i smell america in the air

I CAN HEAR LARGEMOUTHS

with my trip stateside drawing ever closer and the fact that i got home for a few hours yesterday i had a bit of a frenzy of fly tying i had some new popper heads arrive from ken over at pike adventures for me to play as well as some new stuff to review (more on that tomorrow) so to the vice it is and i had a burning desire to do some deer hair flys bunny bug style i think they turned out sweet and surely old bucketmouth will have a pop at them ...........

below

OK a yellow raineys foam head that i drew on some black stripes now im no van cough or whatever his name was but I'm pretty sure the fish wont mind this comes in at around 7 inch's and will rip some water up big style ......get it up ye fish

so the foam poppers i got are called boiler makers for the simple reason that they kick up bucket loads of water when fished on the surface in fact they spurt so much water in front of them that you'll get a soaking from 5 feet away loving it and cant wait till we get one day of summer in the UK to try em out on the surface ......mmmmmmmmm although i suspect ill be chasing down some largemouths with these

of course you can just turn them round and use em for a nice profile head on a big fly like the one below

so about a week ago ken over at pike adventures sent me a link to a great little site www.warmwaterflytier.com and he said id need some of these rubber things for the smallmouths he has in his river the idea is the fly has lots of movement in the water with all the rubber legs so i tied a few the other day and posted the results you'll find this on a posting last week

so intrigued with this fly i was i of course had to start playing with the idea using different bodies and tying styles as i think this will also be a cracking little pattern for pretty much anything that swims in this country and I'm especially thinking perch and chub .....

playing around with different materials is always a great way of coming up with something maybe new and untried like the fly (i use that term very loosely) Ive used piketreks UV life form for a tail and dubbed in ep sparkle for the body nice colours looks right but you never know it may be awful and not catch a thing but fun to do .....

the fly above I've used dubbed silver ep sparkle and a few orange legs to get a simple fly but something that looks like a fish would snack on it so with me being off work next week i very much plan to fill a box up with these rubber legged creatures and a pile of sub bugs happy days

nice find Mr capsey

ken found these amazing massive fin sport wallets that i think will be incredible for hit and run fly fishing so i was delighted when ken sent me one over to try (wasn't to happy at the vat charge though bastards) now myself and ken regularly send stuff to and from this and his fair isle as ken is a keen collector of old tackle and fly memorabilia so i track down useless junk from this side of the pond and send it to ken who loves the stuff in fact just the other day i spotted some plastic teacup coasters 8 of them and all had a different salmon fly printed on well that's capsey fodder some it was purchased for the princely sum of a UK pound and his package of assorted shite is winging its way over the Atlantic enjoy the candy bro ........

A FLY WALLET TO FILL YAHOOOOOO MORE FLIES

OK so i went off on a bit of a tangent there sorry so back to the finsport well as i said its massive and will easily hold enough gear for a session and you can clip a strap to it and carry it across your shoulder well not only is this a brilliant idea and such a time saver i mean imagine getting home from work and being back out in a matter of minutes fantastic , they are widely used in the tropics by beach runners these are guys who chase feeding fish along Beach's with nothing more than a fly rod and one of these ......great idea ....and thanks to my brother for sending me one

should you want a closer look here's a link to a great USA site that sells them enjoy some fly wallet porn here http://www.bearsden.com/product1719.html

so hopefully ill get lots of tying done net week and you will see the return of the Tuesday tie off on Tuesday funnily enough

tight lines fellow friendless followers and for those like to talk shite about me may your next shit be a hedge hog

mcfluffchucker

(a very calm cave in scotland)

a little fix

so yesterday i was as today working a split shift and i had some new materials arrive (see yesterdays post) so obviously i was gagging to get tying well as chance would have it i had to get home for a bit to pick my son up from nursery so a quick bit of time management and i thought i could get home and tie a couple of flies.

