recycled video boxes (again)

yup it had to happen sooner or later id need some new boxes for flies and to be quite honest i do give quite a lot away when I'm fishing and they do make for a great storage system so i set to work on transforming another 17 video boxes into state of the art fly homes well maybe not state of the art but I've changed the foam i use inside them

-----------------

if you go online and look up yoga mates they are brill the things are about 5 ft long closed

cell foam and retail from as little as a couple of UK pounds , you can cut it to shape very easily and with the aid of a glue gun they stick brilliantly into the boxes as you can see below I've now got a few to play with

---------

you know you can go for your more expensive brands i mean I've got a box full of finsport wallets but at £15.00 a pop they ain't cheap although they are great for the light weight roving angler which a lot of us tend to be when we are not boat fishing , the other great thing about sticking yoga Matt foam in these is that it floats quite well so below you can see the fruits of half an hours work

so I've started clearing My tying board and sticking them into boxes if I'm going out on a boat ill just take my big boat box with me as the video case stack up really nicely in them and with the aid of a magic marker i can write on the top spine what is in each box so i don't waste time hunting around for a single type of fly , and if i want to go out and travel light i can just pick a few from each box and chuck em in a finsport or even just take a couple of cases in a rucksack easy

on a sad note below is a picture of the river Kennett in the UK yet again we are hearing of trout clubs clearing there sections of water of pike yup netting them out and chucking them on the bank to die don't they realise that this does a fishery no good what so ever and will only lead to an explosion of jack pike , when will these people ever learn

well I'm off to do some prep for a trip on Tuesday and i have to head to work so have fun if your out at the weekend and tight lines

Dave Lindsay

(waiting for the snow in a cave in Scotland)

bloody modern technology

had to happen you know life goes like that you get a bucket load of extra shifts at work you think fantastic that's Christmas sorted then what happens well let me tell ya your bloody camera breaks just stops working well i can still do everything on it except push the take picture button when i do nothing happens ahhhhhhhhhh new camera called for .....:-(

------------------

on the plus side and to cancel out the negative of the camera i got a nice parcel of gliss and glint plus to play with and although I've been busy at work i sneaked a vice and a few essentials into work for a play , actually my work doesn't mind as long as it doesn't effect what i do there cant really complain at that

so one of the colours they sent me was this lovely kind of blue/green with a greeny flash through so to me that just screamed baitfish so i had to set to work like a bloody cat on heat i was

the end result and oh er more tea vicar I'm loving this and its not really even that hard to tie in fact there is hardly any materials in it yet its 7 inch's long , I've added some orange fibre as a gill flash colour i think it looks very effective and I'm sure this would catch some of the saltwater predators as well

also doing a few flies for nick at deercreek below is a sample i may well add a few dots to it yet haven't decided but whatever its a nice profile and plenty of flash built in

so if you fancy trying some of this very cool gliss and glint plus click the picture below to order from the chaps at deercreek

the rest of my week will consist of tying lots more of the gliss n glint plus flies , I'm heading up to a large Scottish loch next week for some boating and fluffchucking so ill look forward to trying them out and again i apologise for the rubbish quality pictures ill be back to my normal high "cough" standards of photography soon anybody got a spare camera

tight lines freinds

dave

blimey

crazy



22 year old built-wing Salmon fly tying prodigy Edwin Rist has been arrested and charged with breaking into the Natural History Museum in Tring inJune 2009 and stealing 299 rare bird skins.

On June 24 last year (2009) it is alleged there was a break-in at the museum, which is on Akeman Street in Tring. It was subsequently discovered that 299 brightly-coloured bird skins were missing, believed stolen, from a collections’ area.

The Hertfordshire constabulary website reports that "Detectives investigating the theft of 299 rare bird skins from the Natural History Museum in Tring have charged a man in connection with the incident. Edwin Rist, aged 22, from the USA, has been charged with burglary and money laundering offences. Police have recovered the majority of the bird skins."

The skins largely included rare and brightly-coloured tropical species like male trogons and quetzals from South America as well as birds of paradise from New Guinea presumably destined for use in Rist's award winning built-wing Salmon flies.

The public part of the Natural History Museum at Tring, in Hertfordshire, opened in the late 1800s to house the collections of Lionel Walter, second Baron Rothschild and offers outstanding examples of nineteenth-century taxidermy at its very best. The Museum was bequeathed to the nation and became part of the Natural History Museum in 1938.

