Flicking feathers

  Some more carp on fly action from a small stream in East Japan. The average size of the fish in this small stream isn't very big, but it does occasionally turn up fish into low to mid double figures. What it does have going for it is the sheer number of fish, there are loads and I expect plenty of shots even during short sessions. On this trip, it was unusually hot for the time of year which caused the carp to be highly active. There were a lot of fish feeding on things dropping from the bankside vegetation, and were responding to the fly plopping into the water, so a slightly heavy presentation tight to the far bank seemed to be the go for much of the day. Later I switched to the dumbbell eyed worm and picked up another fish on the way home. You can find fly tying videos for all the flies I used today can be found on my channel. Clouser crayfish https://youtu.be/jGkhlmeV7vQ Carp worm https://youtu.be/owtGI7AeAdA Backstabber https://youtu.be/kXRBAtmEyio To support the

 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

 An old one I wrote for  www.sexyloops.com   Now the rains have stopped and the rivers have cleared up, I've been out wreaking havoc on the local carp.Some days are better than others, but even on the real scorchers I'm catching a couple before retreating back to aircon. There aren't many big fish in the river by me except where it enters the lake, but there are lots of fish in the 3-8lb bracket. I was talking about this in an online carp on fly group and was told by several people that I'd catch more if I fed them with dog biscuits and fished an imitation - not interested. At all.  Amazingly, my reply that I prefer fly fishing to bait fishing caused these folk to take umbrage. A barrage of comments about fishing commercial, stocked fisheries making feeding necessary and hilarious accusations of snobbery followed. All of it is ludicrous of course, we all draw our own lines in the sand. But catching a chummed fish is not the same achievement as spotting, stalking and cat

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 great to watch help with s