Moggy

Thanks for that Alan...but don't you think that if I gave them a good layer of varnish or even epoxy that that would toughen them up? It was more the shape that I felt was fitting. I've used foam and polestyrene balls and all manner of packing materials to get bouyancy, but I just envisaged a daddy long-legs for example with a quill body, maybe coloured with Pantone or similar.

I know about the Quill Gordon, Ginger Quill etc, but does anyone know of patterns using the whole quill end? Seems to me that the pointy end of the quill would be perfect as a bouyant dry-fly body simply whipped onto the hook, and I'm surprised I've never seen them used. Moggy

Thanks for that OT...and one more question (On this subject anyhoo) if I don't have access to the various soft hackles (The only ones I have are partridge) are there any I can use as subs? I have plenty of teal for example...and as they're fished upstream, is it then better to tie them on a fine wire hook as opposed to a typical wet? Thanks in anticipation!

You've taught me summat new OT...I've always fished Northern Spiders in the conventional wetfly way...I've never tried them upstream...Do you let them drift down ot do you put movement into them? Are you already getting mayfly hatches in the uk? I've seen nought but wee mozzies up to now, here!

'scuse my ignorance O.T....(Don't live in Blighty) What's FF&FT? I've no doubt it's akiller...it simply looks the biz! I've already got the hooks and materials ready to flood the (Local) Danish market with 'em!

Crackin' lookin' fly that O.T.! I just happen to have found a little tin of cdc's the other day!

At the risk of sounding sexist....is this relevant to the sport???

Fine story well told! Get thee to the vice young man!

No sweat friend. If it's council land I'd say (Off the record of course) give it a bash! The sooner you get the lessons the better...it's REALLY not difficult...but you will need a pull when it comes to technique. I taught myself here in Denmark and took 5 trout on my first trip, it took me ages and a lot of lessons to be able to get my line to do what I wanted it to do...as you say...getting rid of bad habits. But it's a very satisfying form of fishing. I do 'em all including fishing with nets, but if I was to chose one, it would be dry fly on a summers evening! Power to yer elbow! Moggy

Where do I start? Well...for a start, there are few waters that you can fish for free and none I suspect that you can fish without permission. If you can find out who owns the land through which the river flows, you should be able to find out who owns the fishing rights. Your local council should be able to help you there. Meanwhile I would suggest that you locate your nearest Put & take pond where you'll be able to buy a variety of tickets. Where I live in Denmark, you don't even need a rod license but you'd better check for the U.K. Floating line isn't ideal for this time of year as the fish tend to be deep, but if you use a long leader (8-9 feet) and weighted flies you should get down to them. It's anybodies guess what fly would be best but I would go with small weighted nymphs fished very deep and with a very slow retrieve. If you go with the Put and Take option, I'd take some big fluorescent orange/yellow/green flies with me too. The landing net and the rest of the tackle should be fine for general use, but I'd be tempted to use a stronger leader at first if I were you...P&T fish can be heavy if your luck's in! I don't know where you are or what kind of river you'd be wading in, so I can't really advise you there except to say that neoprene keeps you warmer and to talk to local anglers when you get cracking...rivers, especially spate rivers with stoney beds can be treacherous! The C&R etiquette is usually written in stone on whatever water you fish...otherwise it's a very personal thing. There seems to be a growing trend in the UK for catch and release, but I too enjoy a trout now and then and I take them if I'm allowed to. Most clubs stock the waters they control so if everyone sends their returns in on time then damaging stocks doesn't really come into it. Think you'll find it's more the salmon/seatrout waters where there's more of a tendency to limit bags, and of course in put and take waters there's no problem! Finally I would say; find someone to teach you to cast...it's not that difficult but there are techniques to learn...then practice all you can. I used to use the local footy field...use a fly that's easy to see and cut of the hook at the bend so it doesn't snag. Most fly-fishing clubs offer tuition for free to members and some P&T waters offer tuition for a small fee too. But do have a go! It's a cracking sport and not near as difficult as people say it is! Moggy

Ginger Quill, Winged Blue Dun and Black Gnat are ever-present in my box, and where I come from we see a lot of yellow stone fly, so Yellow Sally both with and without the red tag can often bring lazy fish on.

