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
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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
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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

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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

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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