The Bird Group and ornithological research collections were moved out to Tring in the 1970s into a purpose-built building, which is separate from the public museum. The ornithological specimens are used in studies of comparative anatomy, osteology, zoogeography, ecology, conservation, art, archaeology, taxonomy, evolution and a variety of other subjects. For example, much of our knowledge of bird distributions in Africa is derived from these specimens.

Rist, a USA citizen was studying music in London. He is due to appear at Hemel Hempstead Magistrates court on November 26.
--------------------------------------------

FIRE EM UP

get it on with the saber

the most highly anticipated film since barrys waterwolf film ,is coming

and there seems to be a few pikesabers in use in it

eat it

Musky Country: Zero 2 Hero Trailer from RT on Vimeo.

thanks folks

first off i must say a massive thanks to those who bid on the 2 sets of flies for casting for recovery auction the other day (see earlier post) the 2 sets went for £41.59 and £32.00 respectively so a massive thanks you to those that dug deep for the charity , Keith will be posting your flies shortly if not already thanks again

dyckers the leading site for ep flies and e.p material

edwin is crazy about ep and makes some dam hot ep patterns and has got the stuff down to a fine art , although he is based in Holland he ships worldwide and its not only pike stuff he does check out his site by clicking on either the logo above or the picture below and enjoy there is so much great stuff on there

work is crazy just now but I'm back to tying tomorrow

have fun

Dave

"and if your in a bad place just know just remember theres always a light at the end of the" tunnel and its never quite as bad as you think the river is a great healer

feeling the love

nope not the title of one of kens old movies he keeps hidden away in the sugar shed , I'm talking about fly love yup its that time where you see new people coming into the sport new tiers with new takes on old ideas I've been seeing a lot of this lately and how great it is to see more on this later
---------
FLY ART

I'm developing a new site just now so you may see a few of these popping up now and again all will be revealed soon

you know I'm know by dog walkers and associated stoopid people who walk my local venue as the oddball thats throws dead parrots around on a fly rod (big pike flys to me and you) well yea of course I'm going to be using the big flys for pike but there was a time back at the end of summer that a guy who had a little fishing knowledge walked by me and did a double take , why well it was because i was using a little 5 weight and small sparkly flies for perch "ain't you the pike guy he said" yep i said , i had only talked to the guy a few weeks previously and had been using said parrots so obviously the sight of me with this outfit confused him a bit.

---------

but then you have to ask yourself what defines a predatory fish well to me if it eats another fish then its a predator , so we then extend that to well I'm shocked i thought you were a pike man , well i am but i will also target anything else on the fly rod that eats other fish so therefore if i want to go chase perch with a 5wgt I'm going to do that , if i want to chase trout in a stream with a 2 wgt then I'm going to do that as well why because they are predators so on that very same vain here is

-----

FLY CAUGHT PREDS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
top guide and Friend drew price from http://dponthefly.blogspot.com/ has been getting out in the mid November sun before the ice up and catching some lake trout on the fly and from the looks of it it does look like some blue backed bait fish (see predator)

not a million miles away my bro capsey the toad skinner is checking out the first ice of the season and still catching some pretty dam fine pickeral as well head on over to his blog to find out whats been going down with the hill billy http://pikeadventures.blogspot.com/

there is as i said at the start some fantastic new blogs around with pike in mind the latest being a nice guy called stefaan demiddele who has started his own blog go take a look here http://www.thelonesomepiker.blogspot.com/

below are a couple of stefaans flies which i love and will be doing my own take on them , nice ties there mate , go and check his blog out hes only just started it but I'm sure its going to be good well worth following

the coming week sees me tying flies and hopefully getting out on the prowl have to see what the weather does so looking forward to another fun filled week of fluff and tomorrow I'm going to be having a right rant at some very stoopid people stay tuned

Dave Lindsay

(a cave in Scotland)

thanks all

70 followers and growing

(i thank each and every one of you)

may the force be with you

well you know i got a pikesaber from the chaps at piketrek last year and straight away i could feel this was a special rod , i cast a selection of lines on it and since i did the review I've caught a few fish on it I've recommended the rod to others who also love it i knew from my many years of experience that i have i knew just from the feel of it that it really was something special

