And the wind continues to
cause chaos
and yet another trip has been
blown out , I spoke to conan on Thursday about our Friday jaunt this
week and said the wind was showing well blowing and that doesn’t
bode well for being out on the water I never take any risks when
being out on the water , no fish is worth your life so I said id
check back with him Thursday evening and check accuweather which is
usually spot on for me , I checked it later and decided that we would
pencil in a 7am pick up as the wind seemed to be dying down , so when
I checked I decided that actually we would be ok if we kept close in
to the bank until the wind died off we would be able to fish without
taking any risks . As the wind direction was such that we would be in
shelter of a forest all day and we should be able to fish quite
comfortably so the call was made and the alarm was set.
As the alarm went off and in my
groggy pre awake state I heard a noise that sound like waves crashing
down on a beach then I was pulled from that dream when I realised
that the noise was actually the wind in the trees , I hauled my ass
outa bed and into the kitchen where in the pre dawn haze I saw the
trees bending over with the wind “oh bugger I thought” and got on
the internet and checked out the weather site and although it said it
was blowing 13mph winds at my location I knew that in fact it was
more like 25/30 and the tail end of a hurricane I decided that it
wasn’t worth risking so I called conan and gave him the bad news
but hey there’s always next week .
Size 14 wickams fancy er not
you may have seen the above
picture doing the rounds on the net this week, I find it quite
fascinating that a smallish rainbow trout would have a go at a mouse
and proves that what ive long said that if it eats other fish then
its a predator so if I turn up at your local fishery and start to
throw mouse patterns around please don’t accuse me of poaching the
pike I am in-fact fishing for specimen rainbow trout, if there
happens to be pike in the water and I accidentally catch one it
wasn’t on purpose honest............:-)
lots of tying this week
anybody following the blog will
know that me and the barbarian are doing bloody fantastic on my fried
alive flies , so ive decided to expanded on them a bit as I had a
mail from a client who had bout quite a few last week and wanted some
in the specific colour above so here ya go with his blessing to sell
his colours is the electric yellow peacock flash fried alive fly , I
really cant wait to try this one out as the colours and flash are
awesome oh you may like to know where my client is using these well
although I never give out specific locations he is in south America
and fishes them in fast rivers and streams........that’s probably
given you an idea anyway heres the link if youd like to purchase a
few
SUBBUGS TO THE PEOPLE
most of you also know that the
subbug is one of my favourite flies to tie but its not a fast fly to
make indeed some of the patterns can take up to an hour to make , I
take great pride in these hotter than hell flies and make everyone so
the action is perfect in the water , you may also know I dont usually
tie them commercially but im actually going to be doing a few very
limited editions for the guys over at vermont fly guys this will be
the only place in the world where you’ll be able to buy these .
Bug working
why am I doing these well to be
honest I dont supply very many places in fact I usually only supply
one shop in any one country with my flies and I only support fellow
cottage industries with my stuff im very proud to say I will never
tie for the man and my stuff will only go to the hands of fellow
fisher folk and ken over at VFG has used and always believed in
subbugs so that’s why there going there so should be hitting there
store mid October but again in very limited amounts were talking a
dozen of each pattern here’s the link to there site(or look em up
on facebook) if you wish to bookmark it, you know if your in the
market to buy flies here’s what I say and firmly believe , the best
quality flies no matter what you fish for come from guys that
actually fish for that species and tie flies for them , I mean say
you were going trout fishing and wanted some size 18 wickhams fancys
making you wouldn’t mail a guy that makes only marlin flies and has
never heard of a wickhams fancy would you or get buy a fly for
muskies from somebody who has never fished for them you’d go to
some guy who has actually fished for them aint rocket science,
old school classics
(the ken capsey fly porn
section)
way back in the distant past
when I only had maribou feathers and bucktails to play with and ep
fibre wasn’t available in the UK and I was pretty much the only guy
with a uk pike flies site on msn groups (remember them) there was
another guy who did a pike fly called a cronos and had his own group
for them, but that was it , well people saw this nifty 13inch pike
monster maribou fly called a “mauler” this was a donkey of a fly
and a real chuck and duck fly but for all its difficulty in casting
this waterlogged monster looked amazing in the water it would hang in
the water and puff when you stopped it tied on 2 single hooks with a
length of wire in between the 2 hooks to give it the length this
really was a killer fly and and my best seller for many years , I
think im going to go back and explore this pattern again for old
times sake what do you think
Hook storage
I get through a lot of hooks I
tie a lot of different patterns on different kinds of hooks and
different sizes , even different colour hooks , I tie for small
predators in freshwater and I tie for monster saltwater predators so
I do need to keep stuff fairly organized and ive found that these
boxes are perfect for the job , and all they are business card
holders bog standard nothing special 7 quid for 50 on ebay bargain
and if you use sharpie pens to write on them you can always just wide
it with a damp cloth and its comes off straight away ready for the
next hook best storage solution ive found for me anyway …...
