It got me thinking further about my past Sea trout fishing and the fly/lures I used to tie. My fishing was exclusively at night and I quickly learned that colour was relatively unimportant. On my local River Tawe and on the Towy, Black and Silver was the accepted formula. Once again the main variation being the degree of finesse in the finished article. Most of us fished a pattern of long, quite slim lure tied in the manner of the Falkus Sunk Lure but with one hook, a treble at the tail and a decent sized Aberdeen Sea Hook with point and bend cut off in the front.Mine as fitted my Coarse Fishing philosophy were quite 'rustic' whilst my good friend Dai lavished hours on the appearance of his.
One overriding fact became apparent after a while. You could tie half a dozen similar looking lures but due to some quirk in its makeup one lure would be found to be a real killer. Of course each successive fish caught on it would imbue it with something approaching mystical qualities and confidence in its use soared. I well remember one such 'creation' that was well into double figures of fish under its belt, the tinsel was hanging off in a spiral and most of the hair wing had gone but still it worked its magic until one night I lost it in a far bank bush. To balance the books I must relate what happened one night on the Tawe. A rather quiet night in truth and I had lost several of my favoured lures by midnight. Dai set off for home but gave me one of his artworks to try. I examined it in torchlight as I tied it on. A sleek, shiny, beautiful thing with perfectly spaced turns of tinsel and symmetrical Jungle Cock eyes on each side. I heard a heavy fish move down in the tail. I started in halfway down the pool and soon got a good casting rhythm going. There was a hotspot down in the tail, a small bush hanging over where the bottom began to shelve up. Here suddenly the heavy draw of a good solid take interrupted the swing of the lure and a big fish had me stumbling backwards out onto the shingle. A long fight ensued before I beached a twelve pound Grilse in smashing condition. It put me in a quandary over whether to tell Dai the truth as I was always ridiculing his fastidiousness over his lures!
I think this is a photo of the fish but it may be an eleven and a half pound Seatrout I caught from the same pool.
