Martyn White | Thursday, 9 May 2024
We've had some incredible wind recently, so even if i'd thought to try another foray to the river on the public holidays this week it would have been impossible. So naturally, I climbed a couple of mountains instead. It's amazing how much more tolerant of the wind and crowds I can be when there's no fishing involved.
Other than that I managed to set aside a bit of time to work on restocking/rearranging the carp fly box. I feel like I've been doing a lot of this recently for different fishing, and it's become a bit of a chore. Unfortunately it needs doing, after my last carping trip I had to retire my last mottlebou backstabber after a long service and loads of fish. I've put another half dozen in, but I need to do another half dozen in two more eye sizes. The same goes for quite a few other patterns in my box, I'm down to the last one on its last legs and plenty are missing in my preferred weights or sizes.. the last couple of weeks i've been able to do mini top ups to give me some options but I'm sick of scrabbling around the flybox and having to pick out something that might not be ideal for say, water clarity, but is the only option that's heavy enough for the current.
Annoyingly I have plenty of flies that need to be taken out and thrown away. Patterns that I've inexplicably been carrying for years but not using. There's a whole row of Egan's headstands for example, I last tied them for myself maybe a decade, but probably more like 15 years ago. Back then it was one of the patterns that came out as carp on the fly was becoming popular and I added them so I'd have another option in the box. Unfortunately they're a pretty poor carp fly. OK they catch fish, but not that well in my experience. The headstand profile makes a poor fly for when fish are chasing and want something stripped, but doesn't really offer any advantage over a non "headstand" when dragged and dropped or sitting on bottom. plus they have too many unnecessary steps in the tying... So why are they there? I'm a bit ashamed to admit it's probably because I don't like empty box space and haven't got round to replacing them with something better. I suppose their persistent popularity with the folk who dabble in carp is similarly down to incumbency. It's not just that pattern either, there's a real clear out overdue as soon as my frustration on the river outweighs my procrastination. That's just not quite happened yet. Next week I'm hoping to get out on the tube with Chuck if the wind dies down, so the box will have to wait a bit longer.