Nymphing For Cyprinids - Part II

As I told you a few days ago, I had a lot of fun with the cyprinids. To catch this fish I used heavy nymphs. One of the patterns is a black pheasant tail with a heavy silver tungsten BH and a flash back. First time I saw this nymph it was a few years ago in Northern Italy in one of the fly fishing shops from Bolzano. During the years I used it a lot with success also in Germany.

The second nymph is a real orange devil, one of the heaviest nymphs I ever tied. The whole body is made of thick lead wire, colored with porcelain paint and an orange BH. It is a great nymph for catching fish on the bottom of the river. This orange thingy is reaching the ground also in fast streams without any problems. It can be deadly when you're fishing for barbel, chub and sneep. I'll show you soon how you can tie such a submarine ! I read about this pattern on the blog of a french fly fisherman also a few years ago, I tied some and it turned out to be a real joker. 

Nymphing For Cyprinids - Part I

Many fly fishermen think, fish that doesn’t belong to the family of salmonids, shows little interest in fly fishing. Maybe it is like this cause fly fishing for these species is not enough publicized but the trend is increasing. Of course, a cyprinid do not fight like a same size salmonid and certainly will not jump out of the water like a trout is doing but they can be great fighters especially big fish.

Best time to catch these fish is now during hot summer days. The desired results can be obtained with any fly from streamer to dry fly. For me cyprinids were and are some outstanding fish, first of all maybe cause were the first species of fish I managed to catch with the fly many years ago and second cause it is so challenging to catch the real big fish.

As long as the weather was stable and the water clean, we decided to take advantage of the situation and get out fly fishing. My transylvanian buddy joined me and we went in the morning to the portion of river I fished more than a week ago. I watched the water surface for a few minutes without to see a rising fish, so I decided to use heavy nymphs fished Czech style. My friend opted for a combination of wet flies. The results were not long in coming and fish made their first appearance. The diversity of fish species captured made the game really interesting. We caught several cyprinids but most of them were chub and ide. My friend managed to fool some chub with a dry fly. Terrestrial patterns do their job in most situations. Time spent outside has been a true blessing, rods were often bent and to be honest we had a lot of fun also without salmonids. 

I fished two nymph patterns. A black one with silver BH and flashback and an orange BH nymph. I’ll present the flies in one of the next posts and hope I animated you to go out to catch some chub or ide with the fly rod! 

Day Of The Cyprinids

Finally after almost two weeks since the last fishing, I got one day off. After many hours of work in the emergency room and less than 3 hours of sleep, I went with my colleague Dr. O to the chosen water. Since the last rain, waters cleared up and the day promised to be torrid. The chosen area is rich in fish, salmonids and cyprinids. After we parked the car not far from the river, we prepared the rods and entered the water. My heart beat shot up and fingers began to shake while tying a wet fly when I sighted a first rising fish. I didn’t had to wait much for the first fish. It was the first time in my life when I managed to catch a bream on the fly. Actually the day was dedicated entirely to cyprinids. Big chub attacked both large foam grasshoppers on the surface and heavy nymphs on the bottom. Another highlight of the day was a sneep on the fly. Some roach followed on the catch list. We head a great day, diversity of fish, but also diversity of used flies. Enjoy the pictures.

Angel Silk Streamer

I was digging for some new tying material and I found a video about 'Angel Silk'. As the name says it's a mixture of polar fibre and angel hair. I kind of liked what I saw and ordered some of the new stuff. Well, I have to admit I'm pretty amazed about it. I tied some minnows on Gamakatsu F314 size 2 and can't wait to test them during the next days.