Martyn White | Thursday, 17 March 2022
Things are starting to fall into place this spring. I took John to the river this week to fish for maruta (the sea-run dace species we get here- and smallmouth which was fun, even though I didn't actually fish that much myself.
We started with John fishing a jig and me on the crayfish flies. Unfortunately John, being a beginner seemed to be great at getting snagged up and losing gear so we moved towards some faster water to look for maruta. It didn't take long to find them in numbers. They often show themselves in the body of the pool, but are far more catchable in the head, tail and riffles. I know that people spin for them with lures, but I don't really know what they use so I went old fashioned and set John up with a fly and bubble float and showed him how to trot it down stream. It didn't take him long to get bites, but given he'd only been fishing for seabass with 20lb leader, he was struggling with the lighter line and stronger fish. After a few re-ties and drag adjustment he landed his first, then another and I thought I would have a few casts myself and quickly got into a few fish myself. After lunch I left John to have a mooch around for smallmouth, but only managed to lose a little one. By the time I got back John had landed a good half dozen maruta, lost at least that many flies and was looking pretty pleased with himself. He could probably even go out and replicate the situation on his own now. It's really great to watch him start getting to grips with things, begin to understand how the currents interact and why it matters. Although he still has a long way to go.
My YouTube channel is also starting to really grow. Since I worked out a good publishing schedule, I'm actually seeing views and subscriptions moving forward in a way that I'm happy with. Previously I used to get quite confused about some of the guys putting out "instructional" videos despite being barely able to tie their shoes let alone a good fly, but still getting much more growth and viewership. Seems it's playing the algorithm that counts.
But anyway I hit 10000 subscribers this week after I put out a video of Roy's Reversed Parachute. I decided to put a couple of videos of his patterns out seeing as he got away last year and fly chat is my main memory of him, so it felt quite nice to me that it coincided with the milestone for the channel. Also they're just great flies, incredibly clever in their design in that they ensure a sunk tippet and offer a great profile but they seem, to me at least, to be relatively unknown or unpopular. Maybe because the look like a difficult tie, but they're fairly simpleand well worth having in your box.
Here's the video if you're interested.