Martyn White | Thursday, 18 August 2022
We had our first summer typhoon last weekend which was great cause it brought some much needed rain. More interestingly though it signals the start of the summer mulberry fishing around here.
The mulberries have been ripening for a few weeks and a few will have been falling in the rivers, but it seems to take the high winds to blow a good load of the ripest ones on the water to get the carp to start actively looking for them. They'll eat mulberry pattern earlier in the year, but it's far less reliable and tends to be when a single fish is just hanging around under a tree eating the odd one that drops. Even when I do find one of these fish, they seem much harder to fool too.
The ideal situation around here, I think, is a bend with an eddy a bit downstream of a tree or three. The berries will fall in a bob along before getting caught in the eddy allowing the carp to settle in and suck them down at their leisure. With patience you can catch several fish because they glut of delicous berries is irresistable and the fish will come back and start feeding again if you can bring yourself to just sit and wait for them to regain their confidence. I sometimes think it'd be a good reason to start smoking a pipe. The only thing better would be a a tree hanging over the eddy so you could plop the fly down to get the carps' attention, and let them have time to find the fly. Sadly I've not found such a wonder yet.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, berries aren't the only vegatble matter worth imitating. They're my favourite because I can tie an imitation out of deer hair or egg yarn on a big strong hook that won't straighten on a 20lb+ river fish or sink the fly. Seeds of various types are the other offering at the salad bar. They're a bit of a pain at times because they need to float well, but also need to be tied on a stout hook without being too bulky. The redeeming feature is that they don't have as short a window as the mulberries do and turn up for months. If enough of them make it on to the water, the fish will start clooping them off the top. Sometimes they're very easy to catch, sometimes they'd have me pulling my hair out-if I had any! a puff of white CDC works or a white hackle each with a little bit of brown foam.