Blobs and bling - fishing or rapping?

The bright yellow sparkly blob, commonly used in reservoir fly fishing has become a controversial lure of choice according to this report in the Sunday Telegraph.

Well what did we expect? Rainbow trout, in particular, will go for bright yellow attractors pulled swiftly through the water. Indeed I was advised to try something bright yellow when fishing in the recent One Fly competition on the River Test where the beat had been stocked with rainbows.

Blobs on a prime chalk stream? Sorry if you've spilled your tea all over your trousers but that's what a competition mentality does to people. I wonder what Halford would have made of the blob?

Egg patterns

Matching the hatch? Not quite, but it could be argued that blobs look a little bit like eggs, albeit fast moving eggs if they are retrieved at speed.

Are we not doing something similar when using bright yellow and orange lures fished fast to attract salmon? In this case trying to imitate the local insect life isn't going to do much good because the salmon isn't feeding anyway.

But the trout is looking for food and what we like most, I think, if you will pardon this generalisation, is to aim our fly at a surface feeding trout and see it taking our little fly in the belief that it is eating something just like the flies it has been feeding on for the past hour or two. That, fundamentally, is the difference in fly fishing aesthetics.

In a less obvious way it divided the chalk stream fishers when G E M Skues began to use nymphs. Unlike a fast retrieved blob there is some real skill in imparting life in to a nymph fished at the correct depth and discerning the take when it comes. But here again we can "cheat" by using indicators that can double-up as floats.

And if we are float fishing our flies, what is the difference between that and dangling a bunch of maggots (other than that the maggots move of their own accord)?

Better than thou

I don't much care for reservoir fishing, I don't much care for "world champion" tags or fishing qualifications that say "I am better than thou."

Fishing, for me, is something personal. I don't want to feel pressured to fish all the time. I like to stand and stare. The other day I was enjoying watching Mayflies on the water. Some were coming down to the water and landing on spent flies attracted by some unknown smell perhaps, or was it the shape?

Fish weren't rising for them although they may well have been feeding on the nymphs. But that day I was looking for rising fish. I didn't want to fish nymphs.

But it seems a crazy old world when anglers spend their lives thinking of ways to attract fish then, when they succeed beyond their wildest imaginings, find their new method is outlawed because it is too easy.

Behind this newspaper report, however, there is something not very pleasant. There is an implication in the talk of "yobs with blobs" that fly fishing is attracting members of the West Staines Massiv who shouldn't be doing it.

Rainbow rap

Sooner or later, perhaps, we will be singing along to "rainbow rap" and choosing our "flies" from glitzy bling boxes. We could park our spare flies in our ear-piercings. Now that's an idea.

Well if it keeps young people from stabbing and shooting each other I'm all for it. In time they will tire of the easy fishing and begin listening to the old farts (sorry I meant to say "experienced fishermen") who would never - not in a million years - be tempted to use a blob themselves. Goodness me, what are those yellow things in my fly box? Hide them, quickly. As Ali G would say, "Let's keep it real."
Respek.