Martyn White | Thursday, 17 November 2022
There was no fishing for me this week. I was hoping for some carp, but after some heavy rain the rivers were high and mucky.
So I decided to tidy the fishing room and then get to work on my mullet box. I made some form of progress on the tidying front, but I kept getting distracted by the tying books and pulling stuff out to see what I "need" to buy. Eventually, I got my act together and got things looking somewhat civilised, I'll maybe finish it tomorrow while working from home. Maybe.
After all that I sat down to get to work on my mullet box. The first thing was stocking up on the confidence patterns that I've already caught a few fish on. A dozen of each of them. The reason being that they are so small they have to be tied on freshwater hooks so they don't last too long when being used in the salt. After that adding a few other patterns that have been eaten or only accounted for a single fish, also a dozen each, as I'm sure I'll work out how and when to get the most out of them next year. The final step is going to be patterns that I've not used or been successful with. Mostly they'll be from the internet, friends' reports, or Colin Macleod's book "Mullet on the Fly".
While planning and tying I was struck by how much I flavour wee shrimp patterns, the only non shrimp I'm particularly confident in is Ray's mullet fly/mullet bach. I suppose if they're working, it's fine but I can't help wondering if I'm missing a trick. Perhaps it's just the areas I'm fishing, but perhaps not. There are other things for mullet to eat, seaweed maggots, sand fleas, worms, slaters and algae among others. I know that these food sources are there, I have known but for some reason I've neglected them. Of course I'm still early in learning these fish, but it's easy to see how the confidence in a few patterns could have become a crutch that could cost me fish.