Almost A One Trick Pony?

It was a bit windy at the start and the tide was weak, so things were slow to start just the odd follow and bump at the first few locations. Dave managed to pick a few fish up, but all I was getting were swirls, taps & certainly no solid eats. Even though Dave wasn't setting the world alight, I was probably about 4 or 5 fish down when we came to a spot with lights under a huge roofed dock so I could clearly watch the fish refusing the rubber candy at the last moment. Several fish seemed to be put off by the fly stalling and hanging on the pause, which is usually the point where it gets the eat. Dave was also getting plenty of half eats and taps, but managed to make one stick everynow and then on an EP minnow. I'd love to say I had the sense to switch flies there and then, but I hooked up on the rubber candy and decided to persevere. Dave then got hung up and ended up tying a new leader so I had nothing to compare with, but I'd picked up a glut of refusals and nips by the end of the drift. It had finally happened, the rubber candy failed me. That seemingly undefeatable pattern had let me down and for the first time in probably 4 or 5 years I had to tie something else on my 6wt in the hope of catching.

It was weird looking in the box and wondeing what to put on, I'd become so dependent on the rubber candy I was struggling to find something I would be naturally confident in. I knew the size of the rubber candy was right, and guessed the fish wanted something that was going to keep moving at all times so I briefly considered a clouser, but the bass were pushing the anchovies up against the surface so that wasn't quite right. In the end I, perhaps inevitably, went for a little surf candy, and for the next 5 minutes continued to bounce fish before eventually getting a solid hook up with, which aloong with the next 3 were among the smallest seabass I've ever caught while Dave connected with a nice one. But it least they were fish! A few spots using big flies failed to produce anything and we decided the wind had dropped enough to head out to open water and see if we could find fish by the platforms or maybe an anchored ship. We did'nt take long to find schools of bass coralling bait around the LPG platforms and the fishing was excellent for the last couple of hours. We didn't turn up any reallly big fish, but both made it well into double figures.

Looking back it seems odd to me that I was having confidence issues with the surf candy at first, I've caught hundreds of seabass on them and continued to use them for other species as I developed my rubber habit on the bass. It was actually quite nice to be fishing something else in the end, because it was working, and looking in my box there are a lot of patterns that don't get used anymore despite being deadly. Perhaps I'll force myself to bring them back into the rotation this winter, if nothing else it'll keep the confidence game stronger in the face of emergency situations.