Martyn White | Thursday, 20 July 2023
Well, there's no weird temporal shift going on here and I'm still Thursday this week. There's not been much happening. The rain seems to be over and it's got hot, really hot- 38-41 degrees so far this week with humidity in the 80s!
I was going to climb a mountain on Monday as it was a public holiday (I never fish on public holidays) but on the way to the station I was soaked with sweat and decided to go back home, it was about 4.15am, too hot to carry a heavy pack and only going to get worse.Luckily I had the morning free on Tuesday so went a quick scurry up the river here and as expected the heat had the carp hunting and willing to eat anything if it was presented close enough, a few hours of silly fishing and I went back home to tie a few flies and get ready for work. And then something happened that highlighted one of the worst things about being a fly angler in Japan... The tension screw on my Renzetti sheared meaning the jaws won't close or hold anything. In and of itself, this isn't a big deal and can happen, I've no complaints as I've tied many thousands of flies on that vice, and because of the species I regularly target, and the people I tie flies for the tension adjustment gets a lot of work because I'm often switching hooks in a size range from around 24 to 8/0. The problem is getting the part; in North America, the UK or Europe, I'd have the new screw ordered and it'd probably be here by now or arriving today. Unfortunately there are only a couple of Renzetti stockists in Japan, and none of them keep spares on hand, so it's an international order for me as I'm not paying the Japanese mark up that the guys here will apply AND waiting for international shipping. Luckily I needed a few things that you can't really find in the fly shops here anyway so I could live with the shipping fees.
It means there will be no tying for at least a week, which won't affect me too much as I've already got stocked for Okinawa, and the carp and bass boxes are full. Luckily I managed to film a couple of tying videos before the screw went too so I should be able to minimise disruption on that front too. We'll see.