Flicking feathers

If you fish super snaggy waters like me, you probably lose a load of flies like me.  Well I'm always torn between the use of dumbells and guaranteed hook up posture and the streamlined profile of a bead with the risk of hook points. The other day I tied a few patterns on jigs to give them a try.  Admittedly one does have dumbell eyes but these are initial patterns to be tested and refined, But I'm pretty sure they'll get eaten.

So last winter I was thinking about pop ups, the bright bouyant baits the bait guys use and I was thinking about how they behave in water and why they are so effective.  It got me thinking about  applying the principal to flies.  After a few rounds of tweaking, I got down to a final design. carp lollipop Basically it's  a crayfishy thing with a floating articulated section.  The back section is tied on a shank an then attached to the  hook with supple braid. What you are left with is a very light free moving tail and a heavy hook.  This is important, it makes the fly behave in a way that carp struggle with in the mouth.  i.e. it creates an anti eject function.  The tail section blows forward but the hook drops and twists, often sticking the bottom lip,  making the fish startle and hook itself-the takes are generally pretty hard on this bug, you'll feel them in your hand. I can't claim to have invented the system- I just applied the mechanics of a successful rig to a f

Well the time ahas finally come, I've started this blog on fly fishing for carp in Japan.  Actually I've been thinking about it for a while, but just never really got round to it-plus there's already a few blogs on carp fly fishing out there, all be it not in the land of the rising sun... Anyway yesterday was a real red letter day.  Lou and I drove up to Lake Motosuko next to Mt. Fuji on Friday night.  the plan was to arrive around midnight, sleep till sunup and fish lake Shojiko.  Unfortunately traffic was shocking and we didn't arrive till around 4, which meant we could only manage about an hour of dozing before starting.  Needles to say we were a bit delayed in waking, and when we did get up we were greeted by the sight of what looked like a billion anglers sitting it out on the lake. Not good. Luckily in the Fuji area there are five fishable lakes and we reasoned that the lakes without black bass would probably be less busy, so we drove the fifteen minutes