21 February 2005
The Editor
NZ Fishing News
PO Box 12965
Penrose
Auckland
The Ferris Indicator
By
Herb Spannagl
Every now and then a new idea extends the
evolutionary path of flyfishing. In
between many come and go without making any lasting impact. The winners like the globug, the shooting
head, the luminous fly, single foot rod guides, whip-finish tools, large arbour
reels, PVC line coatings to name but a few have become part of the stock in
trade of every serious fly fisher.
Strike indicators, which are a standard
accessory of nymph fishing, have similarly undergone their own evolutionary
radiation. Although the idea was
originally borrowed from float fishing, innovative anglers have adapted this concept
to meet the diverse practical or legal needs of fly fishers wherever the sport
is practiced.
In New Zealand by far the most common
indicator material has been yarn. It
is also the only material that is permitted for this purpose in the Taupo
fishery. Over the years numerous
writers, including myself have covered this subject in such detail that it is
unnecessary to repeat what has become common knowledge.
Since I fish waters outside the Taupo
region during the summer season I have experimented with different materials
and attachments for my indicators. I
have used putty, plugs of high-density foam, dry fly, short pieces of Hi Vis
fly line and of course the good old yarn ranging from ordinary wool to
polypropylene and polyester fiber.
How to attach the yarn has been a story of
its own. On the Tongariro two kinds of
clips have become standard although I have used a small nylon loop
instead. This allows the long leader
to be pulled through single food guides for landing fish or at the end of the
day to wind the whole leader onto the reel.
However practical these methods are, none of them are useful for
attaching summer indicators, which are by necessity much smaller and less
conspicuous than their canary sized Tongariro counterparts.
In the South Island fly fishers have been
using small orthodontic quality rubber bands to wrap around the leader and a
piece of yarn to create a small yarn cone that can be moved up or down the
leader. It works fine but eventually
the nylon cuts through the rubber. The
other hassle is to find a dentist who will sell you the rubber bands. Most don’t have them as they are only used
for orthodontic work. Best to forget
all about it since below I shall introduce you to a much better idea to achieve
the same end.
On my recent trip to Murupara my old mate
Rudi Ferris showed me this simpler version of achieving the same sliding yarn
cone. He uses small (1-2mm) rings cut
from the empty ink tube of a “Biro” ballpoint pen. Quite frankly, when I first saw its
application I was stunned by its effectiveness and by the ingenuity of thinking
that gave birth to this neat little wonder.
This ingenuity not only applies to the choice of ring but to the crafty
way to put it on and to take it off.
I guess after you have read this article
you will be digging around your writing desk or rubbish bins for empty Biros or
other ballpoint pens. Most you will
have to crack open in order to get at the goods. After you have demolished a few you will discover
that they generally have tubes of two sizes.
Your standard Biro has a thinner tube which is just right for small
summer indicators. The larger tubes
are tailor made for Tongariro sized indicators if you want to experiment with
this technique this coming winter. (For
that I use a 1.5m stub of 10kg nylon nail knotted to the end of my fly line).
You will see that one empty Biro tube will
provide enough rings for your and all your mate's fishing for years, so there
is no need to destroy the pen supply of your whole office. Use a sharp knife to cut the rings like
slicing Salami. Experiment with 1,2
and 3mm rings as these will give you more or less friction on the leader.
The next important step is to select the
right thickness of yarn for any given ring opening.
Too much will not allow the ring to slip
over it while too little does not provide enough friction to hold the indicator
in place. You will soon see what I
mean when you try it.
As with my standard Tongariro indicators my
yarn of choice is polyester rovings from Spotlight stores. As this comes in quite thick strands you
will have to tease out a thin piece.
Remember this will be doubled to make up the final density (size) of
your indicator.
Most of us use a tapered leader to which we
attach a few level lengths of stepped down nylon. I usually start with a level one-meter
length of 4-5 kg. This is where I
attach the indicator, as this will give me a one-meter option to increase or
decrease the depth my nymphs can sink.
If you want to have the indicator closer to the nymph, just select a
further forward section of nylon.
Attaching the yarn is a piece of cake.
