. But an indicator isn't fool proof, for instance if a fish turns and follows the nymph downstream then takes it, the indicator won’t necessarily ‘indicate’ immediately because everything is traveling in the same direction downstream, likewise the nymph can land downstream of the indicator so in effect there’s slack in the tippet between nymph and indicator so there’s a delay before the indicator ‘indicates’ as the slack is taken up. In both situations it gives the fish time to reject the fly.... At other times
Read more