06-01-16

Monday

The blue streaked White Pike Sara

Today it was my third fishing trip this year. I'm lucky enough not to have to travel thousands of kilometers to the other end of the country or, still worse, another country to get my fishing done. In that sense I seldom make fishing trips. You know, go to Lapland to fish for small trout, (or is it brown trout?) Or like you in the U.S. of As, go to Canada or Alaska and fish intensively for a week or two and that's it for this year. No, I drive down to the coast and fish for the day. But that I can do about one time a week. 
From where I live here in the woods I have 20 kilometers down to the coast and sometimes I go to the east and sometimes I turn to the west for another ten kilometers or so, depending on the weather or to get some variation. One main feature about fly fishing is variation. Variation of the fly. Hundreds and hundreds of different kinds exist. Maybe thousands of patterns. Maybe even millions if you include all the different sizes and variations of the same fly.!
But I have only one.
And that is the White Pike Sara. Even if it comes in two sizes and may look a bit different from time to time. 

Like here to the left for instance. Maybe you want to call it the Blue Pike Sara but that's a trick of the light. Maybe I can stretch it that far to call it the Blue streaked White Pike Sara.  Oho! Warning, warning, warning! Now he's gonna brag about how outstanding and absolutely best his fly is!  Wrong! On the contrary I think the fly is a rather unimportant factor in fly fishing.  More important I think the place you let your fly land on the water is and the person who wields the fly rod. That is, regarding colors and materials of the fly. I won't point a finger at your favorite fly and wrinkle my nose.   Isaac Asimov has three well-known laws for robots, right? Concerning baits of all kinds, specially including flies, there also exist three laws, hard rules, conditions or what you want to call them.

These are universal laws and includes everything you tie on a fishing line. 
The First states that the bait must behave as it should both during the cast and later in the water. You can't have a spinner that won't spin, a wobbler that refuses to wobble and you can't have a long winged streamer that always twists itself round the hook.

The Second tells that the bait will attract the fish enough to want to eat it, bite or strike.

The Third say unto you that the fish will get stuck on the hook. (Is that the right expression? Or should it be "fasten on the hook", like in "fasten your safety belts"?)

These rules are very simple and I'm sure you would agree to them. Of course you can meet up with these conditions in many ways but I consider my way of tying a fly is what makes it so good. Early in my pike fly fishing career I discovered that it seemed that you could stretch out the ratio between the hook point and the tip of the tail almost unlimited. The pike always aimed for the head of its prey. Later I found out that this behavior included what I refer to as "blank fisk" that is, bright or shiny fish, like sea trout or rainbow trout. Likewise you could go down in hook size until it looked ridiculously small compared to the rest of the fly without loosing more fish. So I won't tell you my kind of fly is the best but I stick to my opinion that it is good.
The four flies above are small and what I call One Size, meaning that it is a compromise between a pike fly and a sea trout fly. The size of the fly is more important than the colors, I think, and now in winter I think maybe the pike more easily will rise to a little fly than a big.
Now what is it you see in this picture?

More birds I can tell you. Little black swimming birds of unknown descent. I have a pretty good opinion what they are called in Swedish but for now I don't have en English book of birds or even good dictionary so I leave it as it is. Guess for yourselves.  
In winter they gather in the hundreds on the lee shores of points and islands. Like the pikes. Like me. Well, not hundreds of pikes, of course, often I don't find anyone at all. When I appear on the horizon they panic and flee. But they don't fly away more than, say 50 meters and then they gradually swim back when I fish and wade away from their favorite place to be. When I'm out fishing there's always me, the birds and occasionally some fish around. 
Mostly I think it nice to watch all kinds of our fine feathered little winged friends out here on the coast. Mostly, with one big exception though; there is one bird I don't like.  A big, white, stuck up, hissing, long necked, evil and...
-OK, cut that out! This is forbidden repeating and you ought to know the rules about that!
-Oh, the Internet Ombudsman... Sorry about that! Now I remember that I mentioned it earlier... Won't happen again, he, he... I promise...
OK, go on with the fishing then!

Now, where was I ...?  Oh, a song rings in my ears: "The wintertime is coming, the rod guides are filled with frost I went to tell everybody but I could not get across." If I remember correctly it was Bob Dylan who sang this very appropriate verse a rather long time ago. I didn't know though that he was a wintertime fly fisher but with lyrics like that he must have been!  Anyway, that's a very annoying problem and I had to put up with it for the most part of the day.  Over the years I've made some observations and sometimes even tried to have a theory why this or that seems to happen. One I noticed again today. That is that the pikes assemble in certain spots. Several pikes stay in the same neighborhood. I don't mean they form a school or even a flock. I think it's more correct to say that they are alone together. Certain conditions that they like seem to form there.  It became very obvious today.  First I fished down a shallow coast line for about two hours without a bite, follower or other sign of fish

Then suddenly I saw a swirling whirl just behind the fly. A fish undoubtedly. Then a little while later a pike come just a little to late to grip the fly. By the way, there is one very weak point when fly fishing. A point when it's almost impossible to hook the fish. That appears just when you're getting ready for the next cast. You raise your right arm with the rod up and behind you. Holds it there for a few seconds in order for the fly line to catch up and gather itself behind you to make the next cast easier. But in those few seconds the pike fly continues to fish. It swims gladly along not caring the least that now it's impossible for you to strike back if a pike strikes first. And believe me they do. It happens rather often. In most cases they let go. You are not able to do one thing! 
Well sometimes I've tried to grip the fly line with my left hand and make a counter strike manually. 
But not today. A pike showed it's head just behind the fly, I could even see it opened it's jaws a little and the One Size vanished from sight. But no, the pike was gone when I got the rod and line in order. But it was just a small pike and in secret I thought it just as good. I mean, had I to stick my hand in the ice cold water, I would much rather do it, was it a big pike. 
But the signs were there. You could not miss that. And more signs a pike gathering showed. Before me when I carefully waded I saw a couple of pikes that I scared away. Pikes that had seen my fly a little earlier and didn't care! How embarrassing! 
Yes, I know that this happens now and then, specially during hot summer days when it's dead calm. Now I put it down to the relatively early day and the cold. 

But this pike certainly didn't flinch! It went in for the kill with zest and good spirit. Look at the fly! Oh no! We don't talk about a fault here! The fish isn't wrong hooked, no way! Instead it has swallowed up the fly so deep, it has come out on the other side of the gills! Now go back to the first photo in today's diary and take another look at the flies. One of them you can see in this picture again, stuck on the outside of the pike.  That is to show you that it's still mostly a white Pike Sara.

But everything changes right? One year it looks like this and another year like that. But it's all the same a White Pike Sara (or little sister One Size).  I even called it the bling bling series last year when I experimented with different kinds of flash materials. But it got to have a core of white Ostrich herl or it's out. 
Another thing is pretty obvious and will illustrate more than words in the photo and that is how important a wire leader is. With pure nylon it would've snapped at once.
Of all of the seven or eight pikes at a stretch of about fifteen or twenty meters, I just managed to book one of them. Later in the day and at a complete different place I  got the other little pike. But considering the weather and all, I had to be content.  
Well, that'll be about all for this time... 

Now, when I write this, more snow is falling from the skies outside and the temperature is falling and... sob... and... I don't know when I can fish the next time!