“French leader” or often called “French Roll Casting” came to my attention in 2009 through the competition sports fly fishing scene. At that stage I was president of Fly Fish Australia and also had the honour on being on one of its international representative teams. This technique was all the buzz and to those that had the opportunity to embrace it the technique was fantastic in the right water.
Whilst in the broad terms these techniques are really quite similar to each other there are subtle points of difference that distinguish each of these forms of river fly fishing techniques. The points of difference are mainly in the leader set up and focus on leader lengths and the use of different flies and materials incorporated into the leader as indicators. I think of all these techniques all as “short line nymphing techniques” and adjust my leader set up, fly selection, drift and the direction I am moving in as I encounter different types of water.
To the uninitiated tying wings on dry flies can be a real stumbling block. This post will show you the correct way and the appropriate proportions to tie a range of dry fly wings.
The technique is best fished from a boat but of course can be fish from the bank , and in both case you need to shorten or lengthen your distances depending on water depths.
I select the best fly lines that I can for particular situations and have set up my gear so that I can relatively easily take one fly line off and replace it with another, during a fishing session, so as to achieve my goals. This process has left me with the following five ‘go to’ 6 weight fly lines in my lake kit to cover all my lake based trout fishing options:
There is nothing new about “Booby Pumping”. English fly fishers have been doing it for years and for a time it was considered so successful in some impoundments that it was banned. I have been fishing boobies for quite a few years and booby pumping has even won a couple of competitions for me.
For me polaroiding is one of the most rewarding forms of fly fishing. It involves the process of sighting fish with the aid of polaroid sunglasses and then working out and executing a when, where, what and how equation with the aim of enticing the sighted fish to take the fly. I like it because it puts me in environments that I enjoy and it’s a real challenge of my stealth and cunning. I guess to the uninitiated this all sounds pretty corny, well perhaps it is, but don’t knock it until you have tried it and had some success with it.
My first fish on fly fell to the magic of a Woolly Bugger and many have gone the same way since then. There are probably more variations to the Woolly Bugger than I have had breakfasts. Some are over-dressed some under-dressed, some weighted other not, on all sorts of hooks and in all sorts of colour combinations. These are the best of the best.
