Month: March 2008

Seek and You Will Find Fish

In my book ‘Fishing Smarter for Trout’, (now on my site and free to read), I wrote under a chapter on finding trout…

Ask Questions on The River

A “I wonder if you could help, I am visiting the area and having trouble choosing the right fly,” question usually gains a positive and helpful response. I could not begin to count how many times that question has gained me a ‘guide’ for the day from locals only too willing to share the secrets of their river. Many times I have been able to return the favour when those fishermen visited my water. Some of these encounters have lead to long friendships.”

Well a couple of weeks ago I was fishing on the Tongariro and was experiencing a hard morning, I had caught nothing, hooked nothing. Then I started fishing below a lad of around 17 fishing the top end of a long pool. I watched as he hooked five fish and and landed three.

My feet were getting cold so I wandered up the bank, heading to the next pool, but as I passed the lad he also came out of the water to warm up.

We started chatting and he recognised me, and became keenly interested in the flies I was using. I quickly made it clear that I was much more interested in finding out what he was using, because whatever it was it was at least five times better than anything I had tied on.

Once I looked at his flies I quickly realised that it was not so much ‘what’ fly, as “what size’ fly. He was using size 14 and 16 nymphs, no gold bead, un-weighted, behind a thumping great heavily weighted ball of lead disguised as a nymph.

Now normally in a big river like the Tongariro I would not go below a size 12 nymph, usually weighted and always sporting a shining gold bead. They get to the bottom alright, but I guess they move pretty unnaturally once they get there. The little un-weighted nymphs, I surmise would really move about as the big currents moved them, much more naturally.

What ever the reason, they worked. So my new fishing companion and I moved on up the river catching a heap of fish, all on the little beasties. Fish I guess I would not have caught that day if I had not asked a question.

So, with a simple question I shattered my myth, ‘big water, big flies’, – a myth I had obviously been carrying around too long.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fly fishing how-to

New Fishing Quotes and Sayings – Mar 5, 2008

The number of quotes, with a bunch of new ones (8) just added, brings the total to 648.

My favourite of the new additions:

“Far away Tongariro! Green – white thundering Athabasca river of New Zealand! I vowed I would come again down across the Pacific to fish in the swift cold waters of this most beautiful and famous of trout streams. It is something to have striven. It is much to have kept your word.” – Zane Grey 1927

My choice has nothing to do with where I live of course!

Had three days on the very same beast of a river, the Tongariro, a week or two back. Got lots of fish, got tested and beaten time and again, got eaten by little black beasties, got fish by chucking and ducking tiny nymphs behind a kilo of split shot, got fish on tiny dry flies, got fish on heavy Prince Nymphs, got leg-sore, arm sore and exhausted, got to have a hell of a great time. It is a great river!

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Fishing in Baseball Caps – Words Of Warning

Last week I had some pre-cancerous lumps removed from my ears, and back of my legs. These were ‘burnt’ out using liquid nitrogen. Another two on my neck had moved a bit too far past the ‘pre’ stage and had to be surgically removed.

Unfortunately this has become almost routine over the last 15 years. Every couple of years another lump or two pops up that has to be removed.

Part of this is down to the the unhappy fact that here in New Zealand we lead the world in the incidence of skin cancer per head of population. This is not just down to the fact that we have virtually no airborne pollution to filter out the bad rays, but also down to the fact that we spend a great deal of time out in the sun.

Unfortunately for old farts like me slipping past 60, we did not know about the dangers of long-term unprotected exposure to the sun back when we were young, but we are paying the price now.

While the doctor was treating my lumps we were chatting, he was a keen fisherman, so a subject wasn’t hard. So I asked him about skin protection for fishermen – and he trotted out the usual; cover-up exposed bits, slap on heaps of a total sun-blocker on bits unable to be covered, and re-slap every 30 minutes.

But it was the last bit of advice that got my attention – throw away your baseball cap and buy a wide-brimmed hat. Most of the skin cancers he sees on out-door people are on the face, neck and ears.

To use his own words, “baseball caps do not cover neck, ears, cheeks or throat – they are about as much use as chocolate tea-pot. Any one who spends a lot of time in the sun, like a fisherman, who wears a baseball cap is simply a bozo.”

Posted by Tony Bishop in Articles and stories on fishing in general, Life & Stuff