OK and so to fishing well me and
the bearded barbarian finally got a day out without force 20 winds
and geared up with great haste when we got to the loch , just before
we were about to load the boat another car pulled up and a chap
called jj got out and had a chat with us (conans grayling was
defiantly bigger mate) he actually recognised me from my you tube
tying videos so we had a chat about that and I gave him one of my
infamous fried alive patters to try and we parted ways , he was
fishing the shore and we were fishing the boat so wed see him at some
point
on the loch
the loch was well down as they
were working on the dam so a lot of shore line was visible that id
never seen before which was quite interesting but the down side was
that with no flow out of the loch there was a largish build up of
algae which made things a bit hard to say the least , its not
impossible to catch fish in fact my biggest from there came when it
was like this to a black subbug on a sinking line but you really have
to preserver which is what we did and frustratingly enough we
actually had a few missed hits which on a slow day can be very
frustrating to miss them .
Eventually towards the end of
the day I had a small jack which saw pity on me and put up a spirited
fight I let out a sigh of relief as I slipped it back into the murky
depths , we drifted down that bank and the fish finder found a
massive concentration of fish although they could have been anything
it was worth putting the anchor down and covering them as there would
bound to be predators lurking around them but despite our best
efforts we couldn’t catch , as it was near to finish time we
decided to troll (purists look away now) a couple of big frankin
flies around to the dock in hope of a bonus fish .
Along one of these banks we came
across jj throwing fluff so as we levelled with him we slowed the
electric down to 1 and asked how he was doing
me – how you doin
jj – had 5 biggest 15lb
me – outstanding what
flies were they taking
jj - the one you gave me
this morning
me – F@@K
JJ – what did you say
it was made from
me – I didnt
no im not bitter im glad
somebody did ok and chuffed actually that the fried alive did the
damage again but still bloody hard going , there was a few trout
anglers out also today and they didn’t do anything either so wasn’t
just us I suppose it was a case of all the flies and no idea today
and let me tell you I threw some strange looking beasts today
including my new dead weird tube fly that’s a cross between an
intruder and a baitfish (more on that later)
a fish
actually the barbarian is quite
an accomplished angler as this picture of the “ lady of the stream”
shows and some of the flies he makes for these are quite works of art
ill be raiding his box when we go trouting , although we are pretty
much coming to the end of the season for a lot of things but ill
still be getting out after anything I can as long as there’s no ice
on the water we do however have a whole heap of very cool stuff to
look forward to next year and for me a couple of the main ones are
chasing dorado in the med and finally getting back out to the states
for some serious top water fish porn .
But my next major trip will be
the long trip south to take part in the piketrek predator cup on
frisby lakes October 20th this is going to be a cracker of
an event and I know will throw up quite a few surprises on the fly
how do I know that , well I used to have a season ticket for the
place so im well aware of what lurks in its depths and the species
that will take a fly , get on over to the piketrek site and book your
place .
So with that im going to leave
you with another of the barbarians brilliant photos which I call
falling in love is crap
till next time
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)
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