how many patterns

sometimes you just wanna tie up something new and you can sit surrounded by boxes of materials but that idea just doesn't come , OK so you can check out the hundreds of pike fly patterns that are already out there and tinker with them to suite your local water but sometimes it can pay to think a bit outside the box


bass flies from the states are a good option to go chase as they can be modified and tied on larger hooks for pike , take the very cool looking bass bug in the picture above now I'm going to do one of these on a 5/0 hook but I'm going to tie in some black marble flash out of the back and then a 5 inch length of black bunny bug strip on top of that and i reckon that will make a great fly



now this fly above was found on a u.s bass site and i think tied on a long shank 6/0 Aberdeen and about 4 inch's long will make a great surface fly , no idea what its supposed to be i presume some kind of cricket but this will make loads of surface noise




another of the bass sites basically a bunny bug with legs from the looks of it but again i think it will make a lot of extra noise and motion so worth a go



now these are really interesting they are saltwater striper flies , there's tons of striper flies out there just do a goggle search and many of them like the ones above will change over to pike flies very easily although id add more feathers than above , i think they are trying to get a thinner profile to represent sand eels although i could be wrong

so when you get a blank get on the net and think of a fish and do a search for flies for it you ll be really surprised whats out there and what we can use for pike with a bit of tinkering in the lab

tight lines fellow fluff flingers Dave