incredulous foam heads

sometimes you'll just be sitting there and from nowhere you will have a wave of ideas pop into your head I've tried to work out where these ideas come from i mean is it your watching TV and you subconsciously see a colour in the TV show and the mind logs it as a colour that will make a great pike fly or is it complete random boredom that has your flie tiers mind work in the background like some kind of super computer churning ideas round then something clicks into place and pops to the front of your mind and you have to go try it before you lose the idea ....well who knows but ill tell you my mind works like that every second of the day i go to bed thinking flies i wake up thinking flies and it was like that yesterday .......



i just had the urge to make big foam heads i mean big i wanted something that was going to slow sink have tons of fish appeal and look like it was ready to kick the bucket .

so when making these big foam heads you have to think about what your doing here as the foam is naturally highly buoyant so you start at that point foam floats so what you have to do is add some weight , of course the first think your going to add is the hook , and by choosing the hook carefully you'll be able to get the first bit of the puzzle the heavier the hook the faster the sink rate , materials are also important to but not as much as getting the head weight correct this i do by applying epoxy around the head.

the fly above has got a very heavy head the sink rate will come in at around 1 ft every five seconds this is done by combing heavy hook , epoxy , and the use of a glue gun to stick the foam together . with combining the whiting feathers ultra hair and flashabou for the body this give a great looking fly also on the drop which of course pike will also hit on the way down .

you can of course short strip these flies back as they sink the use of the conical eyes will make this fly also act like a big glide bait darting from side to side a great searching fly



the fly above will sink more slowly as there is no epoxy head on this one although the weight is added via a glue gun to stick the foam together so it will sink more slowly and have a lesser glide bait action the body is a mix of goat hair and Icelandic sheep with a little flash in the tail using this material will give you more of a flutter as you pause the fly on the strip



rainbow trout (above) here I've mixed in ep fibre and pink ultra hair and purple flash to form the body the head is formed from purple ultra foam but what I've done here is to dab on some epoxy on the sides and sprinkled silver glitter on and left to dry before coating the rest of the head with epoxy a simple and cheap way to give a different look .



perch (above) so whenever I'm tying flies i always have to do at least one perch pattern , the humble perch in the UK is on the pikes menu and usually always a great pattern to try , I've mixed things up a bit with the above said perch the under body is made from yak hair the back is made from sf fibre the red gill flash is made from slinky fibre and of course the copper flashabou i like to experiment when I'm tying sometimes and obviously different materials act in different ways in the water so mixing them up will give the fish something they haven't seen before and may be the trigger to a strike



again the fly above has been made using a mix of materials the belly is white ep fibre the orange in the fly is Icelandic sheep hair and the back is sf fibre , the ultra foam head is silver but I've added green glitter on the top as a contrast to the silver and to mimic the 2 tone head of a bait fish , a thin layer of epoxy on the head means the sink rate will be around 2ft per 1 second another great searching pattern ...

these flys are really great to fish although the 5 flies above took most of the day to make due to the fact that you have to leave the glitter to cure on the epoxy , i could if i wanted to go out and buy the new quick cure epoxys that are on the market but I'm a creature of habit i get a great satisfaction out off watching the flies go round on the dryer and the thought of a job well done when they are finished .

see ya all tomorrow and if you have a web cam remember watch what your doing with the cat before you turn it on to speak to your buddy ........?

tight lines from the cave
mcfluffchucker