Flicking feathers

Another old one from www.sexyloops.com   I lost an enormous carp last week. Enormous. It would easily have been my PB had I landed it, but I didn't. It's hard not to feel bad when things like that happen, but the questions that come of it can be useful or the answers can be at least. I had been a pretty slow day, I started fishing some bouldery pockets below a dam looking for bass but only picked up one little guy and saw nothing else but carp for hours. Eventually I decided to switch over and start targeting the carp. I should have done it earlier than I did, but sometimes I can be too stubborn for my own good. Anyway it didn't take too long to get an eat which even though the fish wasn't very big, was a bit of a day saver. Then I came round a bend where the riffle between the pools dumps into a deep pocket with a concrete diversion and tetrapods turning the river and creating a big slack backwater behind the eddy. There were about 12 fish, all big, and the biggest, we

  This is another specific prey species imitation from Craig Mathews, inventor of Pop's bonefish bitters. Although it's designed to imitate snails and clams, I suspect it might often be eaten for a worm. Whatever they eat it for, it's best fished static near tailing fish or muds. To support the channel, join the monthly online tying meetings, access the members' only content and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up or donate at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/flickingfeathers Materials list Hook: Gamakatsu SL11-3 H size 10-6 Thread: Tan Weight: Lead substitute fastened as a keel Body: Cream, tan or olive furry foam Siphon: Small ultra chenille, pink tan or light brown

Another old one from www.sexyloops.com   With the spawning over I'm back on the water again and because of the current restrictions, I'm staying local so had my first float tube session of the year on Monday. The local lake has a decent population of largemouth bass although it's fairly featureless which can make them hard to find. More interestingly, it has a thriving snakehead population which keeps the bass fishermen away most of the summer. Fishing was slow after an overnight temperature drop from the mid twenties down to single digits. In fact, under normal circumstances I'd have changed my plans and went looking for a quarry more tolerant of cooler temperatures than largemouth. There was certainly no chance of any topwater action and all I managed was a half hearted pick up on a bottom dragged worm fly. So I basically used the day to explore and refamiliarise myself with parts of the local lake. I've certainly identified a few places to hit when it's warme

  Gorrel's Hackle Shrimp is a seriously underrated shallow water bonefish fly. It's incredibly effective, especially on broken coral bottoms or sand with sparse grass, I have supreme confidence in the pattern and it's accounted for hundreds of bones for me in several locations. Materials List Hook: Gamakatsu SL11-3H or similar Thread: Tan, olive, pink or cream 140 denier Weight: Bead chain Antennae: crystal flash Body:Saddle hackle( grizzle, tan or grizzly olive are good) Belly: Crystal flash Book of the Month 8: Strip-Set is available here Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3kizn9F Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3wvglSo Using the link will help support my channel at no extra cost to you. To support the channel, get access to the monthly tying classes and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up.

  Fly fishing in Japan isn't just about tiny yamame on 2wt rods in small mountain streams, there are a lot of different species available in both fresh and salt water. In this video I've put together some footage from last weekend's seabass trip in Tokyo bay. We fished around the Yokohama side near Minato Mirai towards and the industrial areas around Kawasaki. It was a very productive night as we managed to find bass corralling small sardines in several spots, the most effetcive fly was a 3" Bob Popovics' rubber candy. I had around 30- 40 seabass myself, and @Hiromikitakibi probably caught 20-30 too. You can see his video Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaZJD3-KA2U&t=34s We had hoped to get a worm hatch as it was a full moon, but it seems we were a bit early and the worm emergence is still to come. I also caught a surprise mullet, but due to technical difficulty I didn't get it on film.

  A short video of a short 2 hour-ish fly carping session on my local river in Kashiwa, Japan. I didn't think I'd get any fishing done today so was pleased to get out. Despite the tough conditions I managed to catch 2 small carp around the 3-4lb mark; one on an orange glo-bug/egg and the other on a hybrid.