Thanks chaps...that answers my question thoroughly...they're already active, drag the swim asap and feed it regularly to get them using the swim. I prefer the evening session...the swim gets the sun in the warmest 4 hours or so of the day so I assume it'd be a good idea to feed the swim that same afternoon. I assume that sweetcorn's fine both as a feed and hook bait. I always have worms with me as first choice bait, with a single piece of corn to hide the point of the hook. I discovered this part of the lake when I was eeling one evening (Eel is a delicacy over here) and my mate picked up a very broad, deep, short tench in wonderful condition that would have tipped the scales at a 2-2½ kilos. Then I found a spot further away from the path amongst the trees where there were both tench and big bronze bream rolling after emerging insects, but it proved to be virtually un-fishable because of saplings, shrubbery and sedge on land and fallen branches lilies and weed in the water. Now there are two nice pogs that just needs dragging. Looking forward immensely to having many a cold beer down there of a late evening! Thanks again, Jon

Here in Denmark the last of the winters frosts is imminent and a young man's fancy turns once again to virgin Tench spot he discovered over a year ago and STILL hasn't fished seriously! When is do tench start becoming more active again? Has the water temperature much to do with it, or is it the length of the day? I got down last back-end with my little chainsaw and cleared the bank growth, but was advised to leave dragging the swims until I was ready to fish it. Any comments? All advice gratefully accepted!

That's fair enough Ken...when I read the original post, you seemed 100% positive. my mistake...reading between the lines maybe.

Come on ken...out him!

Don't know about "usually" but they'll investigate any unusual movement, which will often than not trigger an attack. But they don't get to be 30lbs on sick fish alone. It's also well documented that pike are cannibalistic, and up to 20% of their diet is smaller pike, so taking out the big ones to preserve fish stocks is kind of counter-productive! But they're masters of camouflage, and difficult to spot in, or against a weedy background. Any fish that comes within range and is targeted, has only a very slim chance of survival. The owner of a local put and take a couple of years ago put 2000 X 4" pike into his lake to get rid of the sticklebacks which were eating all the daphnia, etc. His reckoning was that they would hoover up the spiny tiddlers, and then the largest and most successful would turn on their brothers, and eventually he'd end up with one or two medium size pike which would eventually fall to the fishermen.

A fairly Neanderthal attitude, and one that is unfortunately very widespread here in Denmark, where any species that doesn't have an adipose fin is regarded as superfluous to requirements. I was walking the banks of one of the clubs lakes last autumn with a senior member, when we came across no less than three cadavers around the 8-12lbs mark. They'd been just thrown into the copse, judging by the disturbance of leaf litter on the ground...they hadn't even been knocked on the head. Barbaric.

Not in Denmark Greg! Season stretches from Jan. 16 - Oct. 31, and all forms og (Legal) angling are allowed...worm, spinner, fly, maggot, prawn, whatever. Very civilised!

"The main problem we have are the loss of suitable redds due to the high spates taking the gravel away. If that continues the introduction of smolts may have to start again." Wouldn't a better solution be to replace the gravel in the redds? That's what my club have done under such circumstances...more permanent a solution than re-stocking. Since last talking to you, I've actually found a firm that will mail maggot for about six quid a liter, so I'll definitely give that a shot later in the season. I'm a keen coarse fisher too, so that's a double joy! We have some wonderful tench lakes on the club card, which I've yet to try on maggot. Apropos artificial baits, I don't know if you've tried "Gulp Nightcrawlers" but if you haven't...give them a try...they're so successful that our neighbour country, Norway, have banned them on their major salmon / seatrout waters! I understand that they also make several prawn artificials too. I've also had a word with my local fishmonger, who tells me he can get hold of raw prawn, so I shall try dying some of them red too, and give 'em a whirl. Cheers...Moggy

