tying in rattles on big flies

since discovering those great people over at piketrek had some very cheap but brilliant rattles on there site I've been playing quite a lot with them now they speak for themselves as a great product as I've reviewed them once already for the blog and the pffa site http://www.pffa.co.uk/ and they in my book are still up there as one of the best rattles out there for A the price and b the fact that they are tooth proof if you need rattles for your flies then get over there sharpish

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so i had a mail from a couple of far Eastern client of mine who are fly fishers hi aiko(mainly salt) bought aload and loved them however he was not quite sure the best way to use them on octopus style hooks and large flies , well its actually a very easy tie .

having first tied in your first length of material in this case white slink n flash you then whip on with half a dozen wraps of thread around the lip of the rattle you can see the position of the rattle from the picture above , (if your concerned about off balancing the fly don't be as the weight equals its self out when you add the epoxy eyes later) once you have wrapped the thread around the lip add a touch of varnish to secure you can add superglue but I've found this to be unnecessary when it come to this as the varnish secures well enough but its down to your own preference

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what you then do is add 3 pieces of your belly and side colours and hollow tie in again just a few turns to secure around the lip

then place in your back colour (in this case Steve Farrah's sf fibre in wild olive) which is a great all round bait fish back colour no matter where you are , one thin piece is hollow tied back and secured with a couple of wraps of clear mono thread in the lip of the rattle , you could of course just add all 4 bits of material at the same time but i prefer at this stage to secure the 3rd and get the right sitting of the fibre then add the 4Th

in front of the rattle I've added some orange spectrum twist palmered it to the front of the hook then back again to build up a sloping body and the orange really does show through , once you have got the spectrum on (you can use any chenille i just prefer the UV spectrum colours far brighter than normal chenille) you hollow tie another 4 slight shorter sections in front of the rattle then whip down and then add another 4 shorter again sections and then add an eye
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the end result is an absolutely fantastic looking fly with the added rattle factor , i now tie one with a rattle and one without for the simple reason that adding a rattle isn't the be all end all of attractor flies i tend to use them for pike when the water is slightly more colored than normal or if the fish are playing really tough and are hugging the bottom a very slowly fished fly with rattle can be deadly especially in winter it can make the difference between catching and not catching and in winter one fish can boast your confidence no end and stop you going home early

the fly above is done with exactly the same method except i have use 4 less peaces of material and a different colour eye , straight away you can see the difference in profile this one has a far skinnier roach type profile whereas the one above has a thicker fatter profile that's done just by using less materials simple and there is also a rattle in the same place

i played with a profile made from slightly thicker sections of piketreks body materials and I'm very impressed with the result although it doors look like the material is masking the hook it actually isn't and when a fish chomps down on it the material flattens up against the body , maximum material flare maximum hooking

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with temps at -15 just now not to much fishing is going to be going down till the new year so expect the usual fly tying exploits over the coming few weeks , i will be in a couple of weeks heading out to but a new camera so thanks for persevering with the shite camera phone

see you all soon

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)