RH Fly Fishing

  “Fly fishermen are born honest, but they get over it”.   – Ed Zern     The weather forecast was another day of scorchio, although this hot summer is expected to break in a couple of days’ time. We seem to visit Chiphall Lake about once each year, [episodes 6, 22, 25, 33, 45, & 52 refer]. Today, the Admiral, Inspector, Whytee and Dodgy proudly flew the FC banner, joined by the Professor a couple of hours late; three other chaps had braved the heat too. Martin was holding court on the lodge’s veranda, which is definitely a kind of community and family hub, with friends and relations always dropping by for a brew and a chat, mostly non-fishers. The Fluff Boys generally paid for two-fish tickets, having first checked Martin was amenable to an upgrade if anyone caught too quickly.   There was a good deal of surface weed, silkweed, and scum, but at least that provided a lot of shade, presumably helping to keep water temperatures from rising too high. Defin...

    Congratulations to Hardy; the well-known fishing brand now spanning one hundred and fifty years in business. Orvis, put aside their recent down-sizing in the UK, have been going even longer, founded in 1856 the other side of the pond. Both brands enjoy that longevity that’s partly due to their focus on quality and customer service.   I am certainly no fishing historian, but just having that passion for all things fishing makes sifting through old magazines and the like enjoyable. Damn it, but even when I’m not in the market to buy anything at all, looking through a tackle catalogue just landed on the doormat is compulsive and enjoyable. Some people use the phrase “fishing porn”! It is very similar with old gear and ‘tackle tinkering’, and I totally get the idea of collecting fishing stuff, for those that can afford it. I mentioned these aspects in ‘Hands on’ a year ago; prior to that, another year or so, was a piece called ‘Not Ure usual Red Tag’ which referenced s...

   Why tie flies? They’re not very expensive (classic Salmon flies apart), so why not just buy? It’s conceivable to go fly fishing with just one fly, until it falls apart with wear or is broken off in some marauding tree, but what if your one fly represents something the fish just don’t want to eat that particular day? Obviously, you need some different types to hedge your bets. In any aquatic habitat there will be many food items: nymphal, pupal and adult forms of mayflies, sedges, chironomids, stone flies, alder flies, damsels, dragon flies, crane flies, water beetles; also shrimps, hog lice, aquatic worms, leeches, tadpoles, fish eggs, prey fish, and many more microscopic bugs. Terrestrial insects can end up in the water, and they number thousands of distinct species. All living things experience growth, so size is another factor to consider. Colour is another consideration.  Inevitably, you need more than a few. My own fly collection now runs to seventeen fly boxes,...

    Once in a while you feel you ought to acknowledge something, if just to pass it on: the other week, on YT, I came across a Tightlines Video Production, with the very excellent Tim Flagler narrating. The method used for tying in the wing is fantastically easy, even my first attempt at it produced a happy result!   In the attached picture are versions I’ve tied in moments of free time over the last couple of days, the colours of the flies depicted are, clockwise from top left, Midge, Rusty Spinner, Tan, PMD, BWO, and six in an Adams grey. The dubbing was Orvis Spectrablend, Dry Fly.   The fly in the video is a version of Fran Betters’ ‘The Usual’ [a great name for when you get asked “What did you get that one on?”]. This variant used Enrico Pugilisi fibres for the tail/wing, instead of Betters’ Snowshoe Hare, or even Calf Tail.   Now, I happened to buy a pack of EP -Ultra Brush, 5” wide, some years ago at a BFFI. The pack contained 6 brushes, each about ...

  “Good people drink good beer” – Hunter S. Thompson   There’s no such thing as a bad day’s fishing: you can have a hard day, a tough day, bad weather, bad conditions, but your day fishing is never bad per se. You can fish badly, but any day on the water in our beautiful countryside, doing what we love to do, is never going to be bad … granted, however, there are many degrees of good !   Five of the Fluff Boys descended the bumpy lane to the John O’Gaunt fishery: the Professor, Admiral, Moneypenny, Daisy, and Whytee. For the statisticians amongst you, the Fluff Club last visited this venue fourteen months ago in episode 65, prior to that in 20, 23, 32, 35, 42, 53, and 56. You might say its one of our regular haunts, we certainly group haunted it today, there were only two others fishing. Being right in the midst of this current hot spell, amber weather warnings and all, with temperatures heading into the 30s in the next couple of days, it was prudent to go for just t...

