sticklebacks and other stories

 FAVORITE TIERS PT 1

I thought id write over the coming weeks short pieces on tiers that I admire , something ive not really done before because I really dont go down the hero worship route I have tiers who I love there work and have been honing there skills for many many years , so to start with I present the first guy and this will go in no particular order over the coming weeks …...

BOB VEVERKA (USA)

 if you have never read or seen bobs book innovative saltwater flies then you’ve missed a gem, although bobs flies are aimed at saltwater species the flies can be adapted for uk predators , the book itself contains various tiers and a lot of the names you will know like terry combs , steve abel , dan blanton , jack gartside and a lot of unfamiliar names in the uk but still a dam fine read plenty of lovely glossy plates and clear pictures of the flies , a great book if you can find a copy buy it …....

I really like bobs way of tying and in a lot of ways its like my own finding great patterns for other species and adapting and updating them to your own needs , bob I tip my hat to you and try and find bobs braid sardine one of the greatest looking baitfish ever …....

again find this book and add it to your collection , if your ever suffering from tiers block a quick flick through this book will have you in a tying frenzy cheers again bob

 

 PLAYING WITH FLIES

start of the week DNA flies was the order of the order of the day , just messin around with a few ideas and using diamond hard tack free uv these are being done with perch in mind although the hook is a 2/0 dai reki because most places ill use this will have pike in , again love dna looks awesome in the water 

After id the trouty one I thought id try and see if I could do something that resembled a spawning male stickleback that inhabit my local although this fly wasn't quite what I wanted it still looked OK so I had to think of a couple of alternatives material and design wise . 

 Mk 1  

 I looked at doing these in gliss and glint plus but I didn’t have the colours I wanted so I went and dug around in my ep fibers drawer and chose a colour called tarpon streamer , a nice blend of colours that I could use marker pens on , and I used a deercreek gator eye on this one which matches the eye colour of the stickleback perfectly so the mark one was produced …........still not quite right though

MK 2 

 next I went on to a mullet colour ep fiber was a bit more happy with this but I was still not 100% happy , I had a vision in my head of a monster male stickleback that me and the destroyer saw from the boat last year so while I had the vision in my head I went a totally different route and left out the coloring on the sides and came up with something a bit simpler now this hit the spot and now im happy ep fire deercreek eyes and an orange sharpie pen perfect , better go tie a few more …........:-)

SPRING FISHING

 spring already blimey well me and the destroyer pencilled in a trip this friday (last week) and we were quite excited about a trip into new waters and ideas for him by the way of saltwater fly flyfishing , I was going to take him to a spot where I was sure he would have some fun with some pollock and probably a few bass as well and knock another couple of species of the 2013 hunt list ,

I checked the weather forecast on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday and it all looked pretty much the same as the picture above for friday and the fact that we would have a force 7 or 8 blowing into our faces while chucking with 7 weights was pretty much a no no if it had been blowing out to sea we could have done it but you just cant take risks with mother nature and especially in the sea so with heavy heart a fly tying day was arranged , although I say heavy heart its always good doing it and we both get a lot from it the destroyer new tying ideas and ways and me well I get to speak to a fellow human being for a day before being locked in my cave again .

And heres a couple I made  

BUGZ

HOOK – 8/0

BODY – olive maribou

FLASH – gold flashbou

EYES – christmas tree decoration

THREAD – phantom thread

SIZE – 7 inchs

MARIBUNNY

HOOK – 8/0

BODY – barred zonker strip

FLASH - gold flashbou

EYES – seaeyes with green gator eyes stuck on

THREAD – phantom thread

SIZE – 9 inchs

AND HERES A PIKE

 because im forgetting what they look like , this was caught by a customer in Ireland on one of my purple crystal minnows

I bid you farewell till next week when we are going fishing by the looks of it fingers crossed and a doughnut offering to the weather gods

mcfluffchucker

( a cave in Scotland)

life in the cave continues

 THERE'S SOME IDIOTS ABOUT

Ok so im going to say a few short words here , im not having a rant or anything im just really curious , as you may be aware I do a few videos now and again on youtube , you know just sharing the knowledge or for any kind of gain or reward , i just love to do what I do to share the knowledge and help people who are maybe new to the sport to tie a few flies and catch fish and that’s it , I don’t claim and never have claimed to be the next dogs bollox fly tier in fact in the past ive turned down some great offers from larger company’s to do ranges for them not what im about people despite what brainless idiots say behind closed forums

so what gets me is when somebody presses the dislike button on youtube to one of my videos OK if there’s an aspect on there you don’t like then by all means leave a message or ask a question simple as that , this way it helps me to help others by sorting any issues out with the videos I mean lets face it I haven’t got multi angel cameras or directors or editing suites I just sit there with a digital camera that allows me to record around 15 mins of footage at a time and up load it , so if you come across my videos and there's something you don’t like please leave a message and ill do my best to look at any issues , don’t just press the dislike button , funnily enough there was a few dislikes on my videos on one particular not so long ago and I managed to trace the area where they came from mmmmmmm a suburb of Edinburgh wonder who that could have been …...how sad

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Kicking out the cobwebs

so with the advent of a lovely sunny day I decided that cleaning up my desk was not top of my to do list I did have every intention of doing it in fact I went as far as to get a bag out for the rubbish I walked to my desk and was just about to pick something up to tidy away when I heard that familiar tone of the skype going off on the laptop this time of day it could only be one person 7am in America got to be my favourite redneck brother on his way to work , so I go and answer the call and get into a conversation about flies and then I get an idea into my head and as soon as I come of the call I get into tying flies for the day and the desk will have to wait another day oh well.

