Thursday 30 October 2008

Now that's fly fishing!

Now that's what I call a fish and it'll have me changing my name to McEdwards and moving north of the border... There are folk who have directly or indirectly affected my fishing and hence why I include them in my blog. Dougie Loughridge... I'm not sure whether he's directly or indirectly influence my fishing, we'll go with the former though!

I came across Dougie on the Pike Anglers Club of Great Britain forum (PAC) and have stalked him on the FlyForum and the Pike Fly Fishing Association (PFFA) forum... When PAC decided to have a fly fishing element to the forum I saw posts of step by step "How to tie a fly" and I was in awe of the creations Dougie has made. I then bought a selection off Dougie and that was the turning point in my fly fishing... I started to catch fish!

I lost a fly and asked Dougie to tie me another... I think he graciously declined BUT sold me some surplus hooks he had... and that was the start of the fly tying for me. I've used the flies I bought as the patterns and amusingly until that new fly has caught a fish you don't have as much confidence in it as the original that has caught 10 fish!

I freely admit I'm a novice at this aspect of pike fishing and Dougie has been a source of excellent information... if he can catch fish like this on Scottish loch's then I'm sure other pike aren't going to say no to his creations. I didn't actually appreciate how much time and material went into constructing a pike fly until I started tying my own.

My recent advice to other novices is to search Dougie out on the forums and buy a few flies when he's selling them... (it isn't his day job!) and watch your hit rate go up...

1 comment:

All about the grab said...

I would love to check out the forum page on the PFFA website David, but as I don’t live in England I don’t feel the need to be a member. I have no need for the quarterly magazine and notices on the next club get together or specials either as they are of no use to me. This I find a pity as I feel forums should be open to all the general public to access without having to fork out 10 quid. Okay its only ten quid but all I would like to do Is read what other people have to say about pike fly-fishing.
You could argue the fact that “well Si, you spend 27 quid per year on “Pike and Predator” magazine why not spend an extra ten quid on reading from a forum.
I wrote to the PFFA a few years ago asking whether it possible I could exchange links with them but they never replied back to me. Not that this hasn’t stopped me from linking their site to mine for the last three yrs as I felt they had a lot of relevant information a novice Pike fly-fisherman could still access and find beneficial.
There is still so much other information out their on the subject but when I read articles like this one you have written especially on how somebody in some small way has changed the way you fish I get curious and a bit down trodden at the same time.
Oh well not to worry me old son, still a good read.
Its snowing here this weekend so no fishing for me for a while. Hope you have better luck in getting out.
Have a great weekend Mate