Tuesday 7 August 2012

swivels and eels

LETS BE CAREFULL OUT THERE
Yup fishing near electricity is dangerous theres a reason those signs are there so do yourself a favour and keep well away from them.
Fluffing for a great cause

The Piketrek Predator Cup
The guys at piketrek are pleased to announce that they will be hosting there first ever Pike and Predator Fly fishing competition at Frisby Water Park near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire on Saturday 20th October 2012.
 The event will be held in aid of two really deserving causes so we hope you will come along and join in on what promises to be a fantastic day out for everyone. There will be lots of prizes to be won and the angler who wins the event with the biggest overall weight of fish caught will receive the Piketrek Predator Trophy and a Pikesaber Pike Fly Outfit worth £275. The angler in second place will receive a Pikesaber worth £189, and third place will get a Piketrek Super-Light 10-12 weight fly reel worth £95.
There will also be another trophy "The Len Spencer Cup" and a tackle prize given to the angler who catches the biggest pike of the day, and we expect this to won with a very big pike indeed!
There will also be a raffle with lots of prizes to be won so everyone stands a chance of winning something!
 Full details are to be found on the COMPETITION PAGE on the left hand column of the website . There will also be notification in the National angling press.
The entrance fee is set at £20 and all entrants will have to pre-book their place so that we do not over-subscribe the maximum field of 50 entrants. Spectators will be welcome on the day and will also be able to enter the raffle held in the Sailing Club after the event during the prize-giving ceremony. Breakfast cobs/rolls/buns etc. will be available before the event starts so there is no excuse for not turning up! The venue will open at 7am and a walk-off watercraft draw will commence at 8am, fishing will end at 3pm. Entry will be open to all, but strictly on a first-come first-served basis to make things fair for all. Please give us your support to make this a success and provide much-needed help to our two chosen causes, Macmillan Cancer Relief and Steps, the charity that provides care for children born with bone and foot problems.

We love the idea of this completion and so far there is also prizes offered from www.deercreek.com who will be offering some uv kits as prizes, myself from this blog will be offering up some of my flies and the guys over at hookeye and fly will also be offering predator fly tying hook prizes there will be more sponsors to come and a full list will be on the blog before and after the event , if youd like to offer up any prizes please mail me at dlindsay28@googlemail.com
A great thing about this event is that if you catch it on a fly it counts and the other thing is it is a very worthy cause so get involved I will be traveling down with some of the Scottish lads and it would be great to meet some folks
Get signed up
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sandeels
 The sand eel is a small eel-like fish which swim in large shoals. They are an abundant and important component of food webs in the North Atlantic.
The sand eel is a bait fish that everyone who fishes in the salt should know. Why? The answer is very simple, because the sand eel often catches more fish than any other bait. Exactly why the sand eel is such a popular pray among the predators in the sea is hard to say. But it is a fact that you can catch almost all species when you have a live sand eel at the end of your line.
What a bloody life being a sandeel pretty much everything wants to eat you not only below the surface but above it as well birds love em as well,
The sandeel is a very effective bait fish for almost all popular saltwater sports fish in Europe from Spain to Scotland, and in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. Sand eel is the first choice prey for popular species such as trout, salmon, bass, mackerel, garfish and Pollack. so this is a pattern that you should really have in your fly box not only does it catch loads of saltwater species its also really good for a whole number of freshwater species as well I think its because they mistake it for mabey a minnow of some kind of fry but it certainly does good
The guys over at the internet’s fastest growing online site fastflies  has now a massive range of sandeels made by me so if you want some quality hand made in scotland flies then head over there and take a look

If you’re wondering why I push these company’s well its quite simple really, I truly believe a home grown made in the uk fly is far superior to anything coming out of Africa  and fast flies like the guys at deercreek have home grown tiers make there flies and they actually care about what you buy and what your buying , don’t be fooled by cheap fly by night merchants that sell cheap flies made in Africa or china these flies are garbage , this is why I support home grown industry from good honest likeminded fisherfolk
Not a mud hut or Kenyan fly tier in sight

