The annual fly box disaster recovery act

Well, it is between Christmas and New Year's, and the annual panic has set in. Trout season here in Michigan starts on the last Saturday in April, and due to the vagaries of the Calendar that Means April 24 this year. Damn! Hardly enough time to get the flies tied and a new rod or two to finish before the opener. And it is worse than you think- quite a few of our more famous trout streams are open all year, and some of them have nice spring steelhead runs. So when you here the first spring peepers you need to be ready.

This year is typical. What started as a the beadhead box, the nymph box, the wet box, the streamer box, the dry box, and the pray for death box (anything less than size 18) somehow turned into a massive jumble of matted hackles, flies floating loose in all corners, and a streamer that was somehow still damp from last summer. Go figure. It was pretty clear than any fly that wasn't producing that day was snipped off and tossed in the first box that came out of the vest. Such sloth. There were other affronts- those stupid-ass Hendricksons with the overhackle of wood duck that were supposed to be killers? The entire dozen still sitting in a neat row, all but one intact. The one I used is a bit matted and still had a leader knot, but clearly it had not been touched by a single fish. They get removed and sent to the redo box where the materials will be removed with a razor blade and retied into something that will catch fish. Yeah, right. That box has been receiving flies for 10 years and I have yet to get into it. And a half dozen size 12 nymphs, all untouched, but the half dozen size 14's in that pattern are gone. And the 4 black weed seeds that I tied before I figured out that natural deer hair was the way to go. What am I going to do with all this crap? And worse: the slim Borcher's that I know will never work.

And I finally realized that if you carry a dozen of each pattern, you can only carry about 20 different kinds of a particular fly in a box. So except for the obvious producers, I am going to cut back to 4 of each pattern and watch my backcast. Except for obvious proven patterns, and flies that tend to have short life spans, either because they are fragile (pheasant tails) or spend life near the bottom (I carry a dozen Walt's worms and seem lose them every 3rd or 4th cast).

This year, I have decided that wet flies are a lost art, and plan on fishing them extensively. Look for some future posts on the McGinty, blue dun, picket pin (a top seller in the orvis catalog about 1980), and the Alexandria (reputedly banned in some English waters because it it too effective). Gotta get tying, and right fast. It will be here before you know it. Of course, this is what makes fly fishing so cool. The season never really ends, and Michigan winters simply fly by. Or are at least tolerable until March 15.

The Hiatus

I have been besieged by my readers (all two of them) as to why there was a lag in posts. The answer for this is seen to the left. He is a rat terrier, and has required considerable time and attention.

There was another issue as well. I wanted my fly photos to be better, and was too cheap to buy a new light for illumination. Instead, I obsessed with getting the three dollar garage sale light to work. It finally happened today.

The Mickey Finn has its day

This classic streamer gets it's name from the Chicago underworld, where a Mickey Finn was a bar drink laced with chloral hydrate- the concoction would render the drinker unconscious enough to rob. It is a truly classic streamer pattern, and has appeared in every fly tying book, magazine, web site, and collection as a "must carry" pattern. Even Earnest Schwiebert wrote about it in "Trout".

Presumably, the pattern was such a knockout on trout that it just had to be called a "Mickey Finn". Since everyone who is anyone carried the pattern, I dutifully tied up a dozen in 1999 and always carried three or four in the corner of the streamer box. However, the pattern had a distinction; it was the only fly pattern that I ever tied that never once caught a fish. Part of this was that I never tied one on unless it was one of those cold cloudy desperate days where the stream seemed lifeless. I would usually put on one when I came to big dark pool, make a few desultory casts, and snip it off in favor of something that might actually work. It became a joke- I knew guys that would fish the Mickey over any other streamer pattern but I hated it.

I actually consider the Mickey Finn not as an attractor pattern, but a very good imitation of a redbelly dace. But redbelly dace are pretty scarce in most of their range, and creek chubs, black nosed dace, and sculpins are far more widespread. So although it was good, dace just weren't important.

So this went on for 25 years, until a fateful sunny summer day on the Ausable River. My friends Jim J. and Jaime S. and I were doing a hopscotch float and there was the inevitable discussion about what they might be bitin'. Jim and Jaime both suggested that the Mickey Finn was a pattern worth considering, and I scoffed. They looked at me like I was an idiot. I scoffed again, thereby adding to my future misery and shame. We were catching fish on dry flies until about noon when it sort of drizzled out. I was in a post-lunch stupor and not getting anything. One of those, "well at least the morning was good" days. Somehow, I decided to tie on a stupid-ass Mickey Finn, go fishless, and then make fun of my friends for their bad advice. A good plan, but it went bad on the first cast when a nice brookie smashed the fly. I then had one of the most eye opening experiences of my fly fishing career, but it wasn't about the fish that were smashing the Finn about every third or fourth cast, it was what the pattern taught me.

The Mickey Finn is a great pattern because of all the flies I have ever fished, it is the one that is most visible from 30 feet away when it is swinging through the darkness of deep pools and runs. Because you could see the fly, you could work it within inches of stumps, and watch how it was responding to your strips and mends. But the craziest part were the strikes. I would watch a brook trout (and occasional brown) fly out of their lairs, eat the fly, and then turn back toward the stygian depths. It was only after they had moved 6 to 12 inches that I could feel the strike. That day, I was fishing graphite because we had all agreed that three guys in a canoe was not a good situation for cane rods, and it made me realize that cane rules because of its sensitivity. Next year, I am going back with a cane streamer rod to see if I can detect strikes better, and I think I will.

The coolest part of the day came when I spied a small deep hole with big stump at the tail end- the pool was a depression about the size of your office desk. I thought, if I were king of the brook trout, that would be my spot. It was, he was big, and was released. About five minutes later the fishing ended when the last of my three Mickeys ended up in a tree, but it was fun while it lasted. I now love the Mickey Finn, and will never be without it again even though Jim and Jaime will undoubtedly make fun of me every time they see me fishing the pattern. I don't care.

Another interesting thing about this pattern is that there are almost no published variations. About the only variation I have seen in tying books is the addition of jungle cock eyes, or small painted-on eyes. I do know of two varations though that were developed by friends: William M. of Berks County PA used to add an overwing of grizzly hackle and claimed the pattern was far more effective. My friend Jim J. Ties his with a pink fur body ribbed with tinsel, jungle cock, and a topping of peacock herl . It works.

And by the way, every fishing story I have ever read that discussed this pattern as a fish catcher described the same weather pattern: Midsummer, sunny and hot. That was my case, and it may be most effective that time of year. Why? I have no idea.