Skip to main content

Busy Summer

Busy Summer


Well I've had a super busy summer so not much time to write on here, especially when instagram and twitter are so quick.  Poor substitute I know, but there's been a lot going on.  First thing is  I got an article published in the North Forty E-magazine which you can read here HERE it's an introduction to Fly fishing for carp  with a Japanese twist. Really happy with it and hoping to have some more articles in other publications soon

I've also just made Flicking feathers into an actual business, doing fly tying demos, teaching and selling custom flies which is going pretty well, but it's keeping me busy all the time.. keep your eyes peeled for a webshop coming soon-hoping to have some logo printed technical shirts and the like as well as fly tying stuff.

Fishing

Not been out as much as I'd like, but then I never do fish as much as I'd like.  Between work, Youtube and tying I've only managed about 1 trip a week, mostly for river carp but did manage a few others, notably for me my first small mouth bass, I know that's maybe not a big deal to a lot of people but I'm Scottish. There're no freshwater bass there, I caught largemouth on Holidays to Ontario as a kid, but smallies have eluded me until I found a river just outside Tokyo with a reasonable population.  

There he is, just a little guy, but first timers are always cool.  I was pretty surprised at how hard he fought after nailing my foam hopper.  It's a great little rvver with plenty of carp and some picky Snakehead too. Still haven't caught a snakehead from running water, they don't seem as aggressive as in the lakes.

Here's a nice rubber lips that took a mottlebou backstabber from the same stream.


Another First

A couple of weeks ago a few of the guys from Tokyo Fly Fishing and Country Club arranged an offshore trip looking for Mahi Mahi.  It was pretty rough -almost got cancelled but we made it out there.  Our friend Seichi bought himself a nice new 10 weight set up for the trip-he's more used to a 10ft 3 weight and little mountain stream trout  Obviously this was a completely different game for him, but he managed excellently taking a few small dolphin on a sea habbit.  By the end of the day we were destroyed from pulling in mahi-losing some to sharks and chasing Tuna on bait balls-unfortunately we didn't hook up to any of those guys.  In the end we switched to popping in spinning gear cause it was just too rough and even though we could cast the flies we couldn't retrieve them fast enough to overcome the drift of the boat.

Seichi's first dolly, who was invited home for dinner







.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sharing the love

Last Monday I took my buddy Hideto from  the Tokyo flyfishing blog   out to show him the ropes. He'd been carping before but like most he'd struggled and never really got in to it.  Eventually I convinced him that carp were worth chasing and he asked to come along. I took him to a small river near my apartment, it doesn't have many big fish but it has a lot of fish so I was confident he'd get a fish or two.  After a quick coffee and explanation about the river, flies and presentation we headed up to the water. It took Hide a little while to get to grips with the presentation and reading the fish, although identifying takers is going to take more than one session to pin down. Any way we eventually got him a small fish about 20 inches or so after which his confidence started to grow along side a healthy respect for the carp as a fly fishing target. As the day wore on he picked up a few fish finishing with 5 or 6 nice little commons.  I didn't fish that hard as I

Damsel Booby

  This is a fantastic booby that will catch you fish year round. I find these larger boobies work best on the point or fished singly and really lend themselves to slightly faster retrieves that get the tail moving. For some reason I have found this particular pattern less effective when tied smaller in a competition size format. To support the channel, join the monthly tying classes and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up or contribute through https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers . Materials list Hook: Kamasan B175 size 8 Thread: Olive Uni 8/0 Tail: Medium olive marabou Body: Olive chenille Rib: Med silver holographic Hackle: Grey partridge dyed yellow Eyes: 6mm yellow foam cylinder Book of the month 6 is available here https://amzn.to/3jwznCE Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3DuHvM1 Amazon UK

Partridge & Yellow

  The light partridge and yellow really is a deadly North country spider. Despite its simplicity, this fly is a great taker of both trout and grayling and frankly, the partridge and yellow should be in every river angler's box. To support the channel and be eligible for giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers Materials list Hook: Kamasan B170 size 14 Thread: Yellow silk (waxed) Hackle: Grey speckled partridge