Friday 25 March 2011

teaching predator fly tying

Friend of mine and fishing buddy Stevie decided he really wanted to start tying his own flies for pike and after being run over by a bin lorry last week (don't ask) he finally got round to getting me round to show him a few things , id offered loads of times and Stevie was dead keen so with a few weeks spare i went to his yesterday to show him a few simple but devastating pike catching patterns and the most important thing easy to tie so below are the flies i tied and Stevie copied as i tied them

first i wanted to show him how you could make a fantastic looking fly with a great profile with minimal effort and material this fly has only only 6 pieces of material yes 6 pieces that's it , now think about that the fly above is made from slink and flash for the belly and pink sf fibre for the back , now in this country i get mine from orvis and its around £5.60 a pack and almost the same for slink n flash so that's over £10.00 UK for 2 colours so you want to get the most out of it and the fly above shows great value for money ill do a step by step next week just to show how easy it is to do and how little material you need , Stevie tied a great version of the fly above and he was very happy with his result , i think it gave him the confidence that its not really that hard when your shown how ....................


Stevie had nipped to orvis to get a couple of packs of sf and slink n flash as he didn't have time to order online as it was short notice (he didn't know he was going to be run over) so when he called me he said he had bought some ep as well so what i did was take the same material down to show him how to do it ..
i really wish i had somebody to show me all those years ago when ep was only available via mail order in the states , nobody here stocked anything like it so i was really having to look at American patterns for saltwater to give me some idea what i was doing there wasn't even any step by steps back then . so the thing with ep is to use very very sparsely little is more with this stuff i wish id known that back then .
so i decide to show Stevie a very easy to make perch type pattern with again only 7 pieces of ep Stevie made one and again was impressed with what he had done , it was quite funny to see him doing what id done all those years ago with taking too much fibre and saying OK now split that again and again and your there with the amount when you can see your fingers through it clearly then you got the right amount

now that he had done that i took him right back to the first fly he made and showed him how to do a simple hotcore fly exactly the same steps as the first fly but added in some red e.p sparkle again Stevie got it pretty much spot on and picked it up very quickly



next up i showed him that you can mix and match some materials the fly above again is very very very simple with again 6 pieces of material , can you see a theme with the colours yes Stevie is a great fan of the red head and white body fly and as he has confidence in that colour any fly he makes and throws in anger he has going to have faith in the colours , and once he gets his first fish that's the flood gates open to fly tying craziness
so to end of a very productive 3 hour teach in i showed him how to do a half and half deceiver . id made some for him a few years ago and he really liked them so i showed him how it was done and the fly he tied was his best of the session so i expect to see a whole load of these in his boxes over the next few weeks .......

so that was that for yesterday in fact if i hadn't had to go to work i think i still would have been there now a very enjoyable tying session and great to see somebody picking something up really quickly and getting well into it , Stevie its all down hill now buddy

mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

5 comments:

Piketeaser said...

Good looking flies,thumbs up :)

J and M Flies said...

Great looking flies man. This is the stuff I am trying to tie now. I fish for smallies and largemouth but none of them reach more than say 18 inches. I am looking to make some streamer and bait fish patterns like these but say in sizes 8 and 10. Cant wait to see your SBS.

Jeff
www.gotflyfishing.blogspot.com

Jota said...

Hi Dave!!!
Great ties! And as usual, great tying tips!!
Thanks mate!
José

dave lindsay said...

hey jose thanks buddy

dave lindsay said...

hey jose thanks buddy