Titanic

I’ve a bucketful of objections to hero shooting, and and a couple more to self hero shooting, but this guy just deserves a mention

I just wonder when will pop out on the tubes the first vid from the gopro of a dead guy who drowned BradPitting. I don’t see much of an ethical dilemma (obviously the relatives may be a little upset, but that doesn’t make them right). After all the guy would have gone to his death to be the hero of an action movie. But life isn’t Hollywood and sometimes the good guy dies.

Spanked

Gigantic knock on my head this week end. Few fish, when the old hands were doing relatively well (or not bad). Not skunked, but sufficiently close to warn me that my game is far from being tight enough.
(Painfully obvious) lessons :

1. learn how to tie a proper fly.

2. learn to make a proper leader.

I the fish are not crazy biting, it may save your sorry ass.

This thing is full of big fish. Who have seen billions of flies. And think mine are ugly. And my leader full of coils. So they won’t bite. The bastards.

Now, let’s go for the alphabetical credits.

Big thanks to Ed, Eric, Goulven, Guillaume, for making the Rodhouse FFD 1.1 so cool.

Thanks also to the Refendus fine team for their hospitality to a homeless trout bum: Christian, Jean-Pierre, Philippe and Yves. Fantastic wine and stories, some of them were even about fishing ^_^.

Last, not least, huge thanks to the fantastic crew at the Salamandre/Coyolles domains : Céline, Vincent and Bertrand. Bertrand went out of his way to try to show me and Philippe a couple of tricks. People, if you are anywhere between Paris and Lille (and beyond), go fish there. These are first class people, they will treat you well, and the water and the fish are superb.

I’ll be back soon, guys. With a new leader.

Bead party

I’m tying a couple of flies for this week-end. Tomorrow I’ll meet the boys for the Rodhouse gang at Coyolles, and we’re in for a day of test casting a heap of rods, and secondarily trying to catch a trout. It will be tons of fun. Then Sunday I’m fishing the Salamandre with a couple of friends from the club. There I will be experimenting with Greg’s float tube. It’s my first time with the float, I expect it to be an adventure. And of course, I plan to catch all the big trouts of the lake. Possibly on my 3wt.

So, since my tying stuff box is rather anorexic, I’m going the creative way… My love reluctantly allowed me to plunder the super cool box of glass beads she uses with the girls to make girly things.

Fantastic flytying potential, I say.

Excellent to make all kind of buzzers and chiro nymphs, etc. At some point I thought “My, this would make an amazing body for an emerger, let’s make one with a big thing to float it and the glass body hanging under… I could use the float as a bobber, and hang a buzzer under it.”

That’s me being crafty at the vise.

The problem is that the bead, although not big, are not small either, so to get a good looking abdomen I tied it on a 12 B-100 hook. Cool. But that’s a lot of hook, plus the 5 glass beads to float. I needed a sizeable device. First I tried with a styro bead, but it lacked buoyancy. Somewhat inspired by the Teardrop loop wing seen at Marc’s, I resorted to a kind of loop wing in foam and a parachute hackle.

Looks good to me, but it’s still not enough: most of the wing is under the film. It floats, but way too low. I have to try with less beads, and something buoyant for the thorax also.

This translucency is seriously cool. The fish should agree, or they know nothing about cool looking flies.

Wish me luck.

A funny thing

Jacques Flechemuller, who’s leading the Nonsensicalities Dept. at the Mouching, graces us with a particularly inspired text today. I bow to the depths. Go check it.

White jazz is sometimes fucking cool, though. Here’s a fantastic piece.

More of the same on the NRX

Greg has a NRX, a fact I went about to some length long ago. If you read that, you know I love the thing: it’s probably one of the best 8wt in the history of fly fishing tackle, arguably THE best, and anyway I personally never cast a better one.