Another old one from Sexy loops For various reasons not been fishing for almost a month.  I've made it out for some lawn casting, but as this year's rainy season has already dragged on weeks longer than is normal and the rivers are blown, I'm developing acute cabin fever, and am much less keen on the season than I used to be.  Luckily its already sunny in Okinawa and I'm heading down there on Sunday for some DIY flats fishing. I've been to the island I'm visiting 3 times so far but this is my first mid summer trip.  There are no guides but as this island is more remote than most, the inshore fishery is not as depleted as that in much of the rest of Japan. I'm going with high hopes, I've always seen a lot of triggerfish there, although the reef structure makes converting hooked fish to landed fish somewhat tricky to say the least. We've also started to work out where the GTs are so there's a decent chance of one of them along with the bluefins, ye

 To support the channel and get access to the online tying sessions, as well as being entered into the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up

Step by step instructions for Moore's Agent Orange bonefish fly.  Although it may seem a bit simple by modern standards it is reputedly a killer in the Yucatan and Belize. To enter the giveaways and get access to members only content head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and support the channel. Materials Hook: SL11-3H size 4-8 or equivalent Thread: FL orange flat waxed nylon Body:  Orange chenille Wing: Orange craft fur flanked with 2 grizzly hackle tips

I've added a series of videos on deer hair work. The first one looks at the tools you'll need if you want to start tying deer hair bugs.

Right Guys just got back from 18 days at Costa de Cocos (http://www.costadecocos.com/) in Xcalak where I had a mix of guided and DIY fishing and it was amazing, so amazing that I'll be back in August.  The lodge was nice, fairly basic cabanas but spotlessly clean, very friendly staff with great food and local craft beer. There are also some great little restaurants in the village. The guides were good, I took a mix of in house guides and other local guys-on balance the CdC guides were better and generally more personable. The fishing was great, although I can't really comment on the tarpon because I got so sucked into chasing permit that I didn't spend any time chasing them. My relationship with permit was almost exclusively one of rejection, I only got one eat despite seeing numerous permit- I didn't land the fish either.  I stopped fishing bones with the guides after the first day because they were just so numerous and easy from no pressure that it was ge

If you've been reading this blog, you'll probably know about my YouTube channel, that might even be how you got here.  Well It's growing nicely and For the most part the feedback is good, and I am getting better at the filming and editing.  One thing I have been getting asked about though is beginner's stuff.  So I decided I'd do a beginner series of simple flies that catch fish and help beginners become more adept in their tying skills.  I'm starting with some still water trout videos and I'll move on to river bugs, dries and eventually salt water covering a range of basic and slightly more advanced  skills as I go. with the flies within each section becomming slighlty less easy as they go along. Here's the first video

Continuing with my fly tying videos recently, I've been doing a bunch of bonefish flies to build my  YouTube Channel (click here to sub)    so I thought I'd add them here  in one go than add separate posts as I go along later. Martyn's mantis                                            Borski craft fur worm The slamaroo

I've been quite busy at the vice recently, doing flies for myself and a couple of small custom orders.  While I've been tying I've been filming too Today I did 3 videos and here's the first, the classic bonefish fly; the bonefish bitters.  Enjoy

Being off work for a few days I've been able to get on with some more tying videos.  Here's one of a bonefish fly I designed for skinny water finicky fish.  Like this one. You can see the fly hanging from its jaw. Here's the video, enjoy.  I hope it catches you  a few fish.

Last year I made several plans to go and fish an island in southern Japan, with the hope of getting my first Giant Trevally on the fly as well as ticking a few other species off the list.   It started when I was looking around on Google earth at some holiday destinations and spotted Kuroshima island  at the extreme Southern end of the Okinawan archipelago. Kuroshima Island It looked great and had good reports of quality GTs, bluefin trevally and both titan and yellow margin triggerfish.  I had to go, the first plan was for August, but that had to be put off because all 14 rooms on the island were fully booked by SCUBA divers.  No problem, I thought and took some leave at the end of September, being only a 4 hour flight from Tokyo makes it possible to go for a long weekend. So I got a box of GT flies and a collection of flats flies tied up and got ready to go. GT brush flies NYAPs and poppers GT profile fly And some triggerfish crabs and

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

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 pick up the whole ri