A MATTER OF LIFE AND FLUFFCHUCKING

Fishing food
I touched on the subject a few months back about fishing food with the humble bacon sandwich and how to cook it , there is however more you can do on the bank without having to take a full kitchen you . you maybe one of these guys that likes to stick a plastic box with a couple of cheese and ham sandwiches nothing wrong with that and for the fly fisher walking the banks it goes easily into a rucksack with a bag of crisps and a flask of coffee,

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but of course theres way more you can do I mean in the winter there is the option of taking a smaller flask as well and just having hot water in it and have one of the many kinds of add to hot water ready in 2 Min's noddle dishes that are out there and there really is something for everyone flavour wise and if you live in a big city you'll no doubt have a Chinese supermarket near you and these places have a great selection of add to hot water noddles and you get twice as many and twice the flavour in a tub and usually the tub is made from cardboard so Eco friendly as well and taking a small flask is little extra weight and worth it for a hot meal on a cold bank side
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of course you may not be that adventurous when it comes to food but there is also a solution for you as well to get a good hearty meal on the bank , if you get one of those plastic lock down boxes from you local pound/dollar store they are pretty much instant dinner bowls and here's what I sometimes make

tastes better than it looks bacon and potatoes
tinned bacon grill / or spam / or your fav tinned meat
instant mashed potato powder
knob of butter / salt

all you need to do is this the night before , cube up your meat of choice and lightly fry till golden then drain on kitchen paper leave to cool , pour your serving of potato powder into your box then add a knob of butter add your now cooled meat cubes and that’s it all you need to do is pour on your hot water at the backside and youve got a really satisfying meal and it does make all the difference on a cold day ,
off course you can mess around with this recipe by adding different spices or meats all you need is you basic powder and hot water and a hearty meal is yours for little night before prep

thoughts of the salt
really if your going to go fly fishing in UK waters the only kind of fly you should really need is a sand eel pattern pretty much anything that swims in UK waters will eat it some parts of our coastline in the UK are not really explored much by the bait brigade , why well quite simply there can be bothered most of the time walking any distance from there cars not really due to laziness (although true in a few cases) but because if your fishing rough ground your going to lose a fair bit of lead and tackle so you need to carry spares , the lure and fly angler is a bit better set up as usually a small rucksack and one rod is all that’s called for and you can cover the miles with little kit , so theres a lot of UN flied water out there especially round the cost of Scotland

its all in the pattern
so the pattern itself isn't really a complicated one indeed no couple of different colours of buck tail , a few strands of lime crystal flash , deercreek gator eyes and some Mr bond and bang you have a pretty good imitation of a saltwater snack , the only thing I do out of the ordinary is to use clear mono thread this becomes invisible one Mr bond is added , I do for the most part keep this pattern at 3 to 4 inch's long as with the colours I favour it is also a great fly for other species anything from trout to pike to small mouths would have a munch on this and indeed in the bigger sizes with synthetics it does catch the odd musky or 3 try it

as you can see I've still not been able to get a new camera yet so you'll have to make do with camera phone shots but I'm guessing you'll get the idea OK as you can see nice little snacks in a box ready to go you can really churn a lot of these out in no time as with most thing sometimes fly tiers over complicate a basic idea that doesn't really need changed but that’s just what we do I'm already thinking about the next version you see I have a lake in VT with some bloody great big small mouths that I know will demolish these flies but that’s another story yet to come

the UV light box

bloody brilliant idea as you can see I have a line of sand eels curing I just apply Mr bond and stick am under means I can churn out more flies as I'm not sodding about with a uv torch which always runs out of batteries very quickly as well this way I just plug it in and off I go a far far better option than the torches but that’s just my opinion but I do know a few others that prefer the box as well , should you be so inclined to purchase one you'll find it at pike fly fishing mecca www.pikeflyrod.com the best pike only materials site out there and home to the mighty pikesaber fly rod the choice of experts

big is beautiful

of course i cant help myself and had to make a big version of the sand eel but funnily enough the fly above in slightly different colours caught one of Friends a really half decent musky so i know they work , the one above is a basic buck tail pattern on a 4/0 with a Mr bond head

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so with that and the week drawing to a close i can only wish for some un frozen water to fish as I'm dying to get out with old Friend Stevie again for some laughs but with the weather still looking on the -15 side I'm guessing that its not going to happen for a few weeks yet but when it does hell those fish are going to be hungry and up for it

tomorrow sees me putting some synthetics on iron again so will catch you after the weekend and if my bro checks in can you send me hoover Lady's address in the falls so i can get the package out to ya

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)