Pocket Water

Well, it’s that time again. The Rise film festival is making the rounds again. If previous shows are anything to go by, this one will be a cracker again.

The press release says …

“RISE – Fly Fishing Film Festival has become the premier event on fly fishers calendars across three countries and two continents. In April 2008 the film tour will start in Dunedin and play over 35 shows over two months circumnavigating New Zealand and Australia. The two hour show comprises of the best fly fishing entertainment available from around the world. This year’s winner of the Fly Shorts – Short Film Competition will open the festival at each screening. The competition is open to the general public and always produces some exceptional short films.

The films will be an interesting blend of exotic and local fly fishing focusing on adventure, story telling and humour – all brought to life on the big screen.”

The films featured in 2008 include The Search – Tahiti, Fishizzle and Green Tide. The list of venues is available on the gin-clear website here,

I’ll see you there

No, they arent politicians, though they do have a lot in common

Since the alpine streams are a bit of a hike from here, we sometimes find it necessary to spend some time on water closer to home. Trout are a little scarce on my home water, but carp are plentiful and they are quite sizable. Now before I get an inbox full of hate mail from Carp fanatics asking why I don’t release them, I have to say that European Carp are a declared noxious pest in Australia. Where as in some states anglers are legally obliged to destroy the fish, in NSW we are not legally obliged to do so. That being said, we are strongly encouraged to destroy them, and thus no carp are returned to the water alive.

This guy is 70cm long, 10lb in weight and delicately sipped a bread fly off the surface . There are some additional pics in the gallery.

A few years back I was given an old rod as a gift. It was in pretty good condition for it’s age, however one of the ferrules was loose and fishing with it was not an option, so I decided to completely refurbish it.

After months of messing about, the restoration is now complete. It was completely stripped back, the original cork was cleaned and the ferrule was repaired. The original guides were retained, including a gorgeous agate stripper and tip top. The wraps are Pearsall’s gossamer in Cardinal and Highland Green (including approximately 120 intermediate wraps) and the finish is 3 coats of spar (the rod was dipped after wrapping).

Looking forward to a few nice outings this season. Should be fun.

What more can I say  but …

… and looking forward to many more over summer

After a bit of a lay off, I have added a new section here. There are numerous fly fishermen around Australia who are increasingly interested in taking the plunge and building their own bamboo fly rods.

In response we have set up a Bamboo Rod Builders chat session which will commence at around 7:30pm AEST every Wednesday evening. To join the chat, look for the "live chat" login at the top right of this page.

Most of the discussion so far has been about suppliers and tools. In an attempt to make this a little easier, we have started a new bamboo rod building page where we hope to gather some information that local rod builders might be interested in. The page can be found in the pages section to the right. 

The rod pictured is a new rod by local bamboo rod maker Nick Taransky, dubbed the "Tea Stick". Also, if you every wondered what the rod is in the top banner on this page, well … it is 6' #2/3 also built by Nick. It was purchased as a blank and finished off by Fatso and is a damn fine little twig to fish those mountain streams with.