Hi Flyers ,
As a recent fly angler in Hong Kong, still trying to get my casting right, more often than never, the hookup is zero. attraction of the fish is very low. Some weeks ago, after a fruitless morning , and after using several different flies, still without results , I caught a real-life brown grasshopper and tied it to my hook . Lo and behold, I hooked up with my first ever fish on a 'fly', a decent 1.5 lb (0.7 kilo) perch .
Question : does it still count as fly fishing if one uses a real 'fly' instead of a manmade imitation> ?

the Irish use real mayflies for dapping in the lakes for trout,and that seems to be ok.but it is really just bait fishing

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Hi jim,

Glad to see you are back amongst us. As to you saying that using a living specimen of a fly, or a grass hopper, is the same as using bait, I fear you have opened a "can of worms" with this one, or are you just baiting the lads on the forum?
Do you remember the wee hooks you used to be able to get with the spring bit to hold the likes of a Bog Fly/ Heather fly, and dark olives etc? It made for excellnet sport, didn't they?

I remain firmly on the fence with this one, but cannot wait for the other responses.

doonicus

I am with Jim on this one.
To my (admitedly novice when it comes to fly fishing) mind, fly fishing is using an artificial fly to fool a fish into trying to bite/eat it.
Whether that be a beautifully imitative Mayfly, or a bright orange blob, (I am not even going to begin to go here ) I think it has to be fluff/fur/feather and thread.
My knowledge of dapping however is even smaller that my knowledge of fly fishing, so I stand to be educated.

It depends on who is doing the counting. Technically, it is not fly fishing because you are not presenting an artificial. It sounds like you've made a good start though. You've identified what the fish are on (grasshoppers), that's half the battle, the next stage would be to try an imitation of the grasshopper. The stage after that would be to fill your boxes with hundreds of variations of grasshoppers, but you don't want to go there yet.

Are there any trout in Hong kong?

Not fly fishing. Just fishing.
Fishing is good. But fly fishing is better.

For what its worth, I think the only real definition of fly fishing that stands up to scrutiny is that the fisherman "uses the weight of the line to present the bait/lure" . That would include dapping, where the wind carries the line, but exclude trotting where the current presents the bait. If the fly has a vane on the front or is a live grasshopper then that is still flyfishing. Just my tuppenceworth.

I take the opposite view, I do not see anything wrong in dapping with "live" fly.
To me it is the purest form of our art. Others mileage may vary.
Tight Lines

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"The Future's Bright The Future's Wet Fly"

Many fly fisher man are introduced to the sport through dapping and many a lady to I should add.
Its probably the precursor for modern fly fishing and shouldnt be classified as bait fishing. There is a knack to it which worming or other bait fishing does not have

Gander this can still be puzzleing - what type of fishing would you call it if you could cast a 6 inch rapala on a fly rod. Surely it is not fly fishing.

regards alex