AND
WERE OFF
So by some miracle last Friday all the eliminates came together and
we were able to get out to fish , we choose to go into the salty
stuff to chase bass and pollock to say we were excited was an
understatement , when your sitting tying flies all winter and its so
cold the lochs have frozen over so you couldn't get out even if we
wanted too and the cool flies are piling up on the tying board well
it was enough to drive us to drink , so when the opportunity to go
fish came up we jumped at it …...
A
beautiful day in the deep freeze
after a short drive from my house we reached are chosen and due to
the destroyers weak bladder he took the sign literally
it was a beautiful day in the fish tank although to be honest the
wind had shifted and was blowing a bloody freezing wind into us (I
now know where the term freeze dried means) this was not what I
expected and the omens wernt good but hell ain’t gonna catch a fish
without a fly in the water.
As it turned out this spot was a no go for me as the waders I had on
wernt the best for scrambling around rocks as they had zero stretch
in them mental note neoprene next time , so I directed the destroyer
to the spot where ive had fish before but I wasnt holding out much
hope as I suspected that the fish just wernt there .
After a few cast into the surf I suspected the destroyer wasnt to
confident in my madness so we de camped to another spot on the beach
the tide had about 90 mins left till high tide so I was still
confident despite the bitterly cold wind , we fished like devils for
the next 30 mins jumping waves and getting flies into the zone , much
to the amusement of the 3 bait chuckers to our left who by the way
were in the spot that I wanted and wernt about to move anytime soon ,
so with the tide nearly up I decided on one quick spot change to
another spot I knew further up around the point
we fished the other area for the remainder of the tide but we didnt
have even so much as a sniff of a fish ok so to be honest I dont know
why although I suspect we may just have been too early in the year
and the fish were just not responsive to flies because of the cold I
really don’t know but although frustrated by the lack of fish we
were still glad to be out fishing .
Slim but deadly
ok so although we didnt catch I knew it wasn’t down to the flies as
I have supreme confidence in the sandeel fly above but you know
sometimes its just the way it is and at least it wasnt snowing …...
so we headed back up the road with the stereo blasting out some funky
progressive heavy metal tunes and already talking about the up coming
pike trip next week confidence is high were ready
--------------
BACK TO THE VICE
I had a large pike pimped bunnybug order to fill last week so I set
about getting it done , I had actually run out of white magnum strips
but no problem while I was doing the other ones the white would be on
its way to me via an internet order , or so I thought , id jumped on
to ebay and bought a pack of what I thought was magnum zonker strips
but sometimes ebay buys ain’t what they seem and when the pack
arrived it was probably OK for large trout flies but for pike if was
a no no …....
so I set about checking my favourite online suppliers and for some
reason none had them seriously it seemed like all the white magnum
zonker strips had simply vanished overnight why is beyond me even the
guys at pikeshack didn’t have any white, I eventually found some
after a few hours hunting around again on ebay so I ordered them and
sat back and breathed a sigh of relief it wouldn’t be here for a
couple of days so I decided to muck around with some extra olive
zonker strips that I had
and the result was this mad looking pimped bunny bug with massive
eyes actually I really love this and think it will do quite well for
the pike , the eyes are no super new design they are just bog
standard Christmas decorations yup every year I see them sitting
there on the Christmas tree and every year I swipe a line of them and
the next year the wife says “have you seen the Christmas
decorations” no dear , more are bought and after Christmas they
find there way into my supplies box and so the cycle continues my
dear wife thinks shes going crazy
oh and the zonker strips came , but they were still the wrong size , i ended up going into Edinburgh and seeing if the lovley guys and gals from orvis could help me , well would you believe it they only had them in stock on the shelf now isnt there a lesson to be learnt there
BIG BAD PIKE LUNCH
dont get me wrong ive tied big tandems before in fact all those years ago back in the 90s I used tie a fly called a mauler which was made from all maribou and was great in the water but when it was wet it was like casting a big wet sock so I didnt really pursue making them although I did actually sell quite a few , so fast forward to a couple of months ago and fellow deercreek pro staff pter dahlstrom and ben treppa from http://wishinyouwerefishin.blogspot.co.uk had been doing a few lately and it got my mind thinking about big hungry mommas so with the advent of lighter materials like gliss and glint plus I could make up some monsters that actually would weigh very little
highland pike mk1 16 inch
the highland pike why the highland pike well no reason its just a
name :-) the way to build these is actually fairly simple although
does take a lot of time because its articulated and despite the look
there is very little in the way of materials in this which really
