Graeme Christie | Tuesday, 15 September 2026
There are coffee rings on the tying bench. Two of them, overlapping, which tells you the mug went down twice in the same place and nobody wiped it. That is the state of things. Work has gone up a level this year and the fishing has gone down one, and the only thing I can do about that at eleven at night is tie for it.
So I have been tying smelt.
The photo is six of them, and they are laid out in the order I tied them, which was a mistake because now anyone can see the learning curve. The top one has too much marabou and a head like a golf ball. The bottom one is nearly right.
The season
From now through to about February the smelt or whitebait are in the estuaries. Big schools of them, 50 to 130 mm, transparent, olive over silver, easy to stun. The browns and less common but sometimes present rainbows, that live in that slow tidal water, get onto them and for those of us who enjoy the streamer fishing it's a fun way to match the hatch and target some feeding trout, because it is visual. Boils. Gulls. A wake going the wrong way against the wind. Which brings us back to the coffee rings.
I have been filling the gap with homework. Martin Langlands, who guides in the South Island and I think ties or did tie for a living, put up a half hour called Smelt Part 1 last week. It is a nice piece of work. No drone shots, no music you have to skip, just a bloke walking a lagoon edge explaining what he is looking at. Plus his process to designing a fly. I watched it and it reminded me of still water fishing of recent times, very good and real.
What caught me
A boil is not a missed chance. It is an address. Similar to the snakehead, or many fish for that matter, when you spot them you are prepared and then ready to cast stealthily.
Cast at the bank you are standing on. Fish are often just there, waiting as a patient predator.
Its a novel fly and compelling viewing. Go and watch it.
The desk
The other thing that happened this week is I could not find the pearl tubing for this fly.
I know I bought it. Some time in the last five years, for some other fly, and it is somewhere in this office because I do not throw fly tying stuff out. This happens every time I get keen on a new pattern. The smelt needs some magic ingredient which I have but I cannot find it, and half an hour goes on looking that should have gone on tying.
Ronan's tying desk does not have this problem. I have seen it and it stuck with me. Everything has a spot. I like a bit of craft organisation, always have, and mine is nowhere near that.
My desk is nestled into the corner of the office. It was meant to be temporary and it still looks temporary, but it is where I go when the admin gets too much and I need to quench the fishing bug for twenty minutes before going back to it. So this week I took some measurements.
Corflute. That cheap bendy plastic that the real estate signs are made of. I have helped a few school projects along with it over the years and knocked up custom boxes with it when something needed to go in the post that afternoon, and I have got quite fond of the stuff. A craft knife and a steel rule and a hot glue gun and you have a piece of light joinery in less time than it takes to find the tubing. It is not furniture. A few organisation boxes from our local hardware store for the hooks, and somewhere the marabou packets go so they don't bleach too badly in the sun and importantly a place somewhere instead of lying in a drift.
You will be pleased to hear that the tubing turned up in the process.
What is on the bench
Mine are not his fly. They are a close cousin. White thread 3/0, an aluminum former, superglue, lead wire down the sides, white marabou either flank, a bit of olive over the top, pearl tubing, a few strands of flash, eyes, superglue, resin. The first two are too long in the tail and the resin heads are lumpy because I was doing it while watching sports highlights in poor light. The last one is about 60 mm, which is the small end of the range. I look forward to testing and may even do that in the salt water as I suspect it won't be a bad fly for the harbour either.
The plan, such as it is, is to get to the estuary or adjacent river area a few times before Christmas with a full box, cast in traditional streamer style or even dead drift them through likely lies.