Today is Fly Fishing day

Its been long time since I have been to streams for nymphing and dry flying. Above is one of my favourite patttern which is CDC Deer Hair Caddis. Tied it this morning along with several others dry flies and nymph.

The water today is crystal clear, slightly higher level than before. However the Malaysian Trout are nowhere to be found. I only manage to land a Sebarau using Copper John.

Small Size but twice the fun

My friend also manage to land another small Sebarau on spoon.

Reel Servicing / Cleaning / Maintenance

Personal Service Centre

As a reminder, using bait-caster reel requires higher maintenance since the casting mechanism mostly depends on the mechanical performance of the reel itself. Having regular service will helps to prevent poor casting performance e.g. loss of distance and the smoothness of casting.
The basic for servicing the reel is to clean the reel thoroughly and re-lubricating the parts with the right type of lubricant.

One of the Popular Lubricant

 Basic Items Needed:
1. Tools for dismantling the reel:
Use10mm hex full socket instead of normal spanner. It holds the nut perfectly. 

Tweezers are also important as it helps to hold fine component. 

Art Brushes helps to spread the grease evenly throughout the reel.

Small Circlip Pliers helps in removing circlips.

2. Degreaser.

Consult bearing supplier for proper degreaser. Normally bearing manufacture recommends their own degreaser. As example SKF bearings uses Krown Degreaser. 

However, some bearing uses plastics or teflon retainers that could be damaged by heavy duty degreaser.

Other than that, you could use any light oil, kerosene or Isopropyl based alcohol degreaser.

3. Air gun in a can.
Air dusters helps a lot in removing dirt and grime in tight spaces. It also helps to dry up bearings after degreasing it.

4. Detergent 

WD40 helps a lot as it could be use as a cleaner (not for lubricant) for plastics parts. It also helps to create a layer that resist water during cleaning the reel.

5 Lubricant (bearing oil, grease)

Bearing oil can be important as it helps improving the bearing performance.

However the lesser viscosity of the bearing oil will effects on prolonged usage.

That's why getting the right bearing oil for each trip can save from hassle of relubricating the bearings.

Grease with higher viscosity helps in protecting gears, while lower viscosity is suitable for other moving parts.

Spreading the grease on reel body case and screws will help to prevents water from entering.

However always clean after every trip as it saltwater tends to crystallize with the grease when its dry.

6 Case and Compartment

Make sure to do servicing on a very clean place. Remember a small grain of sand might cause scarring on gears thus resulting performance issues. Proper compartment make assembly easier.

Lurebox can be use to sort out parts

Spending my weekend in Empangan Air Kuning

Well, today's mission is to hunt the elusive Pacu. Its been a long time since I have land any monster pacu. But sadly there are too many fishermen already taken the spot. Therefore, the fishing wasn't that great. But its still quite fun..

Its hits, and run, then jump, and finally broke the hook.

After that, my friend caught a decent toman.

Beautiful fish

And finally a Pacu landed..

Nymphing pacu

Here is another my homemade video. Its quite old. But I would like to share it because most people around the world fish for pacu by using nuts and other baits. This is another best method which is to use Nymph. Pacu are crazy for large nymphs such as stonefly, or even you can use streamer pattern such as wooly bugger. The technique is to locate first  the possible spots for pacu (such as sunken timber or under a tree). Cast using slow sinking or intermediate line. Let it sink first. Normally pacu will take the nymph during this time. If not, then you retrieve slowly using figure 8 technique.

Destroyer Evoluzion Dti F3

Team Daiwa Zillion PE Special

Rapala Shad Rap 7

New Ceramic Bearings from UK

Tuning reels has become more popular lately. Improving performance, reducing weight, or improve cosmetics is the main reason that drive anglers to tune their equipment. As for me, recently I come across these bearings on Ebay the other day and decide to order it because it is cheap.

"CERAMIC" Written

I have no problem with the standard ARB bearings. But I ordered these just out of curiosity. Regarding on the sizes, most of Shimano Baitcaster reels use the same size which is 3 x 10 x 4. Bearings comes with ABEC ratings. The one that I ordered are ABEC 9 rated (so as I was told from the Ebayer). I was also told that it doesn't require any lubricant (since it does not overheat as bad as standard bearing). Bearings also comes with different material for each component. As for these, the balls are made from ceramic, while the retainer is made by Nylon (should be careful when degreasing it), and the case&cover is made by stainless steel.

Black Coloured Ceramic

Regarding on performance, I can feel longer free rotation at the end of the cast(when the centrifugal brakes disengaged). However, this results in backlash with improper thumbing technique. Adjusting cast controller can be helpful. Pitching and Flipping is improved.

Some of my old pictures from oneaxel.multiply.com

Shad rap 9

Jackson Risk Bait

Fat Rap 5 GFR

Megabass Flap Slap

Wander 60 RGB

Shadrap 7

Altima 10g

Megabass X-80

S-Shad Rap 7 HT

X-rap 8

Taildancer

Dives To Flat

Dives To Flat

Jackall Mudsucker

Smith Panish

LC Pointer 90

LC Pointer 90

Wander 60

Maria Bluescode

Jackson Risk Bait

X-rap 8 clown

X-rap 8 Clown