Fishing World

Archive for May, 2010

In many ways the choice of fly when you arrive at any water is dependent on the type of insect life at that water at the time. Indeed it is not necessarily restricted to the type of actual fly that may be hatching at the time, but a sample of the river floor or bank may show the existence of water shrimps, worms etc. Easy isn’t it?

Well actually it’s not. Even if you are something of an entomologist it can still be difficult to work out what the natural insect life is like at any particular venue. Even if you can, there is still no guarantee that a trout will want to take your fly, no matter how closely it resembles the food it is used to.

Trout are notoriously picky when it comes to their feeding habits. Their feeding habits also change throughout the season, from a voracious appetite in early season after spawning, through the summer months which sees them becoming somewhat lazy, to the end of the season when they start to become less fussy about what is offered to them.

So what do you do? Well, game fishermen are usually more than willing to share their experiences with you. Therefore the first thing you should do when you arrive at any water, is to politely enquire of anyone you see fishing, and especially anyone you see taking a fish, what type of fly they are using. Also, if they are regular fissures of that particular venue ask them where the hotspots lie and what are the recommended flies to that venue at that time of year.

At this point, I would add that it is a good idea for you to learn how to tie flies yourself. This is because when we fish water we are used to, we generally know what flies to use. Indeed I keep flies attached to my fishing hat, but only those with which I have taken fish on my regular water. However, when fishing a water that is new to, it is useful to be able to tie a fly that we don’t have in our fly box, but which is recommended to us by a local fisher.

When looking out to see what sort of insect life is around us it may well be that we don’t know what it actually is. In this case it is a good idea to try and get a close look at the overall shape, colour and size of a particular insect, and then select the fly in our fly box that most closely resembles it. Again, if we are able to make our own flies, we can cobble something together on the spot.

Some people go by the age-old adage that you use a bright coloured fly on a bright day, and a dark coloured fly on a dark day. If you do this strategy, make your bright fly as bright as possible, and Orange Fritz always being a good choice, and for a dark day a black fly is a good choice, in terms of pattern, that is something to mix and match on the day, colour being the main factor.

If you talk to any fly fisherman they will tell you all about the enormous range of fly fishing patterns in their box. Most fly fishermen tie (or buy) a massive number of different patterns so that they can “match the hatch.” In other words, they have a fly somewhere in their fishing box that resembles whatever the target fish are feeding on in size, shape and color. This is easy to do for the fly fisherman, because flies are relatively cheap and with some practice you can make them to imitate most anything, so you can fill a box with thousands of flies and always have something on hand that will work.

Lure fishermen do this too, but to a lesser extent. We use small chrome slices when high speed pelagics are chasing small baitfish, crawdad lures when bass are eating crustaceans, lures that look like shad, or minnows or whatever else the fish might be feeding on that day or season. The challenge for lure fishermen is that lures are not so cheap, and you can’t always get one off the shelves that will imitate your particular baitfish for size, shape or color.

Custom wooden lures can hit the mark here, because you can have them designed and made to match the food items that your local fish seek out, but the problem here is generally cost. Custom lures don’t come cheap, and the more customised the design the more expensive the lure, generally speaking.

What most lure fishermen don’t realise is how easy it is to start making your own custom wooden fishing lures. Sure, they may not look as pretty as bought ones to start with, but they’ll still catch more and bigger fish. Over time you will develop the skills to not only make wooden lures that outfish bought ones at a fraction of the cost, but they will look every bit as good as bought ones and your buddies will be begging for you to tell them where you got that “magic” lure.

When I’m trying to match the hatch, I’ll start by catching and photographing a few of the local baitfish, if I can get hold of some. As this isn’t always possible, I’ll sometimes find out what the baitfish are (eg whitebait, herring, bream, etc), then I’ll do a little Google search and see if I can come up with some color drawing or photographs. The information I’m after is: how long are the baitfish, what is their overall body shape, do they have distinguishing features and what is the predominant coloration?

Once you have this information you can start to make a few lures that will fool fish. Don’t be super fussy, wooden lures don’t have to be exact imitations of the real thing, just approximate representations. But you do want to get the overall shape and size of the lure to match the bait, and then get the color to be generally accurate, too.

Wooden fishing lures can be hand shaped using knives, chisels, rasps, files or sandpaper – you don’t need special tools or skills to do this, it’s a very simple process. I like to start with a square section wooden blank (usually cedar, but there are plenty of timbers that work just as well) and use templates to help me create any number of identical lures.

Once I have my wooden lure bodies I’ll get to painting them. If the baitfish have prominent eyes, I’ll either paint large eyes, or I’ll stick on oversized 3D prism eyes. If the bait has a flash of silver on the gills I’ll put silver near the head of my lure. If the bait has dark bands, I’ll paint dark bands, and so on. Minute detail isn’t important here, just a reasonable representation. After all, if a fish is smart enough to look so closely that it can see your paint job isn’t perfect, it must surely have already noticed those dirty great hooks hanging from the underside, right?

Thankfully, fish aren’t that observant, which is great news for those of us (including myself) that aren’t brilliant artists. Instead, we get to focus on presenting the lure well and fighting the fish to the net!