Alright, that may just be me but I bet you have had this one: You are on your biggest travel trip of the year. You have found the magic fly and for half a glorious hour all your hopes, dreams and aspirations have been met. Your are a do-it-yourself fly fishing legend!!!!!!! Except of course you only tied up one of those. You see where this is going right? Suddenly you break off the fly which brings on an unimaginable streak of bad luck complete with sudden cold fronts, red tides, rogue waves and instant collapse of the eco-system. Most of which isn't even possible where you are fishing.
The whole thing is ridiculous of course. I always come back from a travel trip with at least 3/4 of the flies I tied dry and un-touched. Except when I don't. Last year it actually happened. On the first day of my trip with John Montana on the Columbia river I was in the middle of the hottest half an hour of carpin I have ever had when I lost the only Foam Trouser Worm I had with me. It was a complete coincidence but from that moment on the luck on that trip took an about face. An experience like that does a number on reinforcing my travel-trip fly prep paranoia.
This year I think I am going to do something a little different. I have heard some studies that indicate that while lone humans are absolutely terrible at predicting the future, large groups of humans have an almost mystical ability to prophesy. Therefore I am going to put the fly selection for my up-coming pilgrimage up the Lake MI coastline up to vote. Of the prototypes I have put together so far which is going to be the hot fly? Upper Lake Michigan, Michigan coast-line, mid June.
The Montage:
FLY A - Basic Bunny - Small Sculpin-Head, rabbit strip tail, dubbing-loop rabbit body.
FLY B: Large Jaimee's Krazy Carpers with dubbing looped and brushed egg-yarn bodies
FLY C - small sculpin head, Light olive Puglisi brush body, Olive-Yellow rabbit strip.
FLY D: Large and heavily weighted MMF's (Magical Mutha F@#!$%%). Basically a bulky profile arctic fox clouser. I have caught many many many SE Michigan carp on this fly.
FLY E: Packed wool tube-fly. Packed wool head, layered marabou tail. VERY painful to tie.
