Tackle and technical Archives

Books and thievery

It was a very disappointed thief who broke down my patio door in the middle of the night with an axe, in search of a flat screen TV. All he got was an angry Great Dane and a sea of books. I only wish we had managed to give him some fast flying lead too….the bastard! But let me put the angry thoughts of retribution aside for a moment and focus on his disappointment, and my delight: Books. I hadn’t realised it, but books, and more specifically flyfishing books, have been in my blood for a long time. I remembered

28 February 2017

Thank you Mario

22 December 2016

Photo of the moment (64)

13 October 2016

Bill Miller’s flies

My Friend Jay Smit recently returned from the States, bearing gifts from his host in Boise, a week or two earlier. The ever generous Jay, invited me to put my paws in the cookie jar, and take a look at what I pulled out!……. Wow! Thank you Jay, and thank you Bill!

23 September 2016

Kolbe, Kocherthaler, Cartwright and Cane.

I recently became the custodian of some classic fly fishing tackle. That is to say, it was not given to me, but circumstances dictate that I must look after this stuff for a while, (and I am not saying any more than that!) Petro and I opened the heavy and elegant, but battered box on the lounge floor the other night over a good bottle of red. The box was engraved, and inside, apart from the Palakona cane rod, Hardy’s leaders in muslin inserts, reels, tiny trout flies, and the like, were two fishing permits. So from this, and the

23 August 2016

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

23 June 2016