Fish&Fly Journal

Seychelles slideshow!

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It's been a long road....

getting from there to here

Yes Enterprise and Fish&Fly fans, busy times here at the website and now, in case you managed to miss it, at the magazine!

Yes we went and acquired FISH&FLY Magazine, only one of the best fly fishing magazines in the USA!!!

Like peanut butter and jelly stateside, or roast beef and yorkshire puddings in the UK, we were meant to be together. The next edition which is going to be a 96 page bumper commemorative issue is at the printers and should be going out to magazine subscribers and website members (F&F Plus) in January.

Work now forges ahead on the next Focus On ezine covering the Seychelles and then will switch to an online version of the magazine which we will produce on a regular basis through out the year leading up to next winters planned printed version.

Our new ecommerce platform is nearing completion our software vendor tells us which will allow you to browse around your favourite names in one place rather than having to surf around the internet and will allow you to gang up with friends online to secure discounts offered by retailers for bulk purchases, letting the internet do all the hard work for you.

Exciting times and now we are "here" we are already moving on to "there" again. We hope you'll continue to come along for the ride!

If you are on Facebook by the way - look out for the Fish&Fly page and sign up where I will keep you up to date with developments also.

Tight lines and a happy Christmas season

Paul

Social season has begun

You can sense the end of the fising season is nearing as the invitations to various gatherings and events start to arrive. Just this last 7 days has seen a visit to Farlows in Pall Mall, The Tackle & Guns trade show in Warwick and last night the Wild Trout Trust conservation awards at the Savile Club in London. There will be more to come and the BFFI is just around the corner.

The fact is that I think we need these type of social events, even crave them sometimes when we have not been able to get out on the water perhaps ourselves. The chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones, trade fishing stories and tall tales is all part of the fun. It might even be over a beverage or two!

The industry is well served with these types of events but what about the public? Apart from the main fly shows we can see that members of our fly forums arrange their own meet-ups which is great. Actual clubs either seem to thrive or wither away. My local branches of the S&TA in Sussex being a case in point. Split into East and West branches one seems to have found the essential ingredients for success while the other has sadly languished through lack of support.

We all need something to look forward to in the deep dark nights of the winter and Fish&Fly are beginning to investigate the possibility of hosting a fly fishing film evening similar to those held so successfully in the USA in recent years. A chance to meet up with friends, check out the latest gear, talk fishing and watch some great footage of exciting fishing from both home and overseas. Keep watching here and the website for news of this as the plans develop and we hope you'll join us while we all wait for the sun return and warmer days!

Tight lines,

Paul

So whats up with tv at the moment?

After enduring the recent "Extreme Fishing" series with Robson Green and sitting through a program on the Spey casting event at the CLS Game Fair this summer I can only conclude that although the station chiefs perhaps see there is an audience for fishing programs, they are not using anyone with experience of the sport to help direct or produce the footage. This is the only explanation I can come up with the explain the dire quality of both the shows mentioned above. They could have been so much more but basically seemed to become schedule fillers rather than taking the chance to be instructional and serve the sport they were covering.

Needless gaff shots, blood dripping from fish being held to the camera, shooting moorhens for sport with scoped rifles, bowhunting for carp and then shooting a native Alligator Gar just because it came along at the wrong time (all of which will get dumped somewhere rather than consumed) just does nothing to help our sport. The channel concerned even wrote back to my letter of concern explaining they wanted to show the reality of "how it is" in the difference countries concerned. In my view championing bad practices rather than seeking to address or better them is just plain sensationalism. They claim they had many letters of support for the show - I guess they have not taken a look at Robson Green's own website then where the majority were complaining about the content. I don't want to knock Robson here, he obviously loves his fishing as do we all, but someone was needed on the team with experience of the localities being used and with a wider experience of game angling around the world to mould this into the show it could have been.

As for the Spey Casting on Horse & Country channel well again it was a nice thought to perhaps try and show an event that rarely if ever gets coverage but it did show you cannot just turn up and film an event like this and hope to really show what goes on. How about a bit of instruction into what a Spey cast is first and how you go about learning this skill. The coverage jumped around between shots trying to cover the complete cast from start to finish but I think only a few casts were actually captured from start to finish in the same shot which was what was needed. Catching casting on film is very hard as you really need the line to stand out preferably against a dark background and the makers obviously struggled with the location and conditions as they were out of their control. Contrast this footage against a professional casting video such as the A-Z of Speycasting and you will see the huge difference in quality.

Please broadcasters, keep making fishing programming but do seek expert advice to make the best of them. There is a huge market out there that cannot be satisfied with constant re-runs of the same half dozen shows. Fishing is constantly moving forward so lets hope we get programming in the future that keeps pace with all the new skills, locations and personalities in our sport.

What do you think?

What's new?

Well if anyone can tell us it is Zach Matthews of the ItinerantAngler.com who has been broadcasting 3 separate podcasts from the Fly Fishing Retailer Show in Denver this week.

