White Flies (shh its a secret)

I tie a lot of flies, mainly baitfish patterns in all different color combinations so wen the bite turns on I have a series of flied ready that game fish will take. Typically, I carry in sizes 1/0-3/0:

• 6 chartreuse and white
• 6  pink and white
• 6 red and white
• 6 all white
• 6 blue and white
• 6 misc colors. 

Just in case you have not been keeping count thats 42 flies in a series of boxes that I have with me anytime I head offshore. For travel that number typically doubles. Now stay with me. Think about 42 colors in 3 different sizes thats 126 flies that i carry. Talk about a lot of space taken up by flies. 

Lucky for you I have a trick and no longer carry 126 flies. Yes, of course, ill share my trick. I now carry 12 all white flies in sized 1/0 through 3/0 equalling 36 flies total again tied in all white and (heres the secret) 5-10 markers. Regular old permanent markers in various colors. Do you see where I am going here? I can take an all white fly and color it in any combination I wish instantly and even add stripes, mix colors and add fishy patterns. 

Carrying 36 flies vs. 142 flies means 1 or 2 large fly boxes rather than 5/6 fly boxes which is less than half of the space, not to mention money saved on materials and fly boxes. 

One year all the king fish in my area would only strike dirty orange flies with white bellies. So, I have 60 flies in this color that have not been touched since that very unusual season. Had I discovered my marker trick I could have colored each fly as I needed it and not be stick with all these flies and materials I may never use again. 

Try my idea and I know you will be pleased. Plus all the room saved you can bring other items you may really need. 

Tight Lines. 

Capt. Grant

That disappearing sixth sense

Finally after a ridiculous week I got out on the water. Me and a friend headed out of Jupiter,Fl on his newly purchased 31' Contender to find the Bonita and attack them with super light weight fly rods. He decided to let me take the wheel as I have a bit more experience on the water than he does and although he handles a boat very well, we wanted to find the fish and thats my speciality! We cleared the inlet with plenty of live bait swimming around the well, with all his new electronics lighting up his dashboard I felt like I was driving an airliner rather than a boat. He had 3 full size Northstar screens, 1 fish-finder/depth finder, 1 -72 miles radar with an open array, and 1 GPS plus 2 VHF radio's (why two I have no idea), a forward looking depth finder and of course a stereo.

Well, the radar marked the birds, the fish-finder told me what was below, the forward sonar told me what was ahead, the GPS told me where I was and the VHF's just annoyed me so I turned them way down. For 3 hours with all these fancy electronics that likely cost more than my car I found ZERO fish!

So I fiddled with the "toys" increasing beam width, decreasing power etc etc. Needless to say I was getting quite annoyed because in South Florida mid summer Bonita are everywhere, yet even with live glass minnows and greenies as chum I could not find one school to cast to! I than did something that drove my buddy crazy. I throttled the engines way down to a slow head speed, turned the radar, the GPS, the VHF, the fish-finder and everything else OFF and just looked at the water. I watched the water, looked at the way it was moving, looked for slicks and studied the birds. Hey, remember birds those wonderful fish-finding machines. You know what? It worked! The birds let me right to the bait and the fish were not far behind. before we know if we were covered in feeding bonita! Heres the moral of the story, use electronics as an AID in navigation and fish hunting, but don't lose that sixth sense, don't be afraid to listen to your gut feeling and if the entire fleet of fishing boats are headed north, try going south if YOU think thats where the fish are. Don't lose your sixth sense. ~tight lines~