Recycling Underway…

I caught up with Quentin last weekend, a grand plan to fish the lower river was a bust after a week of rain rose the river some 40 cumecs, with only around 10 inches of clear water it was dropping (I’m sure it was perfect a couple of days later). It was a nice day out so me went anyway, a great chance to walk the river and swap some gear. We started by swinging a few streamers with Quentin getting the double hander out for a stretch, neither of us was particularly enthusiastic, instead just hanging out in hope of a fish on the edge sucking down mayfly’s… not overly likely, a few flies came off in the afternoon but not much chance the fish would see them (I did manage to spook a couple of fish from a backwater).

It was a great chance to get tips from Quentin about rod building and exchange some flies for a couple of old reel seats he had lying around. He even had an drying motor lying around to try out while I get started, so I’m all set to practice some coating of a few practice wraps. I boiled off the reel seat for my glass rebuild, a burgundy graphite seat that will suit the merlot wrap nicely… the only problem was the ID was a little small to fit the glass rod. Me being a carpenter, I went about fixing it the carpenters way with a battery drill! I think I was fairly rough but got it cleaned out enough to glue it all back together on the rod (I’m sure Quentin will cringe when he sees what I have done). It’s nice to recycle parts for this rod, I will fish it but it’s not going to be my goto rod… so it’s a great chance to play around and learn along the way.

Recycled reel seat glued on…

While down south for the weekend I caught up with family, got a chance to call into my Sisters and collect some feathers from opening day’s duck shooting… a bag of some nicely speckled flank feathers, enough to maybe get some dye and color a few up I think!

Time to set aside the reel seat and stop poking to let it dry… I’ll leave you with a pic of Quentin swinging a streamer on the double hander

Beer Inspired Flyswap fun…

I joined in a local flyswap on ‘The New Zealand Flyfishing Forum’ a while back, a great group of guys on the forum and always good interest in the swaps. A favorite beer inspired swap was launched, I was a little hesitant to sign up at first, not a big beer drinker more a bourbon man myself… all that aside I decided to jump on board. All signed up with 13 participants it was underway, all tied up and posted away you sit back awaiting the return package… today it arrived!

A great array of flies full of variety and surprise! It’s always fun to see the creative ideas of other tiers and this swap showed plenty of that.

My own pattern is the bottom right, I nick named it ‘The Tui Stripper’ for the Tui beer colors and a wee stripping fly over the weed beds… it originally began as a boobie style fly with respect to the Tui beer ads… (google it and you will know what I mean).

Hmmm I wonder what the next theme will be?

A Few more Fall from the Vice…

Halo emerger varient… all in brown.

This is a mash of a couple of patterns….

A liked the feather tips wings on the eastern green drake emerger and found a bag of blue grey feather tips so had a play with a spent/ cripple pattern… I also tied an all brown Halo emerger that I may get a chance to flick on the weekend.

Now the next few flies for the project….

IRL PMD… by Howard Cole

Pop Top Midge Emerger… by Andy Burk

Quigley Cripple-Green Drake… by Bob Quigley

PMD Cripple… version of Bob Quigley design

Crippled CDC & Elf… by Bruce Salzburg

Poxyback Green Drake Emerger… by Mike Mercer

Eastern Green Drake Emerger… by Stephen Lopatic

Fancy PMD Emerger… by Stephen Lopatic

Bug Lite Callibaetis… by Herb Burton

Warren Emerger-March Brown… by Gary Warren

Might be time to tie a few flies for the weekend, a day on the lower Matuara maybe???

A Little Room is Made…

First set of clearance flies has sold and I have listed the next set… the dangerous thing now is can I hold off from buying something other than it’s intended purpose? I’m a bit of a gear freak when it comes to fishing, I look at all the new fly boxes coming out and ponder how cool it would be to have one of those… not that I need one for fishing or anything, I have several! I am making a large wooden display box for bulk fly storage currently but still plan on getting a large boat style fly box for large streamers etc. Pretty keen to check out the latest from MFC….

I got his off the Manic Tackle blog site…

I think I have always had a wish list sitting in my head of gear, I just keep adding and subtracting from it over time and give it the odd shuffle now and then to prioritize it! That reminds me “hooks” need to bump them up the list a bit… so coming into winter, they need to go above new boots, maybe to the top actually… if I slide the extra rod building gear down one… that’ll work!

Making room…

I have a reasonably large collection of flies lying around, I have bitten the bullet and made up a few bundles of random mixed flies to sell… an attempt to make room and raise some funds to get more rod building gear :0)

Check it out on trade me here…

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=473212867

This is the first of four bundles… see how it rolls otherwise I may try a mega pack and sell the lot as one?!?

Emergers tying back on track…

I had a couple tied sitting to photograph so I finally tied a few more and rattled off the shots….

CDC Bubble Emerger… by A Piller

CDC Suspender Buzzer Pupa… by Henk Verhaar

Holographic Midge Suspender…by Henk Verhaar

Shuttlecock Buzzer… by Clive Perkins

Perky… by Paul Canning

CDC Crippled Emerger.. by Vladimir Markoz

Left-Handed Shortstop… by Thomas C. Duncan, Sr

Snowshoe-Hare Emerger… by Jim Cannon

 

Winter is starting make itself felt here in Cromwell, might just be time to find a heater for my man cave and start to crank out a few more flies… might just need to do a stock take and order some more hooks first!

Glass Re-build Update…

I had a play this afternoon with my thread choice… being new to rod-building, I wanted to see the difference between using colorfast thread and nylon thread. So I put a couple of snake guides on a section of blank and went about coating them to see the difference!

I knew before I started that I had a fussy tag end just showing after I trimmed off, it was surprising how badly it showed when epoxied, Quentin had told me that if you make a mistake when wrapping like a crossed thread etc… back it off and re-do it! Totally right, every minute fault is magnified when you put epoxy on it. I haven’t got a rod drier yet so was only turning this experiment by hand and not overly cautious with a dusty environment but was great to see the stark contrast in thread results. I must say that so far the biggest thing I have discovered from rod building is the need for a good bright light source… poor lighting is a recipe for disaster when rod building, if you can’t see a mistake straight away it’s often too late to fix it later.

Nylon on the left and colorfast to the right… my dilemma now is that I like both so still haven’t made up my mind which to use?

I did then choose the nylon to have a play at wrapping the hook keeper to my glass rod to get  a feel for the Merlot on the yellow blank…

Very happy with the colour and am swayed to the nylon for the semi transparent finish… now I need to practice my thread work to tighten up on my neatness of finish to avoid those fussy tags showing!