A whole year to play with

Despite some slight irritation at the limitation of the 2013 five fly limit I must admit that I did, on the whole, enjoy the clarity of thought that only carrying such a small range of patterns imposed upon me. Perhaps there is an inner Puritan in me trying to get out.

 I have to say that in the main it was liberating to be forced into making a quick selection from the available flies, although I did manage, on a couple of occasions to fall into the ‘paralysis by analysis’ trap even with only the five patterns available. I am however convinced that my actual fishing success was not adversely impacted in any way at all. So really I am railing against the lack of liberty at the tying vice, an activity I claim not to really enjoy. I do, it has to be said, have a very low boredom threshold so I really think I was railing against an inability to go off piste.

So I want to be able to be creative at the vice, to alleviate the boredom, but to also continue to challenge myself to create a range of flies from some self imposed handicap. So this year I will be tying only from the following five materials,

• CDC
• Hares mask
• Deer hair
• Pheasant tail
• Stripped quill

Given that a scruffiest hares ear emerger presented correctly would probably account for the bulk of trout that have ever swum I don’t feel the above list is particularly prescriptive but it should be fun to tie and fish with the results of the above ‘recipe’.

And I have made a promise to myself to fish a little bit more this year.