Eyup Tyke...result mate! I must say that the beck looks more like a drainage cut at first sight! But it must be reasonably clean to hold brownies. There'll be no shortage of natural food in there I would have thought...a slow moving beck out in the country, so it wouldn't surprise me if there the odd "keeper" in there too. It'd be fun to fish with a small dry fly on a #2-3 fly rod later on in the year, with all those dace and brownies. Might well be some surprises to be had if no-one fishes it regularly! Has the Dearne got so clean that it holds fish now? When I lived in west Yorks, many moons ago, (Thurnscoe) all the Dearne held was sticklebacks! Moggy

Yes Phil...with you all the way. I tie all my own apart from swaps I occasionally make, and even though I know I'll (On average) catch less than if I was worming, there is a certain satisfaction gained from landing a fish on your own creation, as you say. And there's nothing quite like having an angry couple of kilos of sea trout on a #5-6 to get the adrenaline flowing! Do you fish cooked prawn? I've tried uncooked with good results when I lived in Norway, but they're not so easy to get hold of here in Denmark. Maggot is something I rarely use these days...again...difficult to source, though I do breed a few in the summer months...but I've never really given them a good go. I'll try that this summer. We're dead lucky this year...we've had more salmon and trout returning than ever before. But that's been down to rigourous catch and release policy over the last 5 years, and the release of about 125.000 smolt every year. Moggy

There's a lot of snobbery surrounding game fishing...ignore it! There's no doubt that a good fat lobworm will kill more trout/seatrout/salmon than any other method! I usually fish fly, but that's just a personal preference. You can do worse than fishing a fat worm or two (The more movement the better) under a light-ish float. Don't bother shotting...no need, and the more naturally the bait falls through the water the better! If the float isn't allowed put on 2-3 worms to give a bit of weight, cast it alongside weed beds, and do a slow retrieve. Let it sink a few feet, then slowly reel in 5-6 turns, let it drop again and repeat. For a visual focus, you can tie a three inch piece of red wool immediately above the hook, and/or cover the point of the hook with a piece of bread. The depth they're feeding at will differ with the weather....general rule of thumb is fish deep in cold weather, further up in the water when it's warmer. As with Coarse fishing, fish up against weed, or lilies...that's where any natural feed will be. You're probably aware of this already, but change your bait as often as you can...a mobile bait will always attract better than a limp one. Tight lines!

Try this site Barry...gives a broad view of many types of fishing in Ireland http://www.cfb.ie/fishing_in_ireland/sea/sboats.htm Moggy

Janet...I live in Denmark and during German holidays we have a lot of German anglers fishing our waters. I see no evidence of superior ethics or ability. One has to have a rod licence for fishing Danish coastal waters, and every single year, the serried ranks of Teutonic piscators get hammered fishing off harbour walls and breakwaters for herring, macky, flatties etc, and I've experienced at first hand some German chappie having shelled out over a hundred quid for a wrecking trip, trying to convince the bailiffs waiting for the charters to land, that he had "forgotten" to buy his rod licence. I've also seen the minimum size guidelines totally flouted by the same nationals. I'm no xenophobe, and I have to say that Danes are also caught during this annual "netting" exercise, but in smaller numbers than our visitors(!)

So very true...some tackle, baits, accessories etc. are designed to catch fishes, and others to catch fishers. I came back to coarse fishing after 20 years absence, and on examining my rigs, floats etc. after reading this thread, I realise that I still use the same terminal tackle for this discipline as I did way back then. Comes under the heading; "If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I don't fish competitions any longer, so maximising my catch is never the object of the excercise. Got a impulse-buy in the form of "Gulp Nightcrawlers" in my rucksack..."just in case I run out of bait" (I never do) but I'm not convinced that it was a good investment, though I have heard good reports of many species being caught on same. I wish I could say this was the only time I allowed advertising blurb to part me from my hard earned cash....but it's not! Come on guys....hands up! We've all done it...what was yours Moggy