Martyn White | Thursday, 10 April 2025
I've pretty much recovered from my disappointing trip to Okinawa, and have been out fishing for maruta while they're around.
The cherry blossoms are peaking now and that usually means that the run will be peaking too. But they turned up early and it's been a bit weird weather-wise. So given the numbers I'm seeing I'm wondering if I missed the best of it while I was down on the island, either that or it's just a bit more of a sporadic run this year. I imagine things will start becoming clear over the next couple of weeks provided I can maintain interest in them and not get distracted by carp and smallies.
The main issue is that the maruta are just too easy when you get among them and because they're spread so unusually evenly through the system this year, and easy to find it's even less challenging than usual. They're pretty and it's a bit of fun, but the novelty wears off after a few dozen of them. I'm probably already at the point where I'd rather catch a couple of nice smallmouth, the only thing that's keeping me on the maruta is John.
He's still very new and does find the mauruta challenging, because he's having to learn to control the drift of his nymphs in pretty fast shallow water detect takes and set the hook. You actually forget how many moving parts there are until you have to explain it and help someone get to grips with it. Especially when they're also still struggling with their casting. It's a lot to manage. The other thing is he's not been fishing that long and hasn't caught many fish, so he's still in the catch anything > catch lots stage. Maruta are ideal for this as they're easy to find, tolerant of wading anglers, pretty forgiving of sloppy presentations and there are enough of them that he has a decent chance of catching a few fish. Provided he can manage his line and pick up on the eats.