Fly Fishing Nation: Scare Tactics

Scare Tactics
by Stephan Dombaj
feat.: Paulo Hoffmann

A story about atomic ants and thymallus tubes

"That´s a nice grayling - haven´t seen them for months here..."
"The whole strech is full of them - give it try!"
"What you got tied on?"
"A Black-Chatreuse-Tube..."

9 of 10 guys turn around now, loudly complaining about the waste of time talking to that strange wierdo... The one who stays will experience the meaning of our scare tactics and aswell a new dimension of approaching streamfishes.

(Scare tactics)

"Never change a winning team" - so why should we question the impact of patterns that worked at our local stream, lake, creek etc. for years? Simply because we are not the only ones to realise the efficiency - at first we got the fish, that get´s used to certain things (such as goldbeads for example) or other fishermen who´ll fish the same flies over and over again.

(The Creek)

Especally brutes can be quite sensitive as far as fishing-pressure is concerned... let´s say, there´s a certain reason why the got so big. The example of our local stream shows very demonstrative the effect of unconventional methods and patterns. The headline "Scare tactics" tells actually everything what it is all about: Fishing methods and patterns that are more or less unlogical: too loud, too big, too bright...simply too much of everything. Here are some examples: Giant Tschernobil Ant... running, Small Tubes for Grayling, running dryflies, UV-Reflecting Hotcone-streamers... and so on...things that would "normally" spook everything in a mile-radius.

(Paulo handling the Switch-Style-Rod)

The following pics are a parol for fishing your fly at the edge of good taste, for the trouts and other fishes that slam on these pattern and of course for the brutes who never thought that this giant wiggling thing was attached to line...