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

 Another old article I wrote for www.sexyloops.com Last week I cancelled my fishing because of a horrendous storm which was disappointing. But at least I managed to make good inroads to a dry fly box I'm working on. It did mean that I spent the whole week looking forward to making my first smallmouth foray of the year, especially as we've had almost a week of 20degree weather. I was super keen. Leaders tied, bag packed well before the usual night before scramble. Unfortunately, I ended up spending most of Monday morning on the fraud line with my bank as my card had been cloned. Another Monday's fishing knocked on the head. After moping around for a bit,  I mustered enough motivation to take the rod for a walk down my local river. With the unseasonably warm weather the fish were feeding, but were still a bit less active than I expected. That said looking down from a bridge I could still see several fish with their tails up.  Encouraging.  I spent the next couple of hours str

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