I know it’s been a while since I last posted. While I have certainly been fishing less, the truth is I haven’t had any trips worth posting about, either good or bad. There are some of note. In November I traveled to Kiribati and was able to fish a remote island. The language barrier proved […]
Read more "I’M BACK…."Until our annual fishing contest. It starts Wednesday morning at 5AM but we won’t be coming up until Thursday after we pick up Zee at the airport. I haven’t even started sorting my gear out. We’ve just been busy with life. I’ve also had some custom ties to do for one of our regular customers. […]
Read more "3 SLEEPS TO GO…"Just a short post with some fun stuff for a mid-week break. It’s never too early to start planning for summer. Below is a custom tie for South Island browns. They are a bead-head baetis imitation. I’ve used badger hackle quill for the bodies, stuck in place with some UV resin for good measure. I’ve also started tying dry flies […]
Read more "FLY TYING EXPERIMENTS – THE SERIES"For all of you here in New Zealand, it won’t be much of surprise to know that the weather this winter has been terrible for fishing. It’s been a few months of constant, intense rain. Rivers on the North Island have been in a state of constant flood. I should have known better and probably cancelled a […]
Read more "PLAN B"It must be spawning season in Taupo as we’ve had a flood of orders coming through. We’ve had to tie so many flies and indicators that it’s interfering with our fishing! It’s a lot of fun though, I can’t complain. Especially when we get requests for custom ties. Those are the most fun for me […]
Read more "FLY TYING EXPERIMENTS – THE SERIES"Just for kicks the other day I Googled “french nymphing”. I expected to find articles that explained methods similar to what we do, with similar flies and basically extolling the virtues of long-leader tight lining. I fully accept that what we do is frowned upon by some, probably mostly people who haven’t actually tried it, […]
Read more "THE RAGGED EDGE OF NYMPHING"Last weekend was a wash out. On Saturday we tried our luck on the Rangitikei, which was just coming off flood. After an hour of throwing streamers at it we called it quits since the river was high enough that we couldn’t cross it anywhere to explore upstream. I had planned to fish downstream on […]
Read more "TOOLS OF THE TRADE"You may have the impression from previous posts that my process for developing flies is pretty haphazard. I will admit that sometimes I just mess around on the vise after seeing some cool flies on someone’s blog or in a magazine. Sometimes I just want to try out some new materials. But when I’m serious […]
Read more "METHOD MAN"The Whakapapa River closes for the season on June 30th. With only two weekends till it closes, I thought I’d go up for a fish. Amy wasn’t interested in joining me, the river is too slippery for her. Some friends would be meeting me in Turangi, but they’d be coming too late to fish the […]
Read more "THE SOUND OF SILENCE"So last weekend was a total write off due to the weather. We did throw caution to the wind and check out a local river, on the off chance it was fishable. It was in flood and flowing pure mud. I ended up back home and finished off an order of bombs for one of […]
Read more "FLY TYING EXPERIMENTS – THE SERIES"
AK CUSTOMS 