i just couldn't not really ,well if you have new materials then well you have to get into the flies simple as that and as i mentioned yesterday i had talked over an idea with the piketrek chaps about incorporating the new material into subbug heads so here is the first try

BIG FLASH HEAD

what I've done is tied in the new material in such a way that it will give off random flash depending on the strip strike speed and angle of the fly in the water , I'm still experimenting with weighting 3d eyes with epoxy so I've added this as well the photo below gives you a bit of a closer look at the flash in the deerhair

that will do nicely

OK so to the next job i had a load of new hooks arrive from Texas of all places for me to try and i loved the look of them so i thought tying up a pretty simple streamer type fly with a head made from the new material (wish they would name it) would do the trick , the fly i made is pretty similar to a fly i caught my biggest UK perch on at 3 and a half pounds , a big perch in this country so i have every faith in the design of it

the whole fly is made from piketrek body material as is the body of the subbug which of course you can buy from piketrek here i think there will be a few of these made next week

so onto other things fishy

my mate tony "mines a double golden balls "harkin has been out and about on his own ( i just love care in the community) and was fishing on a water that hes fished a couple of times but had no luck well he only spots some fish on the far bank herding some roach into the shallows and picking them off so he heads on over

so after crawling for a a mile and a half on his belly commando style to the nearest bridge so not to scare them he get within casting distance and ops for a piketrek roach pattern and he nails a couple of lovely mid doubles which he said were bullied in very quickly on his pikesaber which can get pretty much anything in quickly including me and tony in a punt(see my rubbish review elsewhere on the blog) great rod

hook line and pikesaber

another one in the net i really don't know how the lucky little scrote bag does it i suppose he must have had a good teacher .......mmmmmm don't know who that was as I'm shite and know nothing about fly fishing ............i suspect we will see a lot more of tony in the future

so there you go that's it for today i have to be home for an hour today so hopefully i may get a couple more done and if you been inspired to go tie a few of the flies or looking for something different then please go check out the guys from piketrek who have bundles of cool tying stuff at great value prices here's the link

http://www.pikeflyrod.com

so ill hopefully see ya all tomorrow for more useless crap you don't want to read and if you do enjoy it i thank you very much and ill see you all soon

mcfluffchucker

(really needing some sleep in a cave in Scotland)

mmmmmmm new stuff to play with

Greg over at piketrek has been babbling on for the last couple of weeks about some new materials he had got hold of and i had a conversation with Ben about the possibility of incorporating the new material into subbugs , so i did a quick step by step in my head and thought that this was actually possible to do but id need to be a wee bit care full with the trimming though but it certainly has given me a few ideas to play with and hopefully ill get a chance to do at least 1 today when i get home for a few hours before my next shift starts ....

its basically a chenille the length of the each piece is 33inchs long and the average width seems to be an inch to an inch and a half long so besides this being possible to use on subbugs it does also open up the possibility's to god knows how many designs for a normal pike fly from sparkly body's to big flashy heads i think this could be a winner ............................

theres a full range of all the colours you would expect for tying pike flys and they are very vibrant as well a welcome addition to any fly

the length of fibres is the key to this stuff i think they got it spot on

mmmmmmm olive perch anyone

below the chartreuse is awesome i can already think of quite a few uses for it so where can you get it well piketrek of course i have been in formed it will be available from Thursday evening but if you go to the site you can always give them a phone and also remember they do ship worldwide

*BREAKING NEWS*

I GOT HOME FOR A COUPLE HOURS IN BETWEEN SHIFTS AND GOT TO TIE A FEW FLIES WITH IT

AWESOME CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR THE RESULTS

mcfluffchucker (no Friends what so ever and clueless barf barf barf)

(a cave in Scotland)

bloody work and weather

so winter on my local canal seems so long away and it was cold enough to keep it frozen for a good few weeks although it was cold it was never cold enough or frozen thick enough to drive on like these jokers below tried to do i think they were watching a few to many ice fishing videos .....

i think the other funny thing about this picture is the fact that the police have put a sign there saying accident er no shit..........

