Hook thoughts

TTP (2) Tips, Theories & Pointers Back in the day, nymph hooks were quite the thing: we started getting hooks that  had a longer shank to accommodate the nymph patterns we were all tying, and I for one, went crazy on them. Our human aesthetics (and tunnel vision on the matter) dictated that a nice long hook fitted with the nymph shape. But nowadays it seems to have gone full circle, and for good reason I think. Take a look at these: the shank lengths are about the same (so we can tie the same nymph on them right?). But

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The reachable, the authentic and the appealing.

Questions I ask myself: What if a trip to catch Golden Dorado or Milkfish is not reachable. What if GT’s and Jurassic Lake are beyond the reach of your pay-cheque? Will you dream instead of fishing? Or will you go explore that stretch of stream that has never featured on facebook?  The one that looks a bit grim at the road-bridge lower down, and that would take a lot of effort to go explore. Or will you stick to the best “front-page waters” your pay-cheque and leave balance can get you to, in the hopes of getting closer to the

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Flouro knots …..and fables?

TTP (3) Tips, Theories & Pointers Local wisdom has it, that when using flourocarbon, in place of Mono, one should be mindful of the following knot issues: Flouro to mono knots are problematic, they slip Surgeons knots, done in Flouro, require you pass the tippet through the knot three times, not just two like you would with mono Perfection loops just don’t work with flouro. Period I did have some difficulty backing these claims/ideas up with a Google search. What I did do was to take a piece of 5X flouro, and tie a perfection loop in one end, and

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TTP (1)

Tips, Theories and pointers My friend Wayne Stegen made a valid observation the other day. He was advocating the use of an anchor when float tubing, especially when imitating naturals.  As he put it, when you are dragging around a large woolly bugger due to un-noticed drift, it doesn’t really matter. But when you are trying to inch along a tiny damsel, or dead drift a snail, and your retrieve is being accelerated without your knowledge by your drifting tube, you are not applying the formula you thought you were. Do you know whether you are drifting or not?  I

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Are you being poisoned by your great grandfather?

Since I am more interested in rivers than history, I have yet to establish whether the original farms “Manor Farm” and “Brigadoon” actually share a common boundary or not. I have been busy working on a river instead of pouring over old surveyor general maps, which I would also like to do, if I could just find some time. What I can tell you is that you can see one farm from the other, and that the Umgeni River flows first through Brigadoon and then Manor farm.  Brigadoon being on the southern bank, and Manor Farm on the northern one.

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