The cave last week full of sandeels
(THESE WILL BE AVALIBLE ON WWW.FASTFLIES.COM ON THE WEEKEND OF 11TH AUGUST)
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On the subject of sandeels
For those folks that tie their own the brains over at deercreek have been burining the midnight oil with their design master who they let out of the padded cell every so often and probe the darkest corners of his mind to produce some stunning items I mean we have had their tack free uv which unlike bugshite really is tack free (we saw a fly produced with this stuff at the bffi so we can say that with confidence the stuff is not tack free so don’t waste your time) the awesome looking fishheadz and just when you thought it was safe to go back to the vice they go and produce sandeel fishheadz these photo realistic headz are just too stunning for words.
I received a pack to try the other day and ive only had a short time to play with them as I’ve been busy at my real job but ive managed to sneak a couple out
The fly above incorporates the largest size in the range and has a gliss and glint plus body and a diamond hard tack free coat around the head there is a full step by step over at http://www.spanglefish.com/tyingpredatorflies/
This sandeel above has been done with the medium sized head and uses a simple combination of bucktail a little flash and a barred hackle feather easy job and a great looking couple of flies
A full step by step is avalible over at my fly tying site http://www.spanglefish.com/tyingpredatorflies/index.asp?pageid=412606
Avalible from the crazy people over at www.deercreek.co.uk
Now folks not resting on their laurels and while they had the mad guy out the cellar rigged up to the ideas probe he has come up with these amazing pike sized gliss n glint plus dubbing brushes, now many many years ago even before the big corporate trout companies had thought about pike flies and jumped on the band wagon to make a fast buck I was making bullheads these were big lightweight flies that when stripped and paused had the effect of a topwater glidebait these things looked deadly in the water

I still make these flies now and again and do have a load in a box the trouble with them is that they take a while to produce as there’s a lot of steps to the head so imagine my delight when I was sent this picture by the crazy creek guys dude im so all over these as ill be able to match up some wicked combos can’t wait for these.. of course ill let you know when there available and details ……
So my week so far has been a week of sitting listening to planet rocks thumping heavy metal at the vice and churning out a whole heap of sandeels , next week sees me going back to some monster musky flies for a client , im going to enjoy that , what im also going to do is try and do a gliss and glint bullhead with just the materials I have (not on a dubbing brush) and when I get the brushes ill compare the times taken to make them should be interesting ……
A big well done to my friend from Shetland artist paul bloomer who caught this 20lb+ pike from a mighty Scottish loch this week it’s a really special fish as paul doesn’t have pike up in the islands (although it is trout heaven) so getting down here once a year and catching is great but getting a 20+ is even more special well done mate you deserve it.
Oh and did I mention it was on a pikesaber, the idiot abroad who said it couldn’t handle a big pike can now hang his head in shame what is it with people ….jez, so now in the spirit of millions wasted on the Olympics in London paul gets the gold medal
And from our fellow fly fishing friends who have Tourette’s absolutely f****N outstanding you luckY C*** F****N A********S
On the subject of folks catching fish a big shout out to my friend out in mexico Rhett schober who this outstanding gt on one of my patterns outstanding fella

  And on a final note swivels
Everybody has their own ideas on end tackle I’ve tried absolutely everything out there trust me been there got the t-shirt , if you one of these people that like to only use one or 2 flies a day then tying them on is obviously going to be best for you with something like a jam knot . With flexible wires liken authanic this tying flies isn’t much of a problem these days but if you’re a fly tying nut like me then you want to change flies quite a lot you need a quick change system .

Swivels obviously are the way to go and for many years after a few false starts with various links I settled on the American cross lock , this did me well for a lot of years but this lock did have its limitations as some hookeyes wouldn’t fit on the bend in the clip , so after quite a few years of using these I then was browsing an American saltwater fly fishing site and some of the anglers on there were using the coast lock swivels when targeting larger predatory species on the fly so I ordered some from the states (there were none available in this country at that time) as soon as I got them I noticed they were a lot lighter and after a few months use I was impressed enough to keep using them and do away with the crosslock type

So those have served me very well for many years but still had a few limitations with hookeye size , so then I received a mail shot from the chaos at pikeshak with some new items  they had in stock and I noticed that they had a new type of swivel(well I’ve not seen them before) that looked interesting so they were duly ordered on sunday evening and arrived on Tuesday morning (always outstanding service from pikeshak) so this is the first look ive had and im really impressed so far with the design.
Of course the ultimate test is actually catching fish on them so im now ready to get on the water this week with fellow fluffing jedi and pike convert conan so looking forward to that as the weather is supposed to be good in fact so good I may have to get the subbug rod out happy days
Mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

1 comment:

John Whittington said...

Hi Dave; I've been using those Fastach clips for a while now; available from Dave Lumb. You need to match the size to the hook eye but they are pretty good. John