Salt
I’ve been lucky enough to get into a bit of saltwater fly fishing over the last ten years, both overseas and here at home in New Zealand.
Coming from a trout background, it’s opened up a whole new can of worms—not only with the fishing itself, but with fly tying as well.
Suddenly there are new hooks, new materials and completely different styles of flies to get your head around. It really is a whole new ball game.
For the last three years, bucktail alone has kept me pretty occupied. Such a simple material on the face of it, but there’s a lot going on once you start playing around with it. Every time you think you’ve got a handle on it, something else comes along and sends you backwards.
Recently, I had four days up north with Johnny Gummer trying to crack some Silver Fin Trevally in shallow water. We found the fish and could get them to eat every now and then, but getting one to tail on a fly was another story.
For the first few days, we were constantly changing things—different flies, different retrieves, different presentations. Watching how the fish reacted, making a few adjustments, then trying again. Sometimes you’d think you were getting somewhere, only for the next situation to give you a completely different answer.
It wasn’t until the last day that we finally managed to get a few of them to tail on a fly.
That felt like a pretty good breakthrough.
One problem solved—but, as always seems to happen with this sort of fishing, solving one problem only gives you a fresh set of questions. Different water, different behaviour and different situations all bring their own challenges.
Then it’s back to the vice, change a few things and have another go.
Good problems to have…
