Hello From The USA

[MRA]

Hello All! I've been enjoying Paul's videos for some time now and just joined the board. The videos of fishing in the jungle for those incredible snakehead grabbed me, and then the casting videos held me!

I've been fly fishing for over 40 years and can never get enough! I fish both fresh and salt every chance I get and love multi - species fishing. Catching any new (to me) species is a thrill, and I'm always working on adding to my fly rod "life list". I do pretty well catching fish on flys, but my casting is mediocre. I regularly find myself in situations where better casting would definitely have caught more fish.

I have always wanted to be a much better caster and have tried to improve perioically, without satisfactory results. I have never stuck with any type of structured practice program but now I'm focused and looking forward to putting in the time and improving! The wealth of information on this board is really impressive and I look forward to learning and contributing at some point.

Mark

[Paul Arden]

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the Board!! Great to have you here!

The Giant Snakehead is an amazing species. What are you normally fishing for?

Cheers, Paul

[Bendix]

Hi Mark

Welcome to the board!

Cheers from Denmark
Bendix

[Graeme H]

G’day Mark.

Welcome aboard.

Cheers, Graeme

[MRA]

Thanks Paul, glad to find the site!

Recently I most like to fish for new (to me) species. That has led me to appreciate all species - even micros and microfishing. If I'm travelling, I'll research the area and try to learn about as many new species as I can, big and small, and target them. So far I have not made too many trips exclusively to target multi species, but I plan to!

To answer your question of what I "normally" fish for... Here in the Northeast, in salt I most often target striped bass, bluefish, false albacore, bonito, and hickory shad on flys. I also go after blackfish, sea bass, porgy, fluke and sea robin (species usually targeted with bait) and try for them on the fly.

In freshwater we have rainbow, brook and brown trout. Brook are native, brown are wild and rainbow are stocked - I prefer the brook and brown fishing. I also target largemouth and smallmouth bass, pike, pickerel, American shad and a host of panfish - bluegill, redbreast sunfish, pumpkinseed, green sunfish, yellow perch, white perch, rock bass...
My favorite in recent years is sight fishing for carp and I spend a lot of time on that. They get very big here and spooky!

I also spend some time fishing in Florida and love the incredible diversity of fish down there! Tarpon are king of course, but I also go for snook, redfish, jacks, ladyfish - whatever I can, particularly if I haven't caught it yet. I've also been targeting "reef fish" there and have found them tricky.
In fresh water, peacock bass and the collection of cichlid species down there really interest me and I've spent a lot of time targeting and catching them.

Long answer to a short question!

[MRA]

Thanks Bendix and Graeme!

[Mangrove Cuckoo]

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the (mostly silent) minority.

Gary in Florida

[Paul Arden]

That’s great! Reminds me of how I was as a younger man with the ladies.

Here’s one for the unusual species list! A Galaxiid in backcountry NZ. Sight fishing of course

Cheers!
Paul

[MRA]

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the (mostly silent) minority.

Gary in Florida

Thanks Gary! Is the minority US folks?

What part of the state are you in?

Mark

[MRA]

That’s great! Reminds me of how I was as a younger man with the ladies.

Here’s one for the unusual species list! A Galaxiid in backcountry NZ. Sight fishing of course

pinkpsycho24.jpeg

Cheers!
Paul

Funny! That is a good skill.

Cool fish! Reminds me a bit of the pickerel we have here. But I just read that one from NZ can climb up waterfalls and cliffs!

Mark