Posts Tagged Fly Tying

Golden Hours

May 31, 2021 at 10:28 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , ,

James Wu with an impressive New York City Cyprinus carpio.
(NYC 05 2021)

There is a Japanese word — Yugata — that describes the golden hour when the slanted sun reflects off the earth in a particulary vivid, golden way.

Much of the same intensity and clarity can be experienced when a carp — the golden bone of freshwater fishes — rises to a fly and comes to the net.

May and June are the peak month’s for carp fishing in the American Northeast. Time, then, to tie some specific fly patterns to match nymphs and another carp food favorite: tree flower petals.

The Author’s Tree Flower Carp Fly.
(NYC 05 2021)

— rPs 05 31 2021

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Tie Up Loose Ends

March 27, 2019 at 5:58 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News, Tenkara Reading ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Tie Up Loose Ends . . .

Partridge & Orange, Deer & Orange
(NYC 03 2019)

Trout season in New York state opens April 1st. Time to tie up loose ends and whip finish those kebari fly patterns . . .

 

By Ebisu

Patterns go
In a stream’s flow.

Fishers,
Men and women,

Tie together
As feathers and fur do

When wrapped
By thread and floss;

Their names, embossed,
Become floating sculptures.

 

Optional Author’s Note: Ebisu is the Japanese god of fisherman, good luck, and workingmen, as well as the guardian of small children’s health. He is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, and the only one of the seven to originate in Japan. This poem, about the legacy of fly tiers and their namesake creations, was composed while sitting by an image of Ebisu, thus the title.

 

— rPs 03 26 2019

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The White Fly

August 29, 2018 at 7:13 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

The White Fly . . .

The White Fly
(imitates the mayfly, genus Ephoron)

The poet, the poetic, part of me has always enjoyed finding a word with my name within it, and being born in August, all things keen to the eighth month of the calendar year attract me.

The insect known as the White Fly to fly fishers, the mayfly of the genus Ephoron, a prime hatch of August, is then right there on my short summer favorites list.

White Fly kebari for tenkara can be tied in a most simple manner. My recipe:

 

Hook: size 10-16, dry fly

Body: 6/0 thread, white

Hackle: Deer belly hair, white

 

The body is sparse, light, and deer belly hair adds bouyancy. Fish the fly on an August evening and catch brown trout, or smallmouth bass, or panfish, even channel catfish will rise to this fly on select clear and cobbled rivers in the American northeast.

The remainder of the time I stay true to the crayfish, and other creatures of the subaqueous realm, with some variant of my Green Guarantee.

The Green Guarantee
(NYC 08 2018)

 

— rPs 08 29 2018

 

Postscript: poetic disclosure; my first stand-alone collection – museum of buildings: poems – was first published twenty (20!) years ago this month . . .

museum of buildings: poems
(first edition, August 1998)

 

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Shore and Stream

July 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Shore and Stream . . .

 

Shore
(07 2018)

Photos are worth.

 

There is a Facebook user’s group named “Tenkara Where?” where one can see angling destinations speak for themselves in the thousand words of a single photograph.

 

So, then, so shall July be documented at TTM, not by pics of patterns or fish in grip, rather portraits of place, places angled in July 2018.

 

Stream
(07 2018)

— rPs 07 31 2018

 

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Lefty’s Stamp

March 20, 2018 at 1:37 am · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Lefty’s Stamp . . .

 

Lefty’s Deceiver
(NYC 03 2018)

Bernard “Lefty” Kreh left us at the age of 93 on Pi Day, March 14th, a date almost fitting given the man’s full circle of a life.

One of his many achievements occured just a month after the passing of his great colleague, Lee Wullf, in the spring of 1991. No less an institution than the United States Postal Service honored Krey with a 1st Class postage stamp picturing his immortal Lefty’s Deceiver.

Lefty’ Deceiver and a 1925 Standing Liberty
(what a quarter looked like the year Mr. Kreh was born)

That stamp, part of my extended collection, keeps a central special place in my pantheon. Chuck Ripper’s photogravures, which also depicted the Apte Tarpon, Jock Scott, Muddler Minnow, and Royal Wulff, were an early artistic inspiration like Dr. Burke’s plates found in Ray Bergman’s quintessential treatise, Trout, an inspiration for my own artwork.

I have two books in print full of my own fly pattern art, yet had never attempted Lefty’s Deceiver, until now:

“Lefty’s Deceiver (of fish!)”
(pencils and rubber rub on paper, 2018)

I never fished with the man, but in person in private we talked, and I am happy to report he liked my comparison of tekara fishing the fly for crappie to that of saltwater fly fishing for the awesome Megalops, the tarpon. Both fish share a similar shaped mouth and gulp a fly in like manner; we agreed!

Memories, good memories, and a lifetime of lessons documented in interviews, videos, and a number of wonderful, readable books.

