Small Clousers

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Ed Mitchell

Just whipped up some small Clousers. Now when I say small I don’t mean micro; these are size 1#. But by saltwater standards that is on the smaller side, unless you’re thinking bonefish ammunition.  Heck here in the Northeast, 1/0 and 2/0 Clousers do the yeoman’s work. Probably whip up some of those critters next.

So why did I do size 1#? Well right at the moment there aren’t gobs of giant bass around. At least in Long Island Sound and its surrounding waters. So this is primarily a schoolie fishery and smaller flies and small rods are the best medicine. And  if you hit yourself in the head a size 1#  doesn’t hurt near halve as bad as a bigger one. Ha!

For these flies I’m using a Mustad C70SD Big Game hook. If perchance a monster munches on one, these hooks will hold. (Not sure these hooks are still available. Hell I wonder from year to year whether Mustad will make it.) I opted for no tail. The body is Bill’s Bodi Braid with a thin coat of clear UV acrylic. Medium dumbbell eye. Yes I could have used a smaller dumbbell, but the power of the Clouser lies in two factors. The ability to get down and the ability to “jig”on the retrieve. The medium dumbbell will do both better. Sea green bucktail wing. Flash on top, in this case pearl Mirage.  Whole deal is about 2.5″ long. Very simple and yet very effective. And easy to deliver on a 7-weight fly rod.  Hope you’re well. Keep Calm and Carry on.

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Fishing from Afar by Stephen Johnson

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Ed Mitchell

This small but fascinating book was written in a prisoner of war camp by an RAF pilot shot down in December of 1942. There in Stalag Luft III, Johnson spent his long lonely hours penning a book of remembrance about fly-fishing for sea trout and salmon in Scotland’s Highlands, and the Isle of Skye. At one point he nearly threw the manuscript out before his release in 1945. Thankfully that didn’t happen. 

While there is adequate attention to tackle and flies, the beauty of this book lies elsewhere.  On these pages we get a glimpse into a time and place that can never fully return.

All anglers have a special spot where they feel most at home. It might be a quiet pool, a river bend, a lake deep in the woods, or a beach kissed by a turquoise sea. But beyond such waters, we also hold in our imagination places we have never been. Perhaps we read about them in a book, or saw a picture or a video that grabbed our attention. And we couldn’t help but feel drawn to these location. For they seem like angling edens, creating dreams we hold deep inside of us and can never forget. For me Fishing from Afar supplies that kind of magic.

The Author in tweet jacket, shorts, heavy woolen knee socks and brogues.

Johnson relays tales of fishing lochs and rivers both in Scotland and abroad. But the best chapter, to my liking, is entitled Sea Trout at Sea. Here Johnson tells of camping at Camasunary Bay on the Isle of Skye, where he and his friend fly-fish both day and night for large schools of sea trout holding just off the beach. These fish are staging to ascend the Coruisk River. So the anglers wade the shallow bars casting to the schools. While nearby a wooden rowboat awaits incase a large sea trout is hooked and must be chased out to sea, sometimes under the stars. I would have loved to been there, fishing alongside them. What a wonderful angling adventure, chasing beautiful, strong fish with a fly rod, and then sitting on the beach eating fresh sea trout, and rabbits and raspberries from the wild mountainsides.   

Packing into Camasunary Bay where the Coruisk River enters the sea

Fishing from Afar was first printed in 1947 by Peter Davies of London. Where it sold for the princely sum of 12 shillings 6 pence. It is 156 pages long 

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Synthetic Flies by John Betts

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Ed Mitchell

Nearly 40 years ago I bought a fly tying book to add to my reading stack. A self-published work, it was only available directly from the author. So I stuck a check in an envelope, and fired it off to the writer’s home in New Jersey. A week later the book arrived in a plain brown envelope with the words “please do not fold”.  Inside I found a slim, horizontal 8.5″ x 11 book” of 68 pages. The illustrations, numbering in the high hundreds, had been done by the author and the entire text appeared to be tediously executed by hand. Printed on brown paper, it looked like an original manuscript.  

That book was Synthetic Flies by John Betts. The late Betts was one of the most innovative and fascinating tiers to ever park behind a vise. Always with an eye on the future and never constrained by the past, he was an iconoclast. A man destined to forge his own path. An authentic visionary. 

Today, if you mention his name, most fly tiers they will simply scratch their head. In my view  John never fully received the recognition he deserved.  In part it is because fly-fishing and fly tying are so grounded in tradition. And John was not. While expert fly tiers dreamt of the perfect blue dun neck,  John was designing flies from polypropylene. While fly tiers marched to the legacy of the Catskill dry, John wondered what would be needed on Starship Enterprise. 

Betts desire to radically rethink fly-fishing eventually lead him to “coddling trout”, a term never heard today. Let me explain it. To coddle is to treat with extreme kindness. And John wanted to do just that with trout. So he sought to reduce the sport to only the act of tricking the trout into grabbing the fly. Hooking and landing the trout was to be avoided and from an environmental standpoint unkind. So he built flies without a barb or a point. (I believe at one time Partridge Hooks even made a “coddling” style hook in his honor) All Betts needed was the “take”.   

Besides his innovative approach to fly tying, Betts had an eclectic mind and went on to write several other books on a range of subjects. Reprints can be purchased from Reel Lines Press . Hope this finds you well. Keep Calm and Carry on.

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Keep Calm and Carry On!

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Ed Mitchell

Just got a T-shirt from the UK, bearing the famous “stiff-upper-lip” motto the Brits used during the bombing of Britain. Those words ring true right now!

Keep Calm and Carry On

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Seabirds by Peter Harrison

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Ed Mitchell

Seabirds by Peter Harrison: 

Gannets at Dawn

Many years ago I did a lecture in Ramsey Outdoors, down in Paramus. Afterwards while heading to the car, I spied this chunky paperback on the store shelf. A quick peruse was all it took for me to buy it. What a wonderful find. What a wonderful book.

Published in 1983 by Houghton Mifflin,and revised in in 1991, this is the definitive guide to the seabirds of the world. Harrison spent seven years traveling the seven seas to gather his information and then another four years to pen the book. This  truly monumental effort has resulted in a work 450 pages long, containing 1600 painted illustration of birds and over 324 maps of their distributions. I’m astounded by it every time I pick it up.

It is impossible to fishing the beaches of the Atlantic without seeing many different seabirds. And sooner or later you want to know them better. For they are not only your companion; they very often lead you to the fish. Seabirds by Peter Harrison richly deserves to be in every devoted saltwater angler’s library.

 

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