on the crease

we had had a pretty good week this was my last day the water was like a millpond , we decided to try and bag a last min large mouth before i headed for home ken fired up the engine and we cruised for 20 Min's across the big lake to a shallow area , the water was crystal clear and like an aquarium as we slowly made our way toward the shore and rush clumps that would no doubt hold fish i gazed at the hundreds of small fish darting out of the way of the boat , small blue gills , pumpkin seeds , small bass and god knows what else darting out of the way lake Champlain is a truly remarkable fishery and a place i truly get excited to go and fish id go as far as to say for the fly fisher Vermont is heaven on earth

so we started to cast around fishy looking areas and ken was having a bit of success with his gurgler fly i was slightly deeper with a small bait fish imitation that the fish wernt overly excited about so with ken taking hits on the surface i decided to dig around in my box and chucked on a crease fly a simple silver crease with a rattle in i cast a long line and did a short strip pause retrieve , as i lifted the line and started to false cast i heard a very loud crash behind the boat and ken going dude large mouth land your fly in the ring , it was one of those times everything came together i was at the end of the cast so on the back cast i just let the line fall i looked round to see my crease had landed bang in the center of the ring where the large mouth had hit the bait everything was perfect i did a fast strip and pause as the fly hit the water and on the pause the bass hit the fly ken shouted "fish on brother perfect cast" and after a spirited fight i had the bass not a massive fish but i had done what i had come to do and what a way to finish the trip

that was nearly a year ago and i still look back and wished i had used more crease flies on that trip , don't get me wrong i had like 251 fish in a week i was well happy one fly alone counted for 71 of those but there was circumstances on that trip that i reckon i should have used more of them this year I'm in the big green for 2 weeks so that's so going to happen

so this year has seen the rise of the realistic eye firms like www.deercreek.co.uk have been stocking these fantastic looking eyes , although I'm not 100% convinced that it really makes a massive amount of difference to fish catches you cant deny that they really do sex the flys up and well you know the old saying about flies catching more anglers by design than fish , some people may differ but its just an opinion , i have to say that these new eyes do look bloody good

so i got to work on a few patterns , ill always make 3 , 4 or half a dozen flies as i always end up giving a few of them away to Friends fellow anglers so ill tend just to sit down and churn them out factory style there is something strangely therapeutic about doing these flies and i always just love the end result

pretty much one of the best all round colours for crease flies is silver with a black back this imitates so many different bait fish species in so many places around the work both in fresh water and in saltwater you really cant go wrong with it , usually i have then with a plain red epoxy eye but i got some sexy new eyes (click the pic above) from pike trek to play with so i added these real roach eyes and look pretty good , i think they would also be pretty hot on a green crease fly that ill try later

I've also done some in red with a red stripe and the silver eye really makes a great strike point they really stand out , i remember way back in my lure fishing days i used to do really well with a red and black Berkley lure on a local river so hell may as well do a crease version to play with.

i played about for a bit and decided to do a little perch type pattern and i cant help but really like what i come up with , threes many tutorials on the Internet for making these flies just YouTube crease fly , i like to use epoxy as a thin coat once i have stuck the body on the hook i then wait for it to dry then add any markings and the eyes before adding another coat to finish off , adding epoxy toughens the fly up and protects against teeth.

i used to use the standard 5 min epoxy for crease flies these days with advances in technology i use 2 UV products one is from pike trek called mr bond the other is from deer creek and is called diamond hard resin with the bonus that these UV resins are lighter than traditional epoxy so don't add that much weight to the flys , although you can by using normal epoxy get a nice slow sinking crease fly if you use enough , but for me the UV resins are good enough for what i want

as you can see from the picture above even with 2 layers of resin and a rattle inside the fly (the term fly is used very loosely) sits just under the surface how sexy does that look just imagine if you a predator looking for a meal mmmmm would you turn your nose up at that .

i still have some ideas in my head on colours and stuff so I'm going to go play some more

if you find yourself with enough money to jump on a flight to Vermont and you want to experience some of the best fishing on the planet then book yourself a trip with Vermont's finest guide , drew price is really a great all round fly fisher and his results speak for themselves here's a link to his site

http://www.drewpriceonthefly.com/

c ya later

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)