So we made it out as planned. Forecast of sunny and 60F, breezy in the morning and breezier (15-20 mph) in the afternoon, which was how it turned out. We got on the road at around 7.15, grabbed “breakfast” from the Grim Arches on the way, and got to the stream around 8.45. I was expecting company, as it was the first warm Saturday of the year, and I wasn’t disappointed. A couple in their 20s arrived as we were gearing up and started getting out spin rods. I suggested we head in different directions and that they take their pick of upstream or down. First they deferred to us since we were here first, I said we really, honestly had no preference, so they picked upstream. Then when we got down onto the stream, they followed us downstream. James looked at me with an emerging 8 year old HUH? face. Sssh, s’okay, I said. Maybe they don’t know which way is which, because they’ve never been before. Or something.
I’ve been away from the water for two months, mostly because it’s been, y’know, winter, and thinking about winter fishing turns out to be an entirely different thing than going out and actually doing winter fishing when the weather is in the 10s and 20s F. That and my year of academic dislocation, preparing new classes and teaching as if I was a freshly hired assistant professor (for the record: nope, I’m an aging full professor), reached a crescendo and is now tantalizingly near an end.
And it’s forecast to be 58F and sunny on Saturday, so if nothing intervenes, James and I will be out for our first trip of 2016.
I haven’t been finishing-inactive, if buying a bunch of books counts. And I got in a massive amount of hooks and tying materials. I didn’t match it with a massive amount of tying due to the time constraints, but I’m getting rolling. You don’t need a rainbow assortment of flies, as the first year of tenkara ultimately sort of indicated that if you know how to fish, just about anything you plunk in will catch fish. But I like reading about fly patterns and I like learning to tie them and I like catching fish with newly tied patterns, so shoot me.
Just in case we run out of Brassies…
I bought several C&F 2508F fly boxes. I think these are the ones illustrated in George Daniel’s Dynamic Nymphing where he shows you the contents of his competition fly boxes. If not, they’re pretty close to the same model. I started with Brassies (James calls the chartreuse ones “Limeys”). I’m basically tying them in every colour I’ve seen a Copper John tied, in sizes 14, 16, 18. That’s not as small as you can go, and only edging into midge nymph size, but Daiichi 1560s only go down to 18. These are tied as Morgan Lyle instructs in Simple Flies – wire on bare hook shank via super glue, and with peacock herl for the thorax. He advises using two herls, but I find I get by okay with just one. I’ve started on copper, red, chartreuse, black, and green above, but plan to add gold, silver, blue, fluorescent pink, and wine.
Hare and Coppers, the killer fly from the tail end of 2015, plus first attempts at Frenchies.
In preparation for what we’ll actually fish on Saturday, I tied a dozen Hare and Coppers in each of size 14 and 16. I made one size 18. I also tried my first attempts at Frenchies, two in size 14. I’m obsessively/compulsively waiting on the arrival of a Whiting coq de leon tailing pack in medium pardo because I don’t like the look of the Hareline ones I got from J. Stockard and don’t want to use grizzly hackle (one of the above is grizzly hen fibres, the other pheasant tail fibres for the tail). I doubt it makes any difference, but start as you mean to go and all.
First attempts at egg pattern.
I tried to tie an egg pattern in size 14 using McFlyFoam in McCheese with a Golden spot. I think they came out okay, though there’s shaky range of finished sizes on the few I produced. The trickiest thing is the slippery GSP 50 denier thread you use. After some fun with it turning on the shank no matter how tightly I wrapped it (now I know its breaking strength, at least…) I gave up and super glued the sucker. That settled its hash. At least the foam burst out into more or less perfect little spheres when I cut it. So I’m at least on the right path.
The, uh, Pigsticker. Still drying.
Egg patterns are pretty shameless, but I enjoy catching fish, not the aesthetics of being on the water casting only to upstream rises and all that. I’ve read somewhere that freshly stocked trout sometimes won’t look at anything else. Twice in 2015 I experienced standing downstream from 30-odd fresh arrivals, holding at different depths in a pool, wondering where their dog food pellets were, and ignoring everything I put among them. Along the same lines I’m going to make A Very Red Fly Box and the first entrant in that is the unlovely in most respects Pigsticker, tied above in size 12 on a Gamakatsu C12U. First attempt seems at least okayish, except the head is a bit outsized. It’s coated with Sally Hansen Hard As Nails.
I think the standby Hare and Coppers and possibly Woolly Buggers will carry the day on Saturday, but I’m going to try to bring as many new patterns as I can get around to. I expect water levels will be high, as we’re only just a week past the major snow melt and water levels have been high all winter.
I have several rods that haven’t seen water yet, including a 360 7:3 Nissin Zerosum, a 360 6:4 Tenkara Times Watershed, and a TUSA Sato. I’ll take my go-to Rhodo and my emerging go-to Suntech GM Suikei Keiryu Special 39, and perhaps one of the unfished rods. James has a new Shimano Damo Z 30 cm net to try out (apparently by the time you’re a man of 8 and a half, it’s no longer cool to have Daddy running over to net your trout; many comments to this effect were passed toward the end of 2015, so he got his own net for Christmas).