    Back in Ed 25 I wrote some guff mainly about angling writing prior to the realm of all-pervading social [some say antisocial] media; back then modesty was much more important than self- gratification. I used a photo which was a glimpse a couple of the things I write my habitual scrawlings into, but gave no explanation otherwise. To put that right and expand upon it, here is a new photo!   The original depicted my fishing log, religiously completed each time I go fishing, lying on top of that was my fishing notebook. The first part of that notebook is a list of fisheries, one per page, with their addresses, phone numbers, and post codes for the sat-nav. On the reverse of each page I record the better captures’ weights and dates, giving me a record of PBs per each fishery. The second part of the book holds a list of my rods and their line weight ratings, then a list of reels and spools, also detailing line types and weights, with the lines’ date of purchase. The remai...

  “… the eye-catching splendour of the natural world exceeds even the finest (beauty) in art, or literature, or music.” - Todd Tanner   Whytee ain’t well, it’s a bummer, and his current meds rule out driving. Thankfully, the Professor stepped-in and drove the pair both ways to Avon Springs, Durrington. A lovely day to be driving through England’s green and pleasant land, of which we saw more than was strictly necessary as we rolled thunderously through Hampshire, Berkshire, and into Wiltshire. A combination of too much chat and a shy sat-nav meant some key directions went unnoticed. Ten minutes later than anticipated, we pulled into the car park, spotting Moneypenny, the Lumberjack, Daisy, and Foggy already there, along with three or four other anglers. The two ‘lakes’ provide seven-dot-something acres of water, so it was not exactly crowded. My Fluff Club records show we haven’t been here as a group before (in my time as a member, that is) and on the day the fishery failed ...

  Bri and I were successful with a 2020 bid for fishing the Leconfield FFC waters around Petworth, but a number of factors conspired to prevent us utilising one lot: a day for two rods on the River Rother. We aren’t blaming Covid alone, bad weather intervened twice, and the last time we came close, my own health let us down. Anyroadup, we had a date, and were both looking forward to this particular tantalus with great expectations. Came the day, came the meet. Below us, a wide pool featuring an Archimedes screw right next door to the fish pass where sea trout run. Our host, the estate’s Mr. Andrew Thompson, expressed mixed feelings: the screw generates electricity which is a help to the local economy, but he feels it may be situated too close to the pass, already difficult for fish to negotiate, but there’s the added risk of some being mutilated in the machinery. To stop us brooding on this conundrum he then told us about the twenty-one-pound-something British record Barbel that ...

  Bri and me on the Meon   Thanks to the wonder that is the annual Wild Trout Trust auction, Bri and I have some chunks of river fishing coming up in Wales, West Sussex and Yorkshire. Readers may have spotted that most of our fishing is small stillwaters, so to try and get some semblance of river competence we thought we would start on the River Meon, one of my club’s beats where I can use a guest ticket. Full of enthusiasm we decided to fish up the beat together, taking turns to ‘have a go’, so we set up a ten foot nymphing rod with a NZ indicator, and a eight-and-a-half footer to cover dries or downstream wets, etc., in case the need arose. The river was in great nick, carrying a tinge from the thunder storm’s rain two days previously; this day was cloudy and sunny alternately, and quite warm. The first stretch produced nothing, and we moved stealthily up to the next. Brian would have walked past the shallow gravel run below a deeper, eddying bend, but I insisted he giv...

   Traffic was light and Whytee pulled into the car park a few minutes before nine; when signing-in on the catch return sheet it revealed that Foggy, the Inspector, the Professor, and new member Daisy, had already done so. It appeared Jackdaw was here to, [turns out he came with Foggy], unable to fish yet following his stroke, but keen to just be around fishing again. Moneypenny arrived last, so a slightly better turnout.  The Met Office forecast gave “cloudy all day” but Whytee was only on the third fly change, fishing ‘Birch’, the really deep one, when the first drops of rain fell. The Inspector related he’d had plenty of activity in his first fifteen minutes, and Foggy had just dropped one of maybe four pounds, but this pond was not showing much movement otherwise. As Whytee was about to move away the Professor managed to drop a fish, down at the deep end [35 feet apparently]. Later, fishing the same spot, he was snapped off by a fish, but acknowledged later it could...