- There is little doubt about the importance of ants in the diet of trout, but I suspect that most fly fishers, myself included, have tended to focus more on floating than sunken ant imitations. I also suspect that we haven't given nearly enough attention to fishing ants as micro-patterns…

– Being an essay on discovering new and remote small stream fishing grounds, fishing small streams in testy conditions, and making the unexpected and surprising revelation that bamboo fly rods beat anything else on tiny waters. Text and images (unless otherwise stated) by Greg Carstens... With the recent spate of…

 - It's been years since I had a break from fly fishing as long as this last one. I was out of action for a shade under three months with a back problem that flares up from time to time. So to get out onto a river again last week…

Further thoughts on fly design by Ed Herbst.   Jiri Pechar and jig hooks. At one of the Vice Squad evenings, held every second month at the Cape Piscatorial Society in Cape Town’s CBD and organised by Tudor Caradoc-Davies, I watched the coach of the Czech national junior team tie…

 “Why do trout seem to love the sunken ant? I don't think they see many in nature but the sub-surface lacquered ant has been a winner for centuries. Maybe the double-humped, multiple-legged imitation is a genetically imprinted search image independent of whether it sinks or floats.” From 'The Essential Ant' -…

All that was holding me back from tying a Kite's Imperial dry fly to spec, something I've been meaning to do for ages, was getting hold of heron herl for the body. Then out of the blue, Eben Dowd, a friend from the Eastern Cape, kindly sent me a batch…