does add a lot of movement in the water so the first one I was quite
pleased about but decided that I wanted something with a different
colour and slimmer profile so had a re think and came up with
LOWLAND
JACK mk1 17 inch
so the principles in the tie are the same as the highland but ive
scaled back on the gliss and glint plus and although you may not see
it ive custom blended some yellow in with green to give it a more
jack type look and ive added a pair of large googly eyes to it and
blacked them out with sharpies before sticking them on this one is
really floating my boat and im pretty sure im going to do ok on this
this year better make 2 each as one will no doubt find its way into
the destroyers box
MIXING
IT UP
theres some great coloured lures out there and if you think you cant
match those classic colors
with flies then think again of course you can and if you think a
little outside the box then you can really get some great and unusual
colours on the go , ive done this with this classic fire tiger
pattern. ive mixed orange gliss and glint plus with a plain yellow
synthetic fibre and added a few strands of magnum gold flashbou and
the result is a very nice colour combo hard to see in the picture but
there is a really nice even mix of color on this variation of a
classic
the other thing you may not realise is that you can also troll these
on conventional fishing tackle simply buy adding a wiggle fin at the
front of the lure (I pre build them on short wire traces) they can be
trolled nicely behind a boat or even better if you have a down rigger
these will be deadly sometimes it just pays to think outside the
norm.
“if you wish to puchchase any of these the link is here”
DUAL SUPREME HAIR FLY
nick over at www.deercreek.co.uk
has just started stocking supreme hair if you havent used it before
it makes great small baitfish patterns or even better sandeels the
fly above is tied on a 4/0 clouser hook and is around 7 Inchs long
(if memory serves me right ,im at work just now writing this) and
this particular pattern will catch fish really anywhere you fish it
both freshwater and saltwater , if you havent tried this style of fly
before the you really should it takes no time to tie and is deadly in
the right circumstances if your not sure on how to tie these there is
a step by step on my tying predator flies website here (this a free
to use and share website and I make zero money from it are you listening mikey pikey zero , nowt , nothing) just for the
love people
RATTLEY
THINGS
also hot of the starting blocks this week are some new thinner but
twice as rattly rattles , im a big fan of rattles for murky water or
jig flies and these fit the bracket very nicely for smaller patterns
, if you need any help on tying with rattles heres the link to my
free website (did you see that mikey wilson from paas I said free as
its always been)
£2.75 for 20 you just cant go wrong at that price heres the blurb
from uncle greg at piketrek and trust me uncle greg know what hes
talking about
"Our
pike fly rattles have proved so popular that we just had to have some
longer ones made for using in bigger flies.
These
are a full 5mm longer than our standard rattles, which means that the
balls inside have much more room to move around in resulting in a
much louder rattling sound. There is also more air trapped inside to
improve the neutral buoyancy once they're submerged, which means that
they won't affect the way your flies fish.
The
greater length actually improves their usefulness in another way, as
it makes them more simple to use. Daft as it may sound, having more
rattle length to cover up and hide makes it much easier to tie flies
as there is more room to tie other materials to.
I
had a mess around with these when they first arrived the other day
and I was impressed by how easy they were to use and how I could whip
fibres along the sides. They cover over really easily with Spectrum
Fibre whipped and varnished over them and a simple body dressed over
the top tied down in front of the rattle.
I've
yet to try the flies I made but they look really good and I can't
imagine them not working really well, especially in water that is
carrying some colour. And they're loud!
If
it's noisy flies you're looking for then try these!"
A massive shout out to my brother from another mother and vermont fly
guy ken “i like barbie” capsey who actually got out to do some
chucking with small zonker leeches and stumbled on a this rather nice
looking trout respect bro .
Well the blog as you may have noticed has been a little quite over
the winter with me posting only 1 post every 2 or 3 weeks , this is
simply down to not fishing due to the garbage weather we have had ,
normally I start to venture out after predators come feb but with
winter continuing right through to pretty much spring with ice and
snow still on the ground its been a hard start so ive not had that
much to write about really except myself and the destroyers fly tying
antics over the winter .
This will hopefully be changing in the coming weeks and id just like
to thank all those folks who still kept coming back over the winter
and left comments for me on my sparse posts and those fellow bloggers
who like me kept at it during the quiet spells …....cheers heres to
a cracking year of tight lines and bent rods
and to the arseholes out there both near and far “FACE BOTHERED”
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in scotland)
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