Flymen Blog
Carp have been rising up on the list of desired freshwater fish to experience on the fly.
Some will even go so far as to compare this freshwater monster to the notorious bonefish, earning the carp the nickname of the golden bone.
Many factors will greatly determine your success rate when fly fishing for carp. To name a few: location, mood, posture of the fish, and time of year.
If you've been wanting to try your hand at chasing these golden ghosts of the shallows, here are 3 tips you must know to get in the action with these easily spooked creatures.
The Faux Bucktail Throwdown.
Since launching our new Fish-Skull Faux Bucktail, we've seen more and more photos of amazing flies tied by people like you on social media.
The flies we've seen are just the tip of the iceberg, so we're holding a fly tying contest on Instagram to help you show off your patterns to the world and give you the chance to win grand prizes from Thomas & Thomas Fly Rods, Hareline Dubbin, and Loon Outdoors as well as weekly Flymen prize packs!
It's easy to enter – tie a fly and snap a picture.
- Tie a fly that integrates Fish-Skull Faux Bucktail in some way (Faux Bucktail does not necessarily need to be the primary material) and take a photo of it.
- Post the photo on Instagram, tag @flymenfishingco, @thomasandthomasflyrods, @harelinedubbin, and @loonoutdoors in your post (make sure you're following all of us!), and hashtag #FauxBucktailThrowdown2017.
Fly fishing today has anglers targeting an array of species in pretty much every fishable location on the planet.
Generally speaking, due to the rise of social media and the seemingly insatiable need to snap that “epic fish pic,” there are not too many streams or locations that are secret fishing spots anymore.
There are probably many anglers who have stepped foot in the same run you fish regularly. If you are fortunate enough to fish a river system that doesn’t have much pressure, well, congratulations and please take me there.
The local waters where I live in Pennsylvania can be inundated with anglers just about every other day.
In cases like that, as an angler you have three choices you can make:
- Put your walking shoes on, find open water, and fish anyway.
- Go home and tie more flies waiting for a day where you have the stream to yourself (you’ll be waiting for a while).
- Alter your fishing approach, think outside of the box, and fish your fly with confidence behind people who just fished a run.
In my personal experience, finding open water and fishing usually works and is good for a fish here and there. To maximize your success, try altering your fishing tactics with an unconventional approach that most anglers wouldn’t use.
Believe it or not, this is actually extremely easy to do because most guys are using a Woolly Bugger/standard streamer, or tandem nymph rig. Fly fishing is entirely centralized on observation. Reading water, insect identification, flow rates/visibility, the list is endless. Take a minute, observe other anglers, and BE DIFFERENT.
It’s no secret fly fishing started as a trout fishing sport.
Over the decades it's spread into several other arenas of fishing: saltwater, warm-water, carp… just about anything that swims.
But suffice it to say, even here in the Southwestern United States where the only cold running water within a 3-hour drive comes from a faucet, the trout is still the king of the fly rod world.
However, cold-water trips are far and few between unless you happen to be gifted with unlimited vacation time and free gas. So, being blessed with fishable year-round weather, it is inevitable that even the most die-hard trout purist will eventually try their skills at fly fishing for bass.
Most cold-water veterans go into it with the attitude that this much less sophisticated fish requires much less effort to trick than their cold water cousins, and most are quite surprised when they get stumped time and again by these neanderthals of the fly fishing world.
I’m not here to convince you bass are smarter or harder to catch than trout – they’re not. But if you want to show up at the bass lake and be able to leave with your dignity in tact, you need to change up your game.
Here are 3 of the most common reasons you might not be catching as many bass as you could be.
Taking synthetic fly tying fibers to the next level.
We're excited to introduce our newest fly tying material, Fish-Skull® Faux Bucktail™, which is the first synthetic fiber tapered to a point like real animal fur for use in fly tying and lure making.