------------------

so good was this rod i recommended it to a couple of guides in the states one being muskie king and all round nice bloke brad bohen (the afton angler) this is a guy who really knows his stuff and he only has the best for his clients his reputation proceeds him and he is now using it for his clients so I'm sorry if you think the rods rubbish after that and the amount of people catching decent fish and enjoying the the rod for what it is a casting machine and fish hauler then you really are an amateur I'm proud and still happy to promote this rod as the best 10wgt out there for pike on the fly and will continue to do so and you cant argue with the people that use it click the picture below to go see

-----

Damon Keuhl's PIKESABER caught Muskie
(while out with guide brad bohen)

you got to hand it to uncle Greg at piketrek he just keeps pushing the boundaries of fly tying check out the new gill plates he has now they are a a pretty cool colour and i can think of a few applications that i could do with them on plain white fibres and silver eyes oh yes but that's one for later , if you don't want to wait and want to go order some then click the pic to go direct to them , while your there check out beechys fast sinking putty to turn your floating patterns into submarines

the weather here just know is a nightmare to say the least and some parts of the country being battered by gale force winds here included i decided today to have a look back over my year in pictures and stuff and although the last couple of months i haven't been out too much due to my wife having exams and trying to juggle her need to study and my other work i do i found time a little precious , of course all that stopped a few weeks ago when she took her finals so with that out the way i was going to be able to sneak a few sessions in well that's what i had planned the weather had other planes

now to cap it all I've been offered a lot of extra work but that's no bad thing as its mostly evening shifts so i can still get out during the day (when this bloody weather calms down and the other really cool thing is if i wanted to i could fish for a couple of hours while actually heading to work that sounds like a bloody great plan to me

-----------------

so back to reminiscing i just had to stick this video on from may when i just had the greatest time in Vermont with my bro roadkill Kenny this morning was particularly hot as you can see from the amount of fish hitting the surface and this was like 6am or something stupid , this morning i caught a blinking ton of different species i had a big bowfin size my leg up for a bite (that was a feckin scary evil looking thing of a fish ) i swear this fish knew i was mortified scared senseless as i was up to my backside in the water in just my shorts and a pair of crocs wet wading i swear i though my child bearing days was over (sorry sue at the store lol) i also had a large sucker (cross between a barbel and a grass carp) come right in and sit on my feet as i was fishing madness

-------------

so just take a look at the craziness of the fish in this video ,and you'll not be surprised that I'm going back for 14 days next year and really cant wait to catch up with all the dam fine folks i met up with before and new Friends I've yet to meet yes sir its going to be fun

theres some great fly tying blogs out there and a new one has surfaced with some really nice patterns that im looking forward to following check the guy's out by clicking the picture to go to there blog .............

so with the weather forecast tonight for severe gales I'm off to batton down the hatches

later folks

dave

(a cave in scotland)

new materials and stuff

so if you wanna lay your hands on some off pike snacks then head over to http://www.deercreek.co.uk/--NEW---Pike-flies---Big-Game.html

and you'll be able to purchase a few patterns from myself and some other top guys the flies i do are not mass produced each one is tied by me and therefore limited so get on over and some fluff , keep a regular look out on the site as ill be doing lots more but they will be limited edition

-------------------

gliss and glint fibre plus is a new material from deercreek its similar to sf fibre but seems somehow to be a lighter and softer than the sf fibre this means particularly if you using a hollow tie or high tie you'll be able to get an even bigger lighter fly than you could before , I'm experimenting with it but so far it gets my vote

there is currently 5 colours available and it costs a quite amazing £2.69 per pack i think this will be a sure fire winner

so what did i tie well i used an ice white and lemon sherbert to create this classic pattern although you cant tell with my fantastic photography (yer right) it has a lovely flash running through it


another one this time a rainbow trout kind of colour and I've used a black sharpie pen to add some break up of colour , I'm looking forward to playing with it a bit more great stuff


if you haven't checked it out take a look at pike adventures blog , hes got his son tying flies now aww how cute is that , but cute as it may be i cant help but think that his son will be making flies while Mr capsey spend more time on the water testing them lol good plan bro
-------------

on another note a freind and fellow fly fishing head case drew price has started his own blog click here for the link

http://dponthefly.blogspot.com/2010/11/introduction.html?spref=fb

now drew is a guide for field and stream and has a fantastic record for catching fish and im really excited at whats to come once he works all this blog thing out sign up and follow his blog you wont be disappointed

-------
so ill see ya in a few days as I've got mega loads to do flies buzzing around inside my head and patterns that i really need to make

tight lines Friends

a great cause please take a look

Pike Fly Selections in aid of Casting for recovery UK & Ireland
(a very worthwhile cause check out Keith Passants auction)

------------

click on a picture to go direct to the auction on ebay and please dig deep this is for such a worthy cause

------------

from the ebay auction

About this charity:
Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland is a non-profit, support and educational program for women who have or have had breast cancer.