Lefty Kreh – you inform us, involve us, and your words shall remain stamped in our hearts and minds and our fishing.

Lefty Krey With Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass
(from Tips and Tricks of Spinning by Lefty Kreh, c. 1969)

Lefty Kreh, 1925-2018

 

— rPs 03 19 2018

 

 

 

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Fly, Eagles Fly

February 5, 2018 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Tenkara News ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Fly, Eagles Fly . . .

(Philadelphia on the) Fly, Eagles Fly
(02 2018)

Yes, the Philadelphia Eagles have won Superbowl LII.

The tenkara angler, artist, and author of Philadelphia on the Fly could not resist the photo op.

🦅

— rPs 02 05 2018

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Xmas Prince

December 1, 2017 at 5:26 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Xmas Prince . . .

 

Four for a Dollar
(NYC 12 01 2017)

The kebari for the season is the Xmas Prince; my festive variation on the distinctive nymph with wing of white; my standard weighted with wire on a size 10 wet nymph hook.

Waters local cold, dark with tannins from nearby copses of oaks. Wind, sometimes sustained, can spackle the surface. The decision to dip deeper, forced, yet logical and a fun way to angle. The nymph finessed, hovered, just above the submerged bed of leaves, fished at a crawl with slow lifts in the manner of Leisingring.

 

Fishing the Xmas Prince
(NYC 12 01 2017)

The quarry for the season wears bars of dark green on gold. The yellow perch, Perca flavescens, colored like the last leaves branched on the nearby Norway maple, Green Bay Packers’ colors, autumn dressings under the blue and white New York Giants’ sky.

 

Manhattan Yellow Perch
(NYC 12 01 2017)

 

Fly and fish matched to the season.

Happiness.

“Ho. Ho. Ho.”

— rPs 12 01 2017

 

 

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New York’s West Coast

November 15, 2017 at 5:25 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

New York’s West Coast . . .

Lake Erie
(11 2017)

My one fly kebari for the local freshwater, The Green Guarantee, required a second thought for a November trip to the tributaries along New York’s far west coast.

The fish from Lake Erie, migratorial steelhead, salmonid with shoulders and a girth exceeding a foot of inches, settled me on size 8 streamer and salmon hooks. The results, tied, packed, fished, finished positive.

Lake Erie Chrome
(11 2017)
(photo credit: Stephen Kasperovich)

 

Green Guarantee, meet . . .

The Ho Holiday

The Ho Holiday
(NYC 11 15 2017)

The Ho Holiday

Fly tied, alliteration activated, for a kebari salmon steelhead fly named to honor a variety of levels of meaning. Honor for the mighty steelhead river Ho on the Olympic Peninsula. The holiday red added for the steelhead’s predilection for hot color when streambound. Tinsel added for the traditional barber pole spiral dressing, the necktie of the fly.

Steelhead take such a fly in places autumnal beautiful in a way always graceful followed by a force up, down, side to side, in and out of water, sprints that push water, jumps that land on the water with a bass plunge that resonates sheer weight. Magnificent animals, each and every steelhead represents itself.

Quick Grip Before Release
(11 2017)

 

Respect.

— rPs 11 15 2017

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TAE

May 19, 2017 at 5:26 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Reading, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

TAE . . .

Thank You. Arigato.
(NYC 05 2017)

 

Tenkara Advertising Entertainment

 

-rPs 05 19 2017

 

Postscript: Featuring The Green Guarantee

by ron P. swegman.

c.2017 by ron P. swegman. all rights reserved.

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Cold Water, Wet Wind

March 31, 2017 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Techniques, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Cold Water, Wet Wind . . .

 

The Sticks Cast
(NYC 03 2017)

Days of rain had drawn a distinct mudline, a seam bordered by blued rippled crystal, rendered by cold water current and a consistent wet wind. Perfect, for a stretch, from which fish might pounce on prey and retreat, covered.

A largemouth of fifteen inches darted from this cover and raced over the sprouts of pond bottom plants and in full sun rolled over my Green Guarantee. Rusty ron P. raised Ebisu, plucked the fly from the fish’s mouth a nanosecond before jaws could clamp down on the inhaled line.

Between the lasting breezes, a cold even thermal wear could not weather long. Run, jog, run made mandatory to stay active, not frozen. Beyond the sticks of last year’s shoreline stalks, fishes, and by leaning, balanced, a toehold on dry rock, Ebisu held out to work kebari along the edges, fishes.

Fishes. Yes. No, not the black bass, nor the expected black crappie. The bluegill, male and female both, took to strike the feather and fur kebari worked on the steady swim just above bottom.

Cold water.

Wet wind.

Fist Fish, 2017.

First Fish, 2017.
(NYC 03 2017)

Second Fish, 2017.

Second Fish, 2017.
(NYC 03 2017)

Yes. Gone fishing. Catching and Releasing. Happy.

–  rPs 03 31 2017

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