An equally useful application of the Biro
indicator is its ease of removal. Grab
the yarn and pull the ring down, open the nylon loop and take out the
yarn. This comes handy when you are
nymphing up a stream and suddenly spot that big brownie rising in a foam
line. You just take the indicator off
and change over to a nice dry for a classic presentation. When you have landed the beast you only
need five seconds to put your little beauty back on your leader.
Now that you have got the general idea try
rings from Popsicle sticks, Johnson cotton buds in fact anything that might
work. You never know your name could
go down in fly-fishing history like my mate’s, who will henceforth be known as
Biro Ferris.
Rainbow wrote: Quite apart from the longstanding argument by fly fishers that indicators come close to bobber/bait fishing the real reason is far more down to earth. When all sorts of indicators were allowed in Taupo waters some threaded on several large polystyrene balls that were so buoyant that fish actually hooked themselves against the drag set up by the balls as well as the line belly. I once saw one local meat hunter fishing with 4 balls on his line and the only explanation I got was :"I can see them better". Unfortunately some of the antics one occasionally sees on those waters really stretches one's imagination of fly fishing. But then again if you live there on a benefit and fish to feed your kids I for one am quite relaxed to look the other way. Rainbow |
The dilemma of a “Wild Fishery” is that it is subject to
interacting factors, which can vary widely from year to year. Lake Taupo is largely a rainbow fishery
that depends almost entirely on smelt as its major food source. Each of the two components has its own
dynamics that frequently work against each other to the detriment of both. One of the variables is the recruitment
of trout the numbers of which can change from one spawning season to the
next. The other is the abundance of
smelt in the lake, which is governed by its own set of limitations; the most
significant is the availability of nutrients to produce the microorganisms the
smelt feed on. As we have seen in
recent years smelt numbers can fluctuate widely. The dynamics of these two components of
the fishery operate to a large extent independently; trout recruitment takes
place in the feeder streams and smelt generally reproduce and grow in the
lake. Thus the relationship between
trout and smelt is infinitely variable and only occasionally are “all the ducks in
line” with optimal numbers of smelt supporting the concurrently living
population of trout. Last year Dr.Michel Duadal, who is DOC’s
fishery scientist commented to me that in his opinion the trout in Lake Taupo
are starving most of the time. This
simply means that their size and condition is a reflection of the limited food
supply and if that were to improve the trout would respond accordingly. However, the reality is that because of
this limitation the Lake Taupo rainbows only grow to a fraction of the size
this species is genetically capable of.
The vagary of such variability brings up the question of why
the Taupo trout fisheries is allowed to remains so dependent on a single and
often fickle food supply? Surely no
business model would allow any business to fluctuate so widely between success
and failure without any attempt of mitigation. As it currently stands the only available means
are to regulate the fish size and the daily bag but such regulation changes are
too inflexible, too broad based and too politically marooned to affectively respond to the annual changes
in the dynamics between trout and smelt.
I believe there is enough research carried out by DOC to reasonably
predict the annual recruitment of rainbow trout and the level of nutrients in
the lake that is available to support the food chain that feeds the smelt. What is needed is to allow the management
team the freedom to quickly respond to these figures with flexible management
measures to attempt to keep trout and smelt in some king of optimal
balance. As I have said on a number of
occasions it may also be a smart move to try to find some additional food
sources that do not compete with smelt to try to even out the highs and lows.
One often hears statements that because this is a “Wild
Fishery”, anglers have to accept that the quality of this fishery will
fluctuate. While the latter is true it
is by no means a license for doing nothing about it. In fact the very opposite should be the
case and the challenge for the management team is to use their limited tools
for the smartest intervention. With
the Taupo fishery reputedly contributing some $70mill to the local economy the
management of this prime asset is big business, which can no longer be
constrained by often poorly informed philosophical debates.
Rainbow
old timer wrote: Does Mr Ferris have a patient on this indicator system? |
flyfisher wrote: Barry's (NZ Strike Indicator) system is very polished and works well, have been using the new (knurled alloy head) tool lately and the whole system is excellent. Who cares who invented it? |
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