Hobie Mirage Outback – review
I have owned a number of canoes and kayaks over the years and the Hobie Mirage Outback shown below is by far the best of that type of fishing platform I have experienced.
General articles
Colours for “big fish” flies
Fly colours rules of thumb: For bright days bright colours, dark days dark colours, clear water translucent flies in natural colours, dirty water solid colours and match the hatch when possible.
“Mal de mer”, “sea sickness”, “motion sickness”
This is my approach to Mal de mer, sea sickness, motion sickness or whatever you want to call it. It is a terrible affliction and can spoil what may well have been a great fun day.
Knots – Loop to loop connections – native fish
Using this process if I decided that I want to swap from my existing leader to one of my pre prepared leaders that is stored on a ‘leader pad’, complete with its fly or team of flies, all I need to forfeit is around one minute of my fishing time.
Knots – Chatto’s 2 turn loop knot
This knot is very simple to tie and because of its figure eight configuration is relatively strong. It also has the advantage over the other many other loop knots in that the two parts of line coming out of the actual knot are next to each other so the actual open part of the loop can be as narrow as just the two thicknesses of line.
Getting started – saltwater flies
See also: Getting started – dry trout flies Getting started – wet trout flies Getting started – bass and native fish flies Getting started – the gear Salt water flies are flies that have been designed specifically for use in salt water to catch fish that live full time or part of their life cycle … Read more
AFTMA fly line ratings
This post provides a schedule which shows what grains of weight matched up with the various AFTM line weights.
Rock hopping -safety first
In recent years there has been a number of fatalities off the rocks and this article has only one purpose and that is to remind people that its easy to overestimate your own ability and equally easy to underestimate the forces of nature that may be working against you.
Aspects of lake craft
Reading a lake or impoundment is no less important to the successful fly fisher than reading a stream or river. Lakes and impoundments are not just big volumes of homogeneous water denuded of any structure even though at first glance that may be how they seem.
My favorite 8 knots
Just behind poor fishing technique and inept netting technique the most prolific reason for fish being lost is a problem with a knot. There are more knots than you can poke a stick at that can be used in fly fishing and over time you will settle on a few that you tie well and have confidence in. Over the years I have tried a lot of different knots and currently I have settled on the following 6 knots.