Accuracy Rods

[Paul Arden]

Depends what you call close fishing, sub 20ft I find the line is almost irrelevant. I've heard of people hovering to stimulate a feeding response based on simulating a hatch, I've never tried it myself

The accuracy targets are 8-15m distance. I don't buy into the stimulating the response, but maybe it depends where you fish. I was once shown this technique in Idaho Falls, but it wasn't hovering the fly, rather ticking the fly. Maybe... but I've always believed that when fishing too much false casts simply spook fish and the fewer false casts the better. Curiously - although perhaps not completely surprisingly - when I first got into accuracy I found it more accurate to simply cast to the target without hovering. It's only been relatively recently where I've found hovering to increase accuracy.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Earlier in the season, I was taking fish inside 3m but there's not enough water to get that close now but most are inside 7m. There's not that much clear air to cast in, i carry a folding saw now just to cut my way upstream. I'm not convinced by hovering either for fishing, I think it would put them down but I may be wrong. My leader set up makes hovering difficult because I set up a long tippet to put slack near the fly.

[Paul Arden]

At that distance there is no flyline. Depending on leader and rod length there can be no flyline considerably further than this. It's why you need a rod with mass!

[VGB]

That's why I fish glass and now bamboo. The bamboo was a revelation with big mayfly patterns at close range.

regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

I was shown this be Henry Lowe many years ago at a Chatsworth show (bamboo). I have one but I'm too frightened to use it!

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

Or Bill Hanneman's feel fixers

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

[VGB]

I was shown this be Henry Lowe many years ago at a Chatsworth show (bamboo). I have one but I'm too frightened to use it!

Cheers, Paul

I built my own by buying one of the Zhu blanks and cutting a lump out the middle to stiffen it up a bit.

regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

I've never had a problem casting the leader only, Vince, in fact it's always been an important part of my testing as in this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2AR5PGzJHI Even a graphite rod should bend nicely under it's own mass. The "French Nymphing" rods that I've cast have actually been quite pokerish, despite saying 3 or 4WT they are at least 8WT stiffness (I haven't measured them). I'm not sure why this is so, perhaps it's to reduce counterflex. Certainly they never run a flyline through them, but long tippets up to 30ft long (there is a change in rules now of course, and so they use very fine "flylines", but that only affects the competition guys).

I've been very fortunate to fish with one of the finest fly fishermen I've ever met, Zeljko Prpic, as well as a bunch of team captains who are all masters at this. I have not fully mastered it and it can be pretty damned humbling to fish with these guys but I love it. In fact I love it as much as fishing dry flies on stillwaters! And that's quite a lot!!!

Anyway I just mention that because they're using stiff (and long) rods.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Hi Paul

There's no room for long rods, I'm down to 7ft at the moment and carrying a folding saw to make enough room to cast upstream. My best fish on the small stream came to a size 12 grey wulff about 12ft away. I'd be interested to see Zeljko fish this way, to see how he approaches it.

Regards

Vince