It was a week ago that we got back home from our fishing trip to New Zealand. Time to browse through thousands of pictures, delete a lot of them and keep the good ones, while savouring the memories that each photo brings back. Also time to reply some emails, messages and phone calls. A question is prevalent: how is the fishing over there?
Continue readingVisiting New Zealand is in the dreams of every fly fisher. Traveling there for the first time doesn’t relieve the itch. In fact, you can’t wait to get back!
Not an easy feat, to be honest, as money and spare time are hurdles difficult to overcome.
But, when more than a year ago I received an invitation from Chris Dore for some fishing in the South Island, I decided that it was time to jump those hurdles. So almost two years after my first trip to the sight-fishing paradise, I was there again.
We call dolphin nose to a very characteristic shape taken by the fly leg of the loop. Its origin seems obscure to me, but Grunde Lovoll (fly caster and Ph.D. in Physics) says that it is the result of a decrease in tension in the fly leg of the loop during unrolling. Continue reading
As an enthusiastic reader and book lover I am not very fond of electronic books. Most probably it is a lost battle but I still enjoy the smell and feel of printed paper. The majority of my more than a hundred books on fly fishing are on paper, although, since electronic books have their advantages too, I started purchasing them as well time ago.
One of my latest adquisitions was Jason Borger’s Single Handed Fly Casting, which Jason himself kindly sent to me. Jason’s work is a refreshing new approach and a brilliant start to a change of paradigm in fly casting.
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Aquí van unas pocas reflexiones a vuelapluma sobre los efectos del bucle y la acción de la caña en la delicadeza de las presentaciones de nuestra mosca. Me ha inducido a reflexionar sobre el tema un comentario que encontré casualmente en internet, y que decía, más o menos, lo siguiente:
“Para pescar con mosca ahogadas no hay que usar una caña rápida, secaría la mosca; lo mismo sucede si se hacen bucles estrechos, los bucles deben ser anchos.”Este tipo de confusión suele ser habitual así que vamos a intentar analizar someramente el tema.
Tailing loops are very frustrating. Some of us suffer them mildly once in a while, for others it is a chronic illness. I know of an experienced fly fisher that produces a tailing loop almost on every cast. A fellow angler told me not long ago that I was obssesed with tailing loops. That could be the case, but I don’t mind. I am interested in tails because I see them recurrently in most of my classes, and think that the more I understand them the more effective I will be in helping to cure them.
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Lejos de ser un ejercicio de auto flagelación estas reflexiones se basan en que hay buenos motivos para pensar que se aprende más de los errores que de los éxitos. Mediada la temporada, y con algún importante viaje de pesca a la vista, es el momento de reflexionar sobre algunos fallos para evitarlos en el futuro.
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Upstream dry fly only, that is the rule stablished in some English chalkstreams by their managers. The rule in the Balkan spring creeks is exactly the opposite: downstream dry fly only, this time imposed by the fish themselves; the only law that incorporates in itself the punishment of frustation of those who violate it.
Continue readingFor some geeky discussions on tailing loops go here:
Quizás es un problema de falta de reclutamiento, o que cada nuevo pescador está centrado desde el principio en pescar a ninfa sin usar la línea —o más probablemente ambas cosas— pero es un hecho que la inmensa mayoría de los interesados en instruirse en el lanzado ya tienen una experiencia de varios años pescando; sencillamente nunca hasta ahora se habían preocupado de pulir sus habilidades. Son lo que se conoce como “falsos principiantes”. Continue reading
