Month: May 2008

Barr Flies

John Barr, creator of the Copper John nymph and many other flies has put pen to paper, or probably more correctly, keyboard to hard disk, and produced a book. ‘Barr Flies’ is quite simply a wonderful book that should grace the bookshelves of all fly-tyers. barrflies

John outlines clearly and succinctly the process and thinking that lead to the creation of several of his very successful fly patterns, and gives a very clear outline of how he fishes them. This is presented without the flowery, pseudo mysticism that pervades too many American fly-fishing books.

On top of the good clear writing, are truly excellent tutorials on tying John Barr’s flies, written and photographed by Charlie Craven, no slouch as a fly-tyer and fly fisherman himself. In my view these tutorials and photographs have set a new bench-mark in fly-tying instruction. Clear, concise and informative.

The only niggle I have is that the few drawings in the book, presumably drawn by John Barr because they are not attributed, are awful – stick to designing flies John! Fortunately this does not detract too much from the overall impact of this fine book.

If you are into fly-tying get this book.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fly tying

Cadillac Dreaming

It was a great idea – head down to Taupo for an extended week-end of early Winter fishing before the really bad weather kicked in. Even better was the fact that my middle son Jason, could join me for the Saturday and Sunday. Well that was the plan, Stan, but the dirty digit of destiny stuck one finger in the air, skewing the plot.

I left Auckland for the usually 3.5 hour drive to Te Rangiatia, south of Taupo at 4am, but halfway down to Taupo a bout of food poisoning erupted, literally, slowing progress to a stop-start crawl – the 3.5 hours turned into 7 hours till I finally arrived and crawled into bed, heaving and moaning like a beached whale. Not pretty!

But next day, Sunday, I sprung from my cot full of the joys of living and Jason and I headed off to the Tongariro. We fished hard for most of the morning with only a reasonable fresh run fish to me. Jason decided to head up-river to a piece of water he spotted on the way down.

Wise move.jasonjak300

I laboured on for a while, fishless, till I decided to follow upstream, just in time to find him attached to a good jack which dragged him downstream. While he was engaged landing his fish I tossed a few casts into the lie, to no avail. Jason returned, I let him back in, and on his first or second cast he hooked up again and danced downstream on the boulders chasing the fish.

This same sequence repeated once again once he let his latest fish go. I could not buy a fish so Jason took pity on me, and gave me a Cadillac nymph, the fly he was getting his fish on. Made no difference – Jason would return from landing his latest fish, take over from where I was fruitlessly casting and hook up again. I think this happened 5 or 6 times – I lost count – probably did not want to count.

But I did not waste my time completely, I did some thinking. The Cadillac Pheasant Tail fly certainly did the business for Jason. It was not a fly I had come across before – and really it it is not that revolutionary – a standard pheasant-tail with fine legs. A bit of foraging around the net later revealed the pattern is not new and comes in a variety of guises.
cadillacnymph

Some are your basic pheasant tail nymph, with thin rubber legs. Others have a dubbed body and a moose hair wing case using the surplus moose hair tied back to form legs.

The nymph represents a mayfly or perhaps a stone-fly, and in the particular piece of water Jason fished so successfully, a boulder bottom with swift water over the top, my guess the fly was being seen as a stone-fly.

Either way, the next time my fly-tying bench beckons, Cadillacs are top of the fly-tying project list.

Posted by Tony Bishop in my fishing trips, New Zealand Fishing