Tracy&James | Sunday, 6 March 2022
Tracy and I have finally got a saltwater trip organised for later in the year assuming we haven’t all been vaporised before then. Just the fact we’ve got something to look forward to in a few months, after what will be over three years since we last caught a bonefish, has prompted a little excitement and I couldn’t help myself but have a quick peep into my fly boxes.
I think I went a little over the top in my preparations for the last couple of trips as there’s certainly no shortage of flies. That said, I’m a little disappointed to see the rubber legs on some of my shrimpy patterns have perished, becoming stiff and brittle. The affected flies are in the boxes that have been out on the flats with us, but not in our re-stocking box (once you have a re-stocking box the size of the one we have you know you’ve got too many flies). As such, I suspect the deterioration is due to some residual salt water ‘atmosphere’ within the sealed boxes.
What made me smile is seeing some of the flies in the box for predators – not because they brought back fond memories of sharks and cudas, but because they’re so awful in terms of the tying they’re funny. When I first started tying big flies, size 6/0 is my usual iron, it’s fair to say I wasn’t very good at it. I watched a load of videos of people producing exquisite fish-shaped streamers yet what I produced following these instructions was more like a truncated cucumber. It was also expensive, I got through an enormous amount of material – probably an obvious indication that I was using way too much fibre. I eventually improved with practice and now I’m not embarrassed to pull one of my big streamers out of the box and use it. But therein lies the rub, predators such as sharks and cudas are fly destroyers, hence after a successful trip I don’t have many of them left. I do have all of the comedy ones though as I’m too embarrassed to even show them to a fish. So they’re all still there in the box reminding me of just how bad my fly tying was back then.
I probably should re-cycle these monstrosities, as they’re all tied on good hooks and it’s something I routinely do after a trip any way. The flies that have been destroyed by the teeth of a predator can usually still provide enough material for a Clouser or two, plus I get the hook back for another streamer. I’m sure my early flies can be recycled into more than a few Clousers, so I’m going to get on to this before anyone else sees them and wet’s themselves laughing.
I hope you have a great week, I’m going to formulate my end of the world plans. I think this this is going to involve taking (I won’t say stealing as when the anarchy sets in there are no laws) the best sailing boat in Conwy marina and learning to sail it on the way out of the estuary. I’ll then probably head for the Bahamas if I can. So one way or another I’m going fishing there this year.
James.
P.s. the picture of the day is of Tracy with a shark which took one of my less embarrassing flies. The other is a fly that’s ready for retirement and re-purposing.
