2014 Fly Carpin Swap Submission

Concepts, components of various mutant carp flies all thrown into a decanter of Black Bottle Blended Scotch and then hung out to dry on an old Griffen vise.

Recipe and/or the amalgamation and/or the unity of multiple entities.  Keeping in mind that It is only good manners if you repeat a few other men to at least do it better or more briefly. Utter originality is of course out of the question. - E. P.

The Peabody may be called the basic starting point.  It's ribbed peacock herl under a soft hackle.  See citation at end, from an old issue of Fly Tyer Magazine on my shop shelf.  I think it was noted in critique somewhere that it is much like a partridge and orange.  So maybe it is not even a bookend in itself but one must start somewhere.  From there, these attributes were pooled:
(1) The soft hackle of the Carp Carrot and the Montana Carrot.
(2) Deep burgundy of the carp-effective San Juan Worms.
(3) Headstand of the LOD.
(4) Twist tail of the FYI.
(5) Foam tab of the Holschlag Hi-Tail Craw.
(6) Worm + soft hackle of the Hybrid.

Top it off with the fact that the soft hackles are all from a pheasant skin provided by my neighbor (salted it and set it in my basement, pinned on a sheet rock scrap) and you have a shady shade lethal Deadpool with Great Plains roots.  I did some testing in water tubs; the sink rate is pretty good.  I left the foam tabs on the large side, so folks can trim as they see fit.  Thanks McTage for another swap invitation.

...Stryker activates Wade, now Weapon XI, a "mutant killer" with the powers of multiple mutants: Logan's healing power, John's teleportation, Summers' energy blasts, and Wade's swordsman skill; Bradley's electropathy was used to enable Stryker to control him completely. Stryker refers to Weapon XI as the "Deadpool".

Headstand for me.  Lightest colors I tried.  Probably least favorite iteration.

Here with some flashier chenille paired with the standard burgundy.

Plainest: worm chenille and dark soft hackle.

I'm telling you.  I like this fly.  Twisting the tail like that really keeps it in place and that foam tab lifts the ass right up.  This thing will sit and chat and sit and chat and wait.  It's going to get the shit kicked out of it is what it comes down to I think.

Peabody citation.  And Deadpool image credit goes to moviecroft.com; it was free wallpaper so figured okay to use.

February 2014 Captions

 

It's cold and frozen.  We don't have the worst of it even, but our SE MN uplands have a tundra feel right now.  Longest streak of no eggs we've ever seen at our place.  Conserving energy.  This picture about 20 minutes away.  Wouldn't make one think of fishing.  But again the uplands are frozen and that does not include their ancient dendrites of water that spill from rock walls and come up through streambeds.  The trout streams are the warm refuges in this landscape now.

Fished from around noon to maybe 1430 the other day.  This time of year usually shows one hold-over outing looking ahead to March.  The January outing is in the books; the hard nymphing was done then.  More relaxed schedule and approach.  In fact I didn't even have the drive to make it to the big hole.  I picked up 8-10 fish in a series of four holes and turned around.  Snow deeper.  Colder.  Fishing slower.  But they still answered to scuds and standard approach.  My feet got cold because I have a habit of standing in one place and drifting away until I get the drift right.  I like the S-curve on this fish.

Being that I turned around a bit short, I had a few extra minutes to look at water closer to the road.  Been many years since I had seen it, I think.  I was a little weary after birddog focus on the nymphing so I did something more relaxing: employed a streamer.  More casting, longer distances, steady retrieve, thoughtless fishing really.  In fact one could argue that you should not think about your streamer at all or watch it all.  We have a lot of good streamer water that begs for attention; like that pictured here.  Slower water, especially with boulders in the deep green and gray.

A while back I accidentally and absent-mindedly tied some LOD iterations on some baby little wirey baby pansy hooks.  I didn't realize my error until I had turned out a few.  So I put them in my trout box.  First cast of 2014 brought this fish up from the still in a near-vertical take plane.  It happened that I was watching as the fly got close and thus I was able to see a mouth open and rise.



Suppose now I'll wait a while.  Can't keep any fish and the deep winter jones is shot.  I'm getting good words re new regulations; thinking 2014 could work out really well for any folks who appreciate walking streams and holding fish.