KFC - Attempt at Fly Tying

My recent venture into the rarely attempted pastime of fly tying had infected fellow KFC members and naturally roused certain interest on how to tie fly. While I am not yet so experienced, I think I know enough to try to teach them how to tie a fly. We gathered at LSR this morning to attempt to have each one of us tie and fly and then testing it to see if it would work and get us a fish.

My lousily tied Chennile Charlie

People passing by must be thinking we all siao!

Another use of a fly tying vise

Luckily for us, the vise fitted nicely on the LSR park bench chair and we improvised to convert it into a fly tying bench. With the required materials that I brought, I briefly went through the process of tying a chenille charile. However, I did quite a bad job and the resultant fly wasn't too professional looking. But it was good enough as a demonstration.

Weird variations of the Chenille Charlie

The others quickly had a go at it and each came up with their own version of the fly. I told them to be free to improvise if needed. There wasn't any need to follow any steps to the letter.

With my newly tied fly, I went down to the rocks to have a go at it. And Wham! First cast, I hit a PB. How's that for Proof of concept? :D. However, the PB shooked loose nearing the bank and I lost it. At first I thought the PBs were around in numbers. But we found out later that while the water was clear, the PBs were not readily around. It took me quite a number of cast to get 4 bites later on, while the others were mainly still zero.

Finally another notch on his fishing accomplishment

ZW as normal was the first to score a good hit. He caught a big one at the corner and from where I was standing, it was putting up a good fight. Soon, a big fellow was proudly seen displayed. His fly had passed the acid test.

Patrick was still getting nothing on his 2nd attempt here at LSR. However, he kept trying and trying. And heaven rewarded his persistence and he too hit on a good size one. I was about 100m from him and I could hear a yell that he had got a PB. But he made the mistake of not setting the hook properly and the PB was lost just as he was about to lift it up to the grass patch. We all saw it and yelped in despair as the PB swam away. Too bad that he did not manage to get a pic of it. But he too passed the fly tying test :)

Pat trying out my fly rod

I also brought along my fly rod and let the guys try out fly rod casting. I was not good myself but from what I read, I tried to teach them how to cast a fly line. Most agreed that it was pretty fun.

The children that gave us power.

Man who caught the Earth Eater

ZW and I continued our PB fishing into the afternoon at Kranji after lunch but was badly put to shame by baiters that scored 3 good size PB in just 15 minutes. We had been like cast our flies for hours with no bite whatsoever. Water was still that greenish murky look that was common at Kranji. On the way back, a baiter (on worms) caught a beautiful earth eater. When can I get that on fly? :(

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