bonjour mr esox

OF PIKE AND MEN

Ok so its been a really strange year this year didn’t get half the stuff done I wanted to I didn’t get to fish some of the places I wanted to and my time is running out for chucking flies in fact my local has already taken the boats off for the winter yes what with the strange weather and seasons its really been a crap year in fact but still managed to catch a fair few fish nothing massive but that’s not why I do this its all about the method and the enjoyment of fly fishing ……..

Ive been paying with a few new patterns these are a mix of bucktail and gliss and glint plus for the tail / body and come in around 6 to 7 inch’s. ive called them pmt’s because they take these really aggressively and if your married you’ll know exactly what I mean 

Enough for me and the destroyer obviously but I must say they do look great in the water

On the loch

Wading barefoot and trouser less after the destroyers lost tackle seems a long time ago and with a bit of a nip in the air and he was warned that he had not a snow ball in hells chance of me being a really good mate and going in for him, he was on his own on today

Our latest discovery in fast angler type food is strips of peppered beef from asda (that’s Wal-Mart to you eric Larsen) 2 for 5 uk pounds and to be honest it was actually really nice fast and easy food 

A peppered beef strip modelled by the destroyer miserable sod 

The algae has started to die off leaving big floating rafts of green gunk not actually as bad as it seems as the pike really like to sit under it and the destroyer plucked a rainbow trout form under it so as far as I can see it doesn’t affect the fishing 

As the bend in the destroyer’s rod proves 

The subbug again proved its worth and the funny thing is this fly has worked right throughout the year 

So with the subbug working away for the destroyer I decide to see if the pmt fly still worked its magic so one cast in and bang yup esox loved it and really slammed it its really strange that other large flies of 7 inch’s and over don’t work that well on this venue and usually we fish flies in the 2 to 3 inch range so why these and subbugs do so well is strange maybe its down to the movement of them who know only thing I do know is they bloody work very well and not only on this water , I tie a lot of these subbugs flies for all over the world and they constantly work my brother from another mother ken capsey also makes them in the usa and he and others do really well on them, I predict the pmt will go the same way

Sometimes things go a little quite so usually when this happens for a prolonged period of time ill change over to fried alive fly in olive and a sinking line nailed to the bottom and 9 times out of ten we can nail one or 2 bonus fish as the pic above shows 

I still enjoy tying with ep fibre although these days they tend to be one best made with colour with flash worked through like a hot core fly, although the original hotcore is made with gliss and glint plus

Talking of gliss and glint plus 

The new musky blend gliss and glint plus has now hit the shelves and its become a favourite blend the bottom fly is tied with only musky blend just check out those colours very cool and when tying up a standard baitfish pattern adding a white belly and a musky blend back looks stunning and ive tried these in the water and oh my god they look stunning get some ….

http://www.deercreek.co.uk/DEER-CREEK-MATERIALS.html

A BRIEF ENCOUNTER

You know not everything goes the way you want it to and last week on the loch was no exception we thought we had a good day for it to be honest and things were looking great until we rowed past sexy loops Mr. will I fish who had been on the loch long before us (late start don’t ask) how’s it going was asked, not too good was the reply with only a couple

Of bumps since the morning not really what we wanted to hear but if your flies aren’t in the water you aren’t catching so we set about trying a multitude of flys with only the same half hearted plucks , eventually I stuck a fried alive on and lo and behold a nice scraper double came to the boat ……

Of course after this I just had to give one to mr will I fish to see if he could at least get one to the boat as he still wasn’t having much luck , now dot get me wrong im not trying to say my flies are better that anybody elses but if I can help with a pattern that’s catching then ill happily give a fly away to someone like us who was struggling that day and im happy to report that after a few casts he had one on and to the boat …….funnily enough he forgot to give me the fly back I suspect a few will end up being made for his box and off course I will never mention this episode again ….lol 

For no other reason than I wanted to ive started playing with some smaller but ramped up trout type patterns for pike the first being this stickleback imitation which is an adaption of an old trout pattern ive just added eyes and upped the size , its funny that even after I visualize a fly when its done and im looking at it I can straight away see how I can improve or make variations on the pattern and that what has happened here as I amd next going to do one with a dubbed olive body to give it a more fat stickleback shape and hence we start morphing trad trout patterns into flies for pike , I suspect my winter with the destroyer tying flies will consist of a lot of this kind of thing as my heads buzzing with ideas stay tuned .

Thank you for the Oscar I would like to thank my manager etc etc etc

Ok it had been on the cards for a while I had been speaking with a French documentary maker about a film he was doing on fishing in Scotland for French TV and he had been interested in pike on the fly so I was happy to help but due to some of his logistical problems (i.e not having a car here and hardly any budget ) I opted to fish loch ven in the trossochs as my local loch the preferred venue was showing 15mph winds which made it not very concussive to fly fishing for a number of factors so i had a look at the weather for a few areas and lochs I know to try and find the best option , which happened to be loch venachar in the trossochs a loch I know very well and if the conditions were right we would get some fish

We arranged to meet in callander at the tesco supermarket where me and the dark one could also pick up some lunch , it was a fairly short day with the boat hired between 10 and 4pm a lot shorter than we normally do but we were just happy to find a water we could get out on to be honest , he turned up bang on time and pleasantries were exchanged and the destroyer decided to try and speak French which for me was the highlight ive never laughed so much in ages haven’t a clue what he said but with the look on the directors face I didn’t think he was going to get in the car ……. 

Let me tell you something producing fish for the camera is never as easy as it seems on tv the folks who do the fishing shows will have been on a venue for a good few days getting footage although they probably make out they have just turned up, and with the Scottish lochs you never know what mother nature is going to throw at you.

We started with a few drifts that I knew and the wind was just gently blowing giving us a great long drift at just the right speed but the loch was well below its normal levels in fact I had never seen it so low I knew the pike wouldn’t be in one particular area so doing these drifts would cover a lot of water and the areas I suspected fish would be.

We filmed for a good few hours then disaster struck when the engine wouldn’t engage so we had to get a rescue boat out to tow us in and we changed to another boat and speed back of across the loch then the wind started to get up from nowhere and white caps were starting to appear on the waves this was a sign that we would have to get back across the loch before it got any worse you just don’t take any chances on the big lochs.

Did we catch?  Well you’ll have to wait till it’s on to find out but rest assured ill post the link when it appears online at some point, monsters well you just never know stay tuned 

Being fisherman sometimes its hard to go past a water without stopping to take a look and id always wanted to have a peak at this water but till now never had the chance so our film maker had arranged to film some salmon anglers and when were delighted to drop him of at the very river id wanted to take a look at.

 Didn't see any salmon caught but I always rivers very mysterious places and can sit next to one pretty much all day even without a rod just watching it so even though we only stopped for 20 mins or so I really enjoyed the moment and beside me and the destroyer were actually quite hungry and my wife had a stir fry on and as long as his wife didn't have a better offer he would dine with us although I suspect he would munch his way through a second dinner also well hes a growing lad after all

So on that note there will probably be less fishing reports until march unless we manage to get out as the weather in scotland is taking a turn for the worse but there will be a lot of fly patterns coming up over the winter so expect some new video step by steps some new gliss and glint ties and a whole lot of stoopidness from me and my little pony the pink destroyer ……

Mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)