If you find yourself in the Midlands, and a strange man asks you this question: \u2018Eh lad, can you do the Rutland Roll?\u2019 What would be your reply?<\/p>\n
Would you: A. Slap his face. B. Shake your hips in a sexy circular manner. or C. Pick up your fishing rod, clamp it under you armpit and wave your hands around like a psychotic windmill?<\/p>\n
The correct answer is of course C. The Rutland Roll might well sound like a cheese bap or even a bizarre homo-erotic wrestling competition that hairy men indulge in during long winter nights, but it is in fact a style of fly-retrieval, invented by the veteran game anglers of Rutland Water, who want their lures to move through the water faster than conventional flies.<\/p>\n
The back-end of the fly fishing season can get very tame on little rivers, where the cheeky but diminutive brown trout rely on hatching flies and floating nymphs for food. As the cold weather starts, the fly life stops. Flies stop hatching. Nymphs stop nymphing. And the whole fly fishing exercise becomes pretty academic and boring.<\/p>\n
Out on the big reservoirs like Rutland and Grafham, Pitsford and Eyebrook, things are very different. At the back end of the season when the fly life disappears, the big hungry omnivorous rainbow trout turn their gastronomic attention to fry-feeding.<\/p>\n
These big reservoirs serve as home to huge populations of coarse fish, like roach, rudd, perch, carp and bream. All of which spent the early summer months spawning babies. So, by the autumn, their progeny have grown into fat little toddler fish fry, which provide top high-protein nosh, to any rainbows keen enough and quick enough to feed on them before the larder-empty days of winter begin.<\/p>\n
Fry are small and fat and fast. So, if you\u2019re a fly angler trying to imitate the actions of a fat fry snack, you have to be able to retrieve your fry-imitating lure with real speed. Conventional retrieves like a figure-of-eight or short foot-long pulls, simply aren\u2019t swift enough to make the fry pattern look real.<\/p>\n
Because of this, the Rutland boys have developed the Rutland Roll, a method of retrieval which involves holding your rod under your armpit to allow both hands to retrieve line simultaneously, hand over hand, in a windmill like fashion, causing the lure to move at scorching speed across the water.<\/p>\n
And the favourite fry-imitating pattern amongst the Midlands reservoir fly anglers at this time of year, is the Minkie. Made out of dyed mink fur, the Minkie came into being as a refined, classy, or maybe just kinky adaptation of the Zonker.<\/p>\n
The Zonker is made out of common or garden rabbit fur\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u2014lots of it. The fur is soft and wavy, so with each pull, the back of the fly flattens as its brought forward and then it blooms upwards when it stops, causing an enticing pulsating motion. The Zonker was modified by fly guru Dave Barker, using mink fur which is softer, longer and even more sexy.<\/p>\n
\u2018Mink fur can be hard to find\u2019 explained Andy Miller at Eyebrook reservoir. \u2018The winter coat of mink fur is best. It\u2019s thicker and denser with a proper under-down around the long hairs. Summer fur is a bit sparse and not so \u201ceffective\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andy is a committed Minkie maker and Minkie fisher. And he doesn\u2019t just fish his Minkies at the back end of the season, when the fish are ravenously fry feeding, he finds they work well all through the hot months too. He carries boxes of Minkies in all colours and sizes. \u2018Size depends on the behaviour of the fish on the day\u2019 he says \u2018And colour changes help when the fish are torpid or just lazy. Although, at this time of year white undoubtedly out-fishes any other colour by 95 percent\u2019.<\/p>\n
Minkies can be made in a range of sizes and they can be made to sink or float depending on whether or not they have wire wound into their bodies, or even steel balls added as weighted eyes. Andy swears that a splash of red wound in near the throat is a killer addition too, because it gives the attacking trout a target to aim for, in the same way that some plugs work better when they\u2019ve got eyes painted on them.<\/p>\n
One of the Rutland crew has even developed a Minkie pattern with a foam head, called the \u2018suspender Minkie\u2019, that can float on the surface and be scooted across the top, in jerky tweaks imitating a wounded fry.<\/p>\n
Rainbow trout can get very aggressive when they\u2019re fry-feeding, and apart from just chasing after slower stragglers, they will often launch themselves upwards through a shoal of fry like an Exocet missile, only to come crashing and thrashing down again, stunning their prey. Then, they swim back through the wounded ones gobbling them up in mouthfuls. This is the exact moment to have your floating fry-imitating Minkie on the surface, wriggling and wiggling its kinky fur.<\/p>\n
\u2018Don\u2019t go light\u2019 says Andy. \u2018Fish light at your peril. I use eight pound leader minimum, and I don\u2019t like using any of those fluorocarbon leaders either. It\u2019s too thin. And it sinks. For surface Minkie fishing you need strong ordinary mono. Something beefy enough to absorb the shock of those aggressive takes. You need to be prepared to get hit by the bigger fish. It\u2019s the big over wintered fish you\u2019re looking to catch, the ones that have turned cannibalistic and have started to target the fish fry as food\u2019.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to have mastered the complications of the Rutland Roll to catch winter fry-feeding fish. Sometimes you can get lucky doing absolutely nothing. \u2018What most people don\u2019t realise is that fish love to take Minkies on the drop\u2019 says Andy. \u2018The fur still pulsates even with the slightest water current, or even the action of the fly descending through the water can make it wiggle. Sometimes a trout will be exhausted or lazy and they\u2019ll be sat there and grab the Minkie as it floats down. You\u2019d be amazed at how many fish I catch on the drop\u2019.<\/p>\n
If you have managed to get your Rutland Roll rollicking along nicely, you don\u2019t have to worry about going too fast either. \u2018You\u2019ll never out-pace a trout on the retrieve \u2018says Andy. \u2018If a trout\u2019s seen your Minkie and he wants it. He\u2019ll have it. No matter how fast you roll, he\u2019ll get you\u2019.<\/p>\n
So, in these long troutless winter months ahead, if you\u2019re not at your vise getting kinky with your Minkie fur, you can always practise your Rutland Roll, by borrowing a Jack Russell, tying a rat-scented ball of cotton wool on the end of your fly line, and seeing if you can roll-retrieve it across the back yard before the dog nails it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you find yourself in the Midlands, and a strange man asks you this question: \u2018Eh lad, can you do the Rutland Roll?\u2019 What would be your reply? Would you: A. Slap his face. B. Shake your hips in a sexy circular manner. or C. Pick up your fishing rod, clamp it under you armpit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-fishing","tag-nick-fisher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}