Fish love bugs and small aquatic critters.
Anglers like Blake Jackson love to trick them.
It’s not just the exhilarating strike and tugs, or landing the big one. It’s not just being away, on the water, stalking the seam. There’s another side of the equation.
Back home, or at work — the Ugly Bug Fly Shop and Crazy Rainbow Fly Fishing in downtown Casper — is a time to conspire. To be creative.
Jackson sits at a desk with a small vise and considers which bugs are hatching on the nearby North Platte. Midges in the morning. Pale morning duns until about 2 p.m., yellow sallies in the afternoon, caddis in the evenings. “It’s like a clock on the dial,” he says.
But Jackson doesn’t have North Platte trout on his mind today. He’s hankering to wrestle with a carp. The reservoirs south of town are full of ’em: hulking, prehistoric-looking things with large scales and a protruded mouth sprouting fleshy whiskers. Some regard carp as a “trash fish,” Jackson laments. “But when you’re catch-and-release fishing anyway, to catch a 20-pound fish on a fly rod is a riot. It’s pretty addictive.”
He clamps a stout, size-8 hook in the vise and wraps the shank with dark thread. Next, he attaches black bead-chain eyes at the top to ensure the fly rides with the hook pointed up.
It’s the beginning of a hodge-podge sort of crawdad pattern. A custom creation Jackson has been perfecting. It shares the characteristics of a damselfly and dragonfly larva. “It looks enough like a lot of different food items, and they just eat it.”
He hasn’t picked a name for it yet.
He clips a tuft of black marabou, attaches it with a few wraps and trims it to just the right length. Jackson works with precision, cinching the materials with a half-hitch knot, grooming the marabou just so. It’s a meditation. Depending on the type of fly he’s tying, his mind wanders to the place he’ll fish it. He’s standing in his flat-bottom boat, slowly drifting a favorite pocket on Pathfinder Reservoir. The surface is still, and it’s hot. Carp love the heat, he says.
Typically, the tying ritual includes country music in the background. Sometimes it’s a “stupid” podcast — some random comedian talking, “something I don’t have to follow closely.”
Rubbery legs are added next, then he wraps a peacock collar behind the head, keeping it thin “so it’s wispy with some movement.” He makes a few final knots, a few final clips. He admires his no-name creation.
Tomorrow, it hits the water.