Support your local tying shop

 I had to go and deliver some flies to a friend in a town close by to me and id been meaning for a while to visit a new tackle shop that had opened there , you see although you can of course buy lots of stuff on line there’s nothing beats that feeling of walking round a tackle shop looking at stuff, you see tackle shops used to be the place to be to meet friends , talk fishing , and of course exaggerate the size of fish we caught and 9 times out of ten you’d get a cuppa as well (a warm beverage to my American friends) so I was quite excited to actually get into the shop to have a look round and although I really didn’t need anything(apart from white ep fibre) I still picked up a couple of items and spent a little cash (ill use them sooner or later), tackle shops are on the decline in this country so imagine if everybody who walked past a tackle shop picked up just a bag of feathers of a pack of hooks we could stop the decline so support your local shop folks and a big shout out to mike at www.fishersdirect.com for having a great looking new shop and bucking the trend .

im one of those people who like spam I love to have it in my sandwiches when I go fishing in fact theres a million different uses for the stuff so imagine my shock when I saw this in my inbox my world has been turned upside down im going to have to go back to scotch eggs and pork pies for fishing …............:-(

CHROME BAITFISH 

also been pretty busy tying up a new range for the fellas over at ww.predatorbite.com the results of which you can see here and below pictures

 these flies are made with deercreeks top predator material gliss and glint plus and feature tactical lazerpoint pike fly hooks

 I suspect the last 2 colours will be a top seller , anyway keep checking back to the predatorbite website they will be available shortly

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BIG DNA BAITFISH

 I love tying with DNA it makes some fantastic looking baitfish the only downside is for the amount of material you get in a pack its just to bloody expensive to tie a whole lot of big pike flies up with even if I tie it sparingly I still dont get a lot of flies this size out of pack but dam they look good in the water , ive never even seen anything resembling a cheap version of it guess they have that market sown up.

CRAZY DAYS OF WINTER

 I had the destroyer coming round for a tying session , my cave a little cold just now so we use a small table in the living room , today gliss and glint plus will feature heavily in the patterns the thing is with these tying sessions is you just never know what will happen we get some great ideas on hooks and we talk about future plans target species and where to get them and every so often you get a complete surprise buddy poppy over for a chat

dunb redneck alert

yup my brother from another mother and vermont fly guy ken (i can count to five now) capsey popped up on the skype while we were tying , now its always good to see ken it was like 6.30 am his time and he was just up and seeing what we were up to , after a few seconds chatting I suddenly realised where he was , because folks I have been across the pond and fished and lived with brother ken for a week and I too have laid log in the very toilet he was sitting on while skyping me , yes folks you read right the redneck was sitting on the can while talking to us the destroyers face was a picture when I told him I haven’t laughed so much since I fell off kens boat .

HARD AT WORK 

pretty much all go when we get together on a tying day and this day was no different after we had got over the shock of kens video call on today’s menu was pike flies (when is it any different) 

we were tying up slightly smaller stuff today as well as the the bigger ones smaller flies did so well for us last year so filling up the boxes with smaller flies aint going to go to waste , the destroyer has pretty much nailed the tying of bigger flies considering he had never tied anything bigger than a trout fly a few months ago he’s really got it down to a t now producing some respectable flies

so another tying session drawers to a close its quite amazing how quick the time goes when we do this but we do get a few flies made and hopefully we will get out on the water soon to try the thing out , nothing worse than making great looking flies and not being able to fish them soon though .

GLISS AND GLINT PLUS RAINBOW TROUT 

 this fly now has eyes on and is currently making its way across the Atlantic to brother ken to try out , I like this pattern it turned out really nice with the coloration I think I may have to tie a few more up , although funnily enough ive not really had that much success with rainbow trout patterns but then ive never tried a gliss one before so mmmm mabey this will do the trick

the destroyer was tying a few traditional Scottish brown trout flies also today above is his kate McLaren the beast above it was tied by yours truly a monstrous thing that is tied with a foam body underneath so it floats on the surface , the reason for this fly is that I had no end of big fish last year trying to take hooked jacks of the hook so this will make a lot of noise and movement on the surface and hopefully represent a hooked struggling fish im very confident it will work especially as im about to take delivery of so new and improved jackpike colour gliss and glint plus cant wait to try these out .

SANDEELS 

looks like we may get out after saltwater species next week , the destroyer hasn’t fly fished in the saltwater before so fingers crossed we may actually get out next week , and to maximise the chances of actually getting something on the hook ive tied up up a load of DNA sandeels with medium sized gold aluminium recessed sea eyes and deercreeks 3d eyes in the recess , these are tied on dai reki 1/0 hooks I now have a box full of these things so I really hope we can get out next week as we are both suffering withdrawal symptoms from not fishing here’s hoping , and a hopefully full report next week

id like to give a little shout out to one of my favorite blogs 

STREAMSIDE DIARY

col and brian live not a million miles away from me and always have great blog posts and very nice pictures and as to the flies well check em out keep up the good work fellas always enjoy your posts 

tight lines folks

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)