so i had some great plans to do a 4 morning hit on the local canal from dawn but that has now been kicked into touch because of work i now have to work 9 days split shifts solid so that's not happening although i may try to get an hour on the way to work although this does have problems for me ........

well i can set off for work a few hours early and the canal is actually on the way to work so i could in theory walk the canal to the city (about an hours slow walk) casting into my favorite swims on the way but if the fish are having it then I'm going to want to stay and fish and the fact i hold all the keys for the building it would mean nobody would get in ..mmmmmmmm

but when i think about chucking a subbug into the pre dawn glassy calm of the canal I'm actually quite tempted to do it ........

so otherwise than that it will be a fairly quite week on the blog although i will be posting bits and bods so please bear with me this week , and the Tuesday tie off will return next week as ill only be at home a few hours a day so simply wont have time to do much ......

tight lines fluff lovers

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

uv bond and sticky stuff

ill make it clear from this point I've always been a 5 min epoxy guy i love seeing the flies going round on the drier i love the whole process of epoxy but I'm a bit old school and see no reason to change my ways especially when these UV kits come in at ridiculous prices the cheapest i found came in a around 60.00 UK pounds I'm sorry but do you know how much epoxy i can buy for that

enter Mr bond

so i receive this parcel through the post and its from pike trek now pike trek have got some pretty cool stuff for the pike angler and fly tier and is the only UK site especially for the pike fly fisher and these guys really have there finger on the pulse when it comes to pike products , so dispute me not being a UV guy i thought id have a go and see what i could come up with.........

the UV lamp

so i had a think to myself and thought what for me would be the best application for using this UV product , what would make life for me a lot easier using this product and the one thing that stood out was my big foam heads so i set to work..........

UV foam head this is a big fly and usually uses a lot of epoxy so i tied this up and added a layer of piketreks Mr bond

the one thing i did notice was the speed at which it cured , just 5 seconds in the special lamp



above is the close up of the fly head after curing ,i have used a mesh on the head to give a scale effect , i have been amazed at the ease of use of this product will i stop using epoxy no i wont but i will use this UV product on certain flies i do i will use it on all my foam heads , i will use it for doing the eyes on sub bugs and i have a few ideas that i want to try with this stuff so stay tuned

the most amazing thing about this product is the price absolutely brilliant and well within the reach of those on a budget but without losing any quality in the product i will recommend this product to anybody who has just started fly tying and wants to do a hard headed product so to the bones the price

the UV resin costs an incredible £4.95 you can buy it here
http://www.pikeflyrod.com/tools-and-glues/116-piketrek-uv-resin-mr-bond.html

the UV lamp is an incredible £17.50 UK pounds you can buy it here
http://www.pikeflyrod.com/tools-and-glues/126-uv-drying-light-9w-for-use-with-mr-bond-uv-resin.html

I'm informed that there will be a torch version in the near future but to be quite honest i don't think its needed when you can get a first rate product that other company's sell for 60 quid plus gets my vote

stay tuned over the next couple of days for some more great patterns tied using this , and if you haven't checked out piketreks stuff before then get over to there site for some really fantastic stuff for the pike fly tier

tight lines
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

tuesday tie off

so welcome once again to the Tuesday tie off and this week was kens choice and a great one it is , it basically stems from an email conversation i was having with him and he sent me a link to a site that was funnily enough on my website links www.warmwaterflytier.com on there was a great pattern for small mouth bass which with a bit of tinkering ken thought would make a great pike pattern

so i had a look at the link and thought mmmmmmm i think this would make a great pattern not only for pike in larger size but in its smaller form i think this fly would be great for perch , chub or even zander or carp in this country so to the vice

first up i decided to get a feel for the pattern so the fly above was the first out of the vice and i must admit i loved it and thought what a great little pattern and it will kick up a load of noise in the water