He lined up interviews with all the top brands to ask them what we can expect to see on the shelves and in the catalogues for 2009. Rio, Simms, Fishpond, GLoomis, the list goes on.....

The first 2 podcasts have already been published on Fish&Fly and the 3rd and final will come later this week. Be one of the first to find out what's new!

New Zealand says no to felt soles

You may have seen the story I published recently on Fish & Fly regarding the upcoming ban in New Zealand on felt soled wading boots, designed to help stop the spread of problematic waterborne micro-organisms. It is good to see a Fish & Game organisation taking a positive stand against such problems and with the advent of new 'sticky soles' and other manufacturing breakthroughs in boot technology, the end of the felt era should not be a problem.

Yesterday I put in an email to the Environment Agency in the UK to see if they have any comment on this and what plans if any they may have for the future. Today I got the standard response that I should receive a reply within 10 days so I'll guess I'll have to wait and see. With more and more fisheries, coarse in particular, making net dipping mandatory to help stop the spread of disease, perhaps this is an area that should be looked at before we find we have a problem on wild trout rivers for instance that we were not prepared for.

Just a thought!

Jungle Perch & the beach

Sorry for the delay since the last update but getting reliable comms here in Thailand can be challenging at times! The Jungle perch trip with Asian Angling Adventures was an experience - both for the journey in which we lost a wheel off the boat trailer in each direction, but more so for the companionship and a new species to tackle. We did get some Jungle Perch on spoons but did not hook up on fly despite a couple of takes which never stuck. Very similar experience to largemouth bass fishing except at a much faster pace. These fish hit the spoons when they are ripped back with a savage take. Bass tackle might well work with plastics and spinnerbaits in case anyone plans to travel east after this species.

Also had a very interesting tour around a boutique fly tying operation - very high quality operation utilising the local skilled craftspeople to turn their hand to this new venture which they obviously enjoy, turning out a uniform product time after time.

The last few days have been spent at the beach in Krabi (well I am on vacation  right!) where only one small fish has succumbed to the fly in an ocean seemingly devoid of any serious inshore species sadly. There are some grouper around rockier areas I am told but not near to where I am located. Travelling in country tomorrow where there is a large reservoir to experiment on - it has fish - I just don't know which species!

More news as and when I can report it.............

Thailand update

Managed to borrow an internet connection at last for an update! Had a good days fishing with Fishing Adventures Thailand at their Predator Lake. First cast saw me playing the fish I wanted most on the fly - an Arapaima! I have some photos to share when I get back but glad to say they were joined by some more of my first Redtail Catfish and Alligator Gar on the fly also.

Tomorrow sees me up at 1am to catch a ride with a contact here in Chiang Mai for a dawn session a couple of hours drive away. Fishing has been good I hear and I think we are after Jungle Perch and Snakehead but don't quote me on that. I'll try and report in again on how we do in a day or so.

In a few days time we'll be down in Krabi so will be hunting the surf but also looking up Brit ex-pat Stuart Gilham who owns a big fish lake down there also.

Tight lines,

Paul

Just arrived in Thailand after a crap journey - nearly 24 hours door to door with little sleep. Temp around 40 degrees C! Fishing tomorrow so time to rest up and check the gear over! Will continue to mblog as and when I can and give some catch reports hopefully.

Rainy days and Mondays......

Do they always get you down too? The weather of late has been kind of depressing here in Blighty. A few days of gray and rain then perhaps a dry one and maybe some sun then it's back to the gloom. Still, if you get out and about there are still fish to be caught.

I have been spending a lot of time investigating the waters of a new club I joined this year in Sussex. It is a coarse fishing club but that's fine as that is what I want to target. So far I have mostly test fished with regular coarse tackle to find out what species are present and have a handle on a couple of nearby waters now and even winkled out a tiny chub a week or so ago on a nasty blustery evening while prospecting. The lakes are what interest me though. This past weekend I discovered a tench hole in crystal clear water exactly as Brian Clarke describes in his excellent "On Fishing" book where he was able to catch them using a white nymph for visibility - that has me excited at the prospect of maybe being able to do the same - if I can get past the hordes of small rudd that seem ever present.

I also have a great venue for some bream! Yes old slabsides. There seems to be a good head of 2-3lb'rs in another venue and they willingly hit freelined breadpaste with no groundbaiting required so I am guessing they are there in numbers. I am thinking a substantial fly dragged slowly along the bottom may well attract their attention too and will be putting that to the test sometime soon. The added attraction is these fish are feeding in murky water only about a foot deep and several have leapt clear out of the water when hooked - not exactly what you'd expect a bream to be doing!

Watch this space and I'll report back on how I get on later in the month.

This Thursday I am off to southern Portugal to see if we can catch some mako sharks and dorado on the fly -testing out a new potential destination for fly anglers. Should be fun! Hopefully I'll be able to text in a report from on location.