Another Fantastic Item in aid of

Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland

A fantastic set of 14 Pike Flies
Hook sizes Vary from 1/0 to 6/0 and are tied with a variety of Deer Creek materials

Donated by The Pike Fly Fishing Association of Great Britain and tied by

Dave Lindsay

The flies were donated by the PFFA as a raffle prize for the 24 hour Fly-tying Marathon undertaken at the BFFI over the weekend of the 30th and 31st of October by Keith Passant.

I decided they would raise more money by Auctioning them off.

Every penny raised from this auction will go to the charity

Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland

To give you an idea of value these flies retail at anything from £2.65 to £3.95 each

Dig deep folks. You know it makes sense

There is a similar batch of these on my other items and again its all going to CfR

Thanks and good luck
----------------------------------

please get bidding people and show you care , if you dont want to bid then please help by posting a link on your website,blog or forum

dave lindsay

easy,cheap and deadly for predators

first up got to give a shout out to the chaps at piketrek who have back in stock there range of fly lines there are very cheap but are top quality if you want to know more here's the link to some more info and how you can purchase them

so yesterday i was talking about doing some marabou flies something i used to tie all the time for the simple reason they caught me a massive amount of fish in fact my biggest ever pike on the fly a river Trent beast of 25lb was caught on a red and white marabou bait fish they work for the simple reason of theres so much bloody movement in them . the fly below was tied way back in January 2006 and this was a more advanced version of the basic marabou fly and i was tying basic marabous for pike for years before that

so progressing on from the fly above in terms of easy tying and what can be accused with just a couple of feathers we have a little yellow bait fish that's tied with just 2 yellow marabou feathers yes just 2 feathers the eye is just a 9mm googly eye that's been painted black and glued on simple as that and let me tell you it is a devastating fly to use .

i am as guilty as anybody for probably making way to nice looking pike flys but you know new materials come along and you get sucked up into trying to produce fantastic looking flies with these new materials and you tend to lose your roots a little you know you caught loads of fish on these flies so why on earth would you dump these fish catching patterns and move on to other materiel's i suppose its the same as going out and buying a new TV what happened did your old TV stop playing channels well i don't know but its good fun all the same so for today i decided to revisit a couple of patterns , i have done a step by step as well for those who are new to fly tying and ill post this tomorrow as i need to put it all together
-------------------
so materials well not a lot really some 4/0 hooks , marabou from deercreek , a bit of your chosen flash colour and the eyes from piketrek , and that's pretty much it so if you tune your browser back tomorrow you ll get a full step by step this will be of more interest to those who are interested in maybe starting out fly tying than the more seasoned fly tier although saying that it just may give give you a few ideas if you do already tie flys

3 flies done in around 15 Min's including the epoxy you really cant go wrong with these patterns a simple white marabou with some flash built in and a little perch pretty much go to flies for a lot of people especially in the UK and another bonus about these flies is the fact the materials are so cheap i mean marabou is a couple of quid a packet and eyes are pence so , if you have a water that's particularly snaggy you could make up a dozen patterns for a few quid and not worry too much if you lose a couple on underwater snags although none of us like to lose tackle sometimes its where the razor gang hang out so sometimes you just have to get into there hood to get em and that means sometimes you lose gear but at least its not an expensive pattern or one that took you an hour to make
------

a close up of the head and something that you really don't need to do if you don't want to is epoxy the eyes this fly will work just as well if you were to just glue the eyes down i like the little bit of extra weight in the heads to impart more action in the fly so i drop some epoxy in the eyes to achieve this but gluing the eyes is just as good you'll still get the action of the fly and truth be known this flys catching ability is in the way the feather moves in the water not the weight of the head sometimes i just like to mess about for the sake of it , human nature i suppose to try and improve things

a perch version

all I've done with this is just added a black feather after the green to give the illusion of a stripe , the possibility's are endless with colour combos and eye colour so you can match pretty much anything bait wise that your chosen predator feeds on in your local water , so dig down through all that new funky material you have and tie with some marabou and do it old school I'm sure you ll love the result and if you haven't tied with it before then your really missing out on a great fish catching fly that really looks the business in the water , but don't just take my word for it give it a go