so not too proud to show a mistake i whipped a little too hard and one of the rubber legs went flying across the tying room but still i think even with a leg missing it will catch the 2 flys above are tied on 1/0 hooks

i decided after the last 2 ties to up the fly a bit and venture into pike size flys so the above is tied on a 4/0 sakuma and is tied with normal bass bug rubber legs i was rather impressed with the outcome and you know sometimes you just know when a fly is a catcher and i got that feeling with this one

so with time fast running out before i had to go to work i just had to do the pike version no i thought that normal bass bug rubber legs wouldn't cut it on a pike fly so what i did was use the legs from a sea fishing Muppet instead and although a bit trickier to work with I'm rather impressed with the results .....so that's that for today although I'm going to tie a load more smaller ones up for my trip to vt in the next few days I'm loving them ......remember to head on over to ken capseys pike adventures blog (the link is a box at the top of the blog) ..............................or click below

http://pikeadventures.blogspot.com/

tight lines till next time fly tiers

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

size 24 olive

somebody once said to me as they passed in a boat as i was fishing a trout water for pike well mate at least you wont catch any trout with those big flies ........er right

see ya all tommorow for the tuesday tie off

new pffa blog

check out the new pike fly fishing associations blog
(click the picture)

watch out for up coming pike fly fishing news , gear and tying reviews

real eyes and dyno clousers

REAL EYES AND DYNO CLOUSERS

real fish eyes well that's what i thought id been sent this morning from www.deercreek.co.uk but turns out its there new range of realistic eyes so straight away i just had to get to the vice and as i had my clouser head on well seemed like it was time to get some monster dyno pike clousers on the go and I'm glad i did they look feckin awesome with those eyes ..................

all the picture featured are done with 7mm dumbell eyes so they will fish hook up of the bottom , and the eyes are glued on and the a light covering of z poxy to finish off with i think these will score really well with zander as well a great big snack bounced past there day roosts should jolt them into action the fly above is 7 inch's a great snack for any predator ...........








as you can see from the pictures there is a great range of colours and deercreek are hoping to have some 10mm eyes soon as well which I'm really excited about more monster clousers on the way i think they are really onto a winner here .....here is the link if you want to go and get some before they sell out

http://www.deercreek.co.uk/CrystalGatoreyesdumbbells.html

OK so this may be my last post till Tuesday due to work commitments and being away but i think theres enough on in the last 3 days to keep you happy and failing that you can get over to ken at pike adventures for the usual redneck pike fishing tips

tights lines people of the fluff
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

tuesday tie off

the Tuesday tie off this week is clousers simply because i was on a clouser kick , ken said hell we will just go with that and that works for me so here we go a whole heap of the buggers in pike size enjoy

4/0 - 5 inch's

4/0 - 6 inches

slightly damp to show the profile a nice looking pike snak at 6 inch's

pug nose

the fly above has been made with a heavier bug nose so it sits backside up off the bottom and can be jigged along the bottom

black nosed dace
as my u.s.a jaunt is getting closer and as i said yesterday i need to be filling my boxes with some local bait fish so after chatting with ken over at pike adventures and doing my own research on bait fish and stuff and found that the bass are quite fond of a bait fish called a black nosed dace so above is my version of it and its a fly that id use without a problem in my home waters

another slightly different version of a dace

roach it up

well not really a roach more a general bait fish pattern for bouncing along the bottom and i think would pretty much catch anything out there

a slightly damp version just looks like a real good pattern

a few strands of piketreks uv lifeform gives the fly that little edge and bear in mind these flys are 5 and 6 inch's long so plenty big enough for pike to show an interest in

more orange and yellow

more clousers vicar


so that's a few made then I've got some ideas for some others as well but I'm working till Monday now so to have to wait to see what i come up with so head on over to ken capseys pike adeventures to see what hes come up with not sure when hes posting as hes away fishing tonight and with the transatlantic time difference it may be quite late so I'm posting mine just now and hopefully there wont be long to wait

tight lines flingers

Dave mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)