Planning or Doodling?

We all do it. When you're really not focussed as fully as you should be on something or when the mind is free to wonder and float. The pen close by and a scrap of paper become the canvas of your daydream. Whether its simple stick drawing of fighting fish or intricate multi-layed masterpieces they all have a similar theme - things fishing.

Looking back over my journals I had to chuckle at the variety of pictures and scribbles. Some lucky stick men catching tailing stick permit. Some over zealous stick fishermen about to get smashed up! And then there are some interesting things.

Drawings of flies. Variations. Ideas. Concepts. Without realising it my doodling is a form of brain storming for the flies. Notes, musings and thoughts litter the scribbles. And these are the scribbles and doodles - I'm not including the actual thought recording writings and musings.

The Ugly Crab was drawn before I finally tied it. There's a picture in there of a creature come shrimp come crab that I still want to tie. Colour variations of Charlies, Clousers, Sar-Mul-Macs and Brush flies. I don't remember putting the details, the notes and colours, into the pictures. But there they are scribbled in the corners from the corners of a fly fishing mind.

I'm sure many of the lines came from flies I'd seen, read about or fished with. While other ideas are my own. It's the combining of the two that make these scribbles so unique and interesting. I'm now sorry I sent my last three journals home last month. How many ideas did I leave in the margins. Who knows - maybe no good ones or maybe one that could change my fishing totally!

The point of all of this? I guess it is a bit like those adverts that played for awhile on SA television of people coming up with great ideas at the damnedest times or in the strangest places. You never know when a new great idea is going hit! Write it all down somewhere. I remember Peter Coetzee, author of borntoflyfish.com, saying he started his blog to keep a record so that he and others could remember.

So keep day dreaming and doodling - you may just get your next best idea just when you should be concentrating on something else!

The Ugly Crab was still in its infancy when this was drawn. I never realised then that bit of a Merkin, an Avalon and some funky eyes would turn into my favourite flats fly.

This drawing came about watching Needlescale Queen fish and Big Eye Trevally decimate a school of sprats. I tried every colour combo in my box and eventually when dredging in disgust. Couldn't 'match the hatch'. I eventually tied the fly six months later because I bumped into the picture while paging through my journal.

Piscatorial Picasso

Too Pretty

At first I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Dark boxy shapes clearly floating over the turtle grass.

Triggers? Triggers!

On my doorstep on the inner islands! Only once before had I seen them and then only fleetingly. These clownish fish that people pay thousands to chase around the world, right here. Immediately I tossed out the recently copied prawn fly that has been nailing the Bones and Goldens and got denied. That made me nervous. This little fly has been slaying fish and for it to be turned down so readily - ignored actually - made me shaky.

As quickly as possible I found an Ugly Crab and tied it on. I moved around slowly and cut the Picasso off as he drifted and foraged with the pushing tide. A tight loop and the crab went to work. Strip, strip, pause. Let it sit. He's seen it. Strip, strip and drop. Here he comes! Strip. Tail up, inside!

I couldn't but help marvel at his magnificent colours, the tenacity of his fight and sheer pleasure of catching him.

Fifteen later and another one came to hand.

They weren't big but what a treat.

A dark boxy shape that gets me all excited!

Typical Trigger fighting style - on its side and heading for structure.

Ugly Crab in scissors. 

Colours that would make Picasso smile.

Not a trophy but pretty as any fish you've caught.