Flicking feathers

 Another old one from www.sexyloops.com I was planning to head up into the mountains in search of a mayfly hatch this week, but due to a sketchy forecast I decided to stay local instead of travelling for 2 hours plus. It was nice as I was able to have a bit of a lie in before walking down the river for a crack at some of the local carp. The weather actually turned out better than forecast; 27-29 degrees with a very thin high overcast and spells of clear skies made for great visibility. The carp well well on the feed too and there were plenty of shots to be had. Which was good because I've spent a while turning these fish into spooky pricks. During the first lockdown, I was fishing them near daily once the outdoor exercise allowance came in and I'd been pestering them pretty regularly for years before. One of the main difficulties I've been having is that they seemed to be fairly immune to the otherwise reliable drag and drop presentation. My first work around was long leads...

I took a guy from the office fishing.   He'd been asking to go for a while, but it took ages to get the schedules all worked out.   I always enjoy indoctrinating new acolytes.  As we live on opposite sides of Tokyo, we decided to meet at a river a couple of hours to the North of the city, with a good head of carp, bass and catfish.  Nothing too difficult on the casting front and with plenty of opportunities so he'd be in with a chance. Gerard told me he had fished before, but when we got down to the river and I handed him the rod, it quickly became clear that he had been a bit confused on the difference between fly fishing and bait fishing. We spent an hour or so on a quiet pool going through some basic casting before making our way along the river in search of willing fish. It took some time but after a while he managed a couple of decent short shots that were good enough to get an eat had they gone in first time. It was getting close.  It was ...

Detailed instructions for a nice little carp bug that's ideal for waters where the fish prefer a smaller fly.  I like small beadhead bugs for carp but wanted something that would fish hook up while still maintaining the small profile. Tie them in a range of weights and colours to suit where you're fishing. Materials used Hook: Owner C5 boilie hook size 4 Thread: Veevus 10/0 Weight: tungsten bead mounted on 20lb mono Legs: black and white barred sillileg Tail: Chickabou Body: Semperfli straggle string Hackle: Whiting Brahma hen

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 ...

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 ...

There's a lot written all over the internet about leaders and connections and some of it is good, some of it on the other hand is rubbish.  Anyway I thought I'd add add my tuppen'worth.  Today I changed over to my summer line on the carp set up. I use a WF 8 Rio Smallmouth Bass, in the summer here as it's just too hot for a cold water formula line.  Since I was changing back, I replaced the connections. I start by attaching  a length of 30lb fluorocarbon to make the butt section.  I use a modified Albright Knot for this.  Basically I tie an Albright, but leave the waste end of the fluorocarbon the same length as the end you would normally leave.  If you don't know the Albright you can find out how to tie it   here , just remember don't trim the waste like the standard knot. The next thing I do is furl the two ends together to make a single butt piece.  To avoid putting a ton of twist in the fly line I tighten the drag on the reel and ...

Today I went to check out a river near by that  I hadn't fished properly, it's part of the same system as the one I usually fish-they both feed the same lake.  Every time I've been it's been full of old guys bait fishing for crucian carp and it's generally pretty dirty because of the wind and the rice fields.  I actually only realised how big an impact the rice paddies make today.  So I had checked it out on Google maps and I was sure it would become more fly friendly if I followed it away from the lake and the easily accessible spots.  I was right... to an extent Clear water, overgrown banks for cover, but very tight ad a lot of high banks.  It had quite a good head of fish including some of the biggest Asiatic barbel I've seen,  didn't catch any today though. The river So the nice tall grass is great for hiding, but the dead rushes and bamboo that was lying around not so helpful.  I spooked about a million fish before I actually got a s...

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 ...