A GREAT SCOTTISH BREAKFAST

--------

i decided to make my darling wife breakfast in bed this morning (i need some new materials) so i cooked up a lovely chilly mushroom and cheese omelet with baked beans so after i had served it up i was bloody hungry myself i was just going to have some toast but after cooking hers i needed something fried , so i peared into the fridge and there on a shelf was some flat sausage so into the frying pan it went , as i was cooking it ken from pike adventures called me unfortunately my sausage was just ready so i had to cut the conversation short (sorry bro) but he did ask me what the hell i was cooking and take a picture so for the dumb assed redneck here is my breakfast this morning

-------

firstly you need to butter up a couple of bits of bread and fry up a couple of bits of Lorne sausage , for those who don't known Lorne sausage is just flat square sausage meat and is well used in Scottish breakfasts and being square it doesn't fall out the sandwich when you bite into it it also tastes fantastic with an egg on top

so usually ill put an egg on top but today i had some baked beans left from my wife's breakfast so i had those on top just a case of spreading them over the top of the sausage and add a little salt , i now use sea salt because the flavour is miles better than normal mass produced salt

and there you have it a dam fine Scottish breakfast snack and ill tell you if you have this for breakfast you wont want anything else for at least 12 hours

tight lines till tomorrow fluffchuckers

dave mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

and remember folks a picture is worth a thousand words make sure you have a camera with ya when you go fishing

welcome to scotland

Scotland is a fantastic country to live in except for the fact of when the weathers rubbish its really rubbish been like that for the last week and a half now so not been able to get out and fish I'm far too long in the tooth now to go chuck massive flys on 4/0 and 6/0 hooks in near gale force winds er no thanks .....

--------

my local fish prefer long settled periods of weather so hopefully early next week they will be on the hunt again so in the meantime I've got time to play with some patterns so yesterday was quite a productive day in terms of getting a new step by step done and today i had planned to do a step by step for the easiest pike fly in the world to tie and one of the most deadliest but unfortunately the wife had other plans so i spent today doing some diy stuff that really needed doing so maybe tomorrow ill get that fly done in the meantime here's what i got up to yesterday

here's a little helpful tip for tying with synthetic fibres , once you have whip finished you fly get an ordinary lighter and heat the hook eye for a few seconds what this does is send heat down the hook shank and will melt the inside core of the fly slightly bonding everything to the hook shank as it melts giving you a really strong bomb proof fly

i love these hooks there as sharp as buggery strong as an ox and a great sized hook eye the only downside for me in this this country is that they are bloody expensive I'm paying nearly 6 pounds UK for a pack of 6 hooks but they are really great hooks


as you can see these hooks are perfect for the big baitfish patterns allowing plenty of movement of the fly in the water

a day for mucking about this time ive gone for some white ultra hair belly with a piketrek raptor fibre red core and a blue sf fibre back , blue is a much underused colour for pike flies and its a great colour for deeper water sometimes it just pays to experiment

these also turned up in the post today the thing about it is you travel a long way to fish sometimes and you don't always expect to catch trophy sized fish but it was a blast to do it the first one for the small mouth bass has a great story behind it , id only been in vermont for about 8 hours and 6 of those i was asleep so while i was out on the lake fishing with ken i decided to try a different fly ken shouts over to me "you got one of those things you tied with the dumbell eyes you showed me on skype last week " yes i replied you think they are worth a go "hell yea says ken" and first cast i had a trophy smallmouth on it so I'm well pleased to receive this in the post today

and the white perch caught while wet wading at dawn casting to rising fish with big woolly buggers what a fantastic morning that was but that's another story

so remember if your going out fishing this week be sure to make sure your camera is fully charged and in your bag you may just catch that fish of a life time

tight lines

Dave

(a cave in Scotland)

new step by step

tie a hardcore 2 from PFFA on Vimeo.