Crushed by yet another snow storm and no desire to stand out in the spring snow cone mix being ejected from the sky overhead I was making my way down the aisle at Albertsons looking for dog food when I happened on the magazine rack with a new American Angler. Interestingly enough it was misplaced sitting next to the new Maxim which I also attributed to the weather.
Besides a brief daydream about trophy Brown trout fishing while reading David Jensen’s article I noticed an ad from Moffitt Angling, flys without hooks, chewy flies and so forth. After I got home, fed the dog and resigned myself to actually cleaning a layer of debris out of my workroom I sat down to find out about the flys without hooks.
Turns out that the Moffitt Angling system is basically a refinement on what a lot of egg fishermen in Alaska know as “pegging”. A technique that has some controversy. Basically a fly is tied onto a piece of tubing which is in turned tied onto the leader. A hook is tied onto the end of the leader and when the fish strikes the fly the fisherman sets the hook by pulling the fly out of the fish’s mouth and the hook into it. The actual hook set takes place on the outside of the mouth. I won’t get into the argument here of whether that’s snagging or not; it is an interesting approach and looks like it would be a bit better for the fish than some of the interior hook sets .
I would actually try this system if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity, one thing that I did not see which would preclude any reason to keep using the Moffitt Angling system is the ability to tie my own flies and I didn’t see anything mentioning that.
And no I didn’t check out the Maxim, I like girls in breathable waders, flannel and farmer tans.
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The Moffit system works great, but I suspect they have some “conterfeit” problems from China already. I cannot get any answer from Moffitt.