Sunday 11 March 2012

gliss and glint plus flies and a monster perch

GLISS N GLINT PLUS MONSTERS
Nick over at deercreek sent me some cool new colours of gliss and glint plus the wonderful light and sparkly material that creates some pretty amazing baitfish patterns without having to add in your own flash and let me tell you it looks pretty fantastic in the water, fished lazily with short strip and pauses it looks almost lifelike which is a reason I use a bloody lot of it.


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So I decided this time round to do something a bit different and well pretty much do some simple colours and see what I could come up with the gliss n glint plus



So first up was a couple of green colours with the back being just a shade darker the flash you can’t really make out in the picture but it runs all the way through the body . The hook is a 4/0 sakuma manta and the fly is around the 7 inch mark, nice baitfish size and actually looks very nice , sometimes you just know when something’s going to catch fish this is one of those patterns





As Sammy Hagar once said “red red I love red” reds a great colour and I’m sure you’ll know from experience that a red headed fly coupled with a white body is often a deadly combo for predators so I’ve tweaked upon that very idea and pretty much done an all red fly but has uv flash’s running through the whole fly .this fly although fairly large is ultra-light as I’ve used pretty much the bare bones of material on it this you can see because if you look you can pretty much see right through the thing , and I can say that it has a far better movement in the water than a bulky fly , this does look very natural and with short strip and pauses it really does look like a dying baitfish , of course the overlarge eye helps as well to give it just the correct amount of weight to impart that movement of a dying fish
A couple of more natural patterns with red gator eyes and a new colour of olive that will be hitting the deercreek site hopefully fairly soon

Another basic 1 colour pattern in pink gliss and glint plus with a uv head a very fast tie and a great looking little bait fish, pink again is such an underrated colour and a few times it’s a colour that’s saved the day for me on a couple of occasions, I suspect this may be a great little pattern for fly fishing in saltwater as well kind of got that smelt shape to it ……..



A basic blue herring colour and again an underrated colour for the pike angler blue, blue is one of those colours that is the last to disappear at depth so of course not only a great fly for saltwater fishing in depths up to around 100 feet but for the pike fly fisher it’s a fly that we know would stand a chance of catching fish over 50ft should you find yourself chasing fish in these depths the fly would be seen and if it can be seen then of course it can be attacked by predators


Same fly as above but I’ve added a green gliss and glint plus back to it just for something a bit different sometimes being a bit different can save the day


Talking about being different here’s a colour I’ve never used before a nice kind of rust colour, I’ve used it for the back of the fly and used a light pink for the body , what’s it supposed to mimic well to be honest nothing at all its just a combo of colours I’ve not used before and who knows it just may be that classic killer colour , that’s the fun of fly tying there a million variations on what you can tie up just go with what you fancy if your confident with what you have made and you think it looks like it will catch fish then well that’s half the battle .


Of course no ties would be complete without adding a couple of red and whites to the armoury, the white gliss and glint plus has a very nice stiffness to the material kind of stiffer than superhair but soft feeling like ep fibre and it moves lovely in the water which to be honest is why I bang on about it a lot well we are all out there to catch fish aren’t we and if it helps achieve that goal then brilliant here it is


As with a lot of my baitfish patterns these days I apply a coat of deercreeks tack free UV to the heads this give the eyes a little protection and add a little weight to the head which helps in the action of the fly, for those of you in the states that have mailed me about buying the tack free across the pond hopefully there will be a supplier there soon as soon as I know more I’ll let you know believe me it’s worth the wait.


So my Sunday at work ended up being very productive and to be honest I had a ball I was getting colour combos left right and centre I was really having a blast and totally in the zone a great place to be in and at the end of my shift I felt I had really achieved something, actually all I think I had really achieved was the fact that I may need to go out and get some more storage boxes for them, oh hell


So a second box of gliss and glint flies rears its head to be honest these flies look bloody awesome in the water which is why I have a couple of boxes of them and no matter where I go to fish I will always have at least one box of them in my bag give them a go you won’t be disappointed


Back subbugin
Deerhair to the metal



It’s getting to nearly that time of year when subbugs come out from under the stones and annoy the crap out of predators and it was in the back of my mind to start doing a few more when along comes a pal who wanted a couple to try, so no time like the present so I dived into the zone and did a couple for him there big and move a lot of water and have caught people a hellava lot of fish and no there not Dahlberg divers




the second of my friends bugs he wanted a red and white one also the red as you can see is more a muted red colour than a traditional red and white although the feather behind the head is , to be honest I’ve had more on the muted red than a bright red especially on sunny days in the summer not sure if its down to colour or the noise the things make subsurface that does the trick but one things for sure the bloody do the trick when it comes to predators .
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I remember once when I was out on a big loch in Scotland and had been trying all sorts of flies and methods all day to no avail I was pretty much on last knockings of the day when I decided to switch over to a fast sinking line and lead core leader and a bumble bee subbug of 8 inches in length and just float it off the bottom in 30ft of water well let me tell you that fly saved the day in that last hour I absolutely leathered the fish out , now I had fished the area before with nothing taking so it may well have been that the fish switched on to feed or it may well been the action and colour of the bug who knows but I do know that one other boat had one fish the entire day so I like to think it was the bug as its proved itself a few times around the world in hard conditions



Big shout out time
I’m privileged in life to have some great friends who know I call a spade a spade and don’t take crap from people and I tell it like it is, even though I get peoples backs up sometimes they know me for who I am as a person and fellow fly fisher, one of those people is the pffa membership sec Ernie firth.
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Now dear old Ernie has been around and been fishing since the time of the dinosaur’s and I think I’ve also know him that long and had the pleasure of blanking with him on more than one occasion in fact when I go south to fish with Ernie I sometimes don’t even bother taking flies with me not saying that he is a Jonah or anything but I’m not the first he’s blanked with on a boat, but to give him his credit he keeps at it come rain or shine (he doesn’t do ice and snow though) , so the last time I saw Ernie the awesome was back in November when I was down for the pffas annual fenland flyer and as per usual whenever I go down to see him ill dump a load of flies on him as a thank you for the roof bed and house ghost(although that’s another story) so in amongst these flies was a pattern I had made called a down and dirty minnow pretty much a fly for getting down through the layers and bounce around the bottom (oh err Mrs) so I gave some to Ernie to try whenever he felt like it .


So that was back in November and of course we both blanked at the flyer (no change there then) , I had spoken to Ernie last week and he told me he was heading out with Simon from http://www.pikeshack.com/ to fish one of Simons local rivers , well yesterday I got a very excited email and a few pictures from Ernie of a truly enormous perch of 4lbs that he caught on the down and dirty minnow , now this is an absolute cracker of a fish and to have caught such a fine specimen on the fly is a massive achievement I mean some people go most of their angling life’s searching for such fish and never seeing them , in fact this stretch of water where he caught it used to be my local stretch for many years and I had some encounters with very large fish following flies on this river but never been able to hook one up so massive congratulations to Ernie for this monster perch and truly a fish of a lifetime



Ernie I salute you buddy you are a fishing god


On that very happy note I bid you farewell as im off to get ready for a hit and run trip next week so tune in towards the end of the week to see how I did, hopefully a lot better than last week and one things for sure sub buggin action will be had
I’m on it
Mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

3 comments:

Col said...

Wow what a perch, fish of a lifetime!

Love the flies dave that white one with the redthroat looks really good!

The Jassid Man said...

Lovely flies! Be sure to tell us how they work out in fishing for large predators. Very nice perch too!

Have fun stocking up,
Mats Olsson

Unknown said...

Dave.

What is the down and dirty minnow pattern please?