I wanted to dig deeper into it but Greg, who had something as a bit of an attention disorder with respect to tackle, had quickly sold it, much to my dismay. But yay! the old chap came back to his senses, realized what I had been telling him bitterly during our hour long drives to the fishing hole, and bought the same rod again. I was pleased. I had another half an hour casting session with it last week, confirming all the good I thought about it. Except that my casting is way better now that it was when I wrote the review, and as a result I was even more pleased.

Even with the spun crap that was on Greg’s reel I could cast to the last 2 yards of line. And that was because the end of the line was curlier than Nelly Olson, I reckon I would have sent the backing in the guides with a proper line, like my Barrio GT90. (I doubt I’ll ever see the backing with the GT140…)

N.O.: Don’t you dare comparing my hair to your filthy fishing thing.
Me: you’re right, that line was crap. Sorry Nelly.

The other night we felt wild and decided to go for some casting in the dark. I didn’t want to endure again Greg’s catastrophic thing, so which switched to my GT140 WF6. The NRX handles the line quite beautifully. Even when it was pitch dark, we could’t see shit and had to do most of the casting relying on the rod’s feedback. Not bad for a rod underlined of two numbers.

I was impressed. If you get a chance, go cast it, it’s a treat. But beware if you have that kind of dough. You could well find yourself 800 euros lighter sooner than you think.

All the good

Many years later, I began to wonder how much of my life now is just the adult version of those childhood fantasies. Of course, the obvious answer is: All the good parts.

John Gierach, No Shortage of Good Days (2011), p. 198.

Like the knowledge that you’re going to die

Field&Stream features here one of the best short text on fly fishing I’ve read online in a while. It’s from Bill Heavey, and it’s good.

Flyfishing is like the knowledge that you’re going to die. No matter how good the party gets, it’s always there in the background to remind you what awaits: tangled line, wind knots, snagged vegetation, broken leaders, and the very real possibility that by the time you do make a decent cast, your own eyeball will be attached to the hook. I have been flyfishing on and off for 35 years, during which period I have progressed from beginner to advanced beginner. With continued practice, I fully expect to be an intermediate just three or four years following my death.

And the converse is, as it sometimes happens in life, no less true. The words of John Buchan** ring all over the internet, to the effect that the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. No quote gets viral like that without having at least the ring of truth to it. The astute reader will have noticed that this may not directly apply to fly fishing, but I think it does. It obviously does: for instance each time I throw a loop, I hope it won’t tail.

** Despite quite an intense search over the whole internet, I did not find the book where Buchan wrote this. If, by any chance, you know which book it is, please leave a message. The darn (Right Honourable) Scot wrote lots of books.

Sunfish

[...] and we covered the last two hundred yards to the truck marveling, for the hundredth time, at the god-awful beauty of sunfish. They’re one of the things in the world that are so much prettier than they’d have to be, you have to think it means something.

J. Gierach, At the grave of the Unknown Fisherman (2003).

Carp on the fly:

DONE.

With an ugly imitation of bread I cooked on the spot with deer hair GI-cut à la muddler minnow on a size 12 Kamasan B170. The tricky part was to have something crust-looking. I ended up with a couple of turns of rusty+brown dubbing. Don’t forget to crush the barb.

fuzzy deer hairs caused by fish abuse

The other morning, a good fish, about a pound and a half, was kind enough to mistake it for actual food. Then I tried it on a couple of cracking common, in the same weight range, from a lovely pond in Kent. It was good to meet some relative success with a fly I produced ad hoc. It was even better to catch carps on the fly in front of a bait crowd. The fish were definitely into surface stuff, and had I been a better tier, I’m sure it would have been murder.

Now, I’m going to chase the slabs. I’d like to catch a 4-6 pounder this year. It will probably involve some inquiry on the fly front. As for tactics, the theory says: go ninja, and drop the fly right in front of them. Obviously easier said than done.

And pike and mullet are still on the to-do list for a postmodern grand slam.

Boycasting

actually has a long tradition. It evolved from boytenkara, a witness of the influence of Japanese culture in Mitteleuropa at the turn of the century.

Boytenkara in Austria, ca 1895. Notice the cane rod.