A MATTER OF LIFE AND FLUFFCHUCKING

a video protest

2012-01-26T12:05:00.002Z

i hope one particular german blog reader is pleased with these results

THANK YOU MY FRIENDS I AM HUMBLED BY YOUR KIND SUPPORTIVE WORDS
(Here is just a few I’ve received since yesterday)
I have left names off
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HI Just read your blog, you don’t need to worry about arseholes that can.t match your work or commitment to tying.
A lot of anglers look forward to reading your reports on new materials and also your video’s
I would love to have a day’s fishing with you sometime
Keep up the excellent work
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I think we should send Mr Ferret a wild angry mountain cat. Will see his key board anger turn to utter fear when that cat rip’s his face off bro. WELL PUT and to all those other web warriors kiss my pike.......... I mean ass. Much love brother............
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Dave, Your blog, tying sites and YouTube videos are the best source of pike fly fishing ideas and instruction I've come across. I caught my first fly caught pike last year on one of your Green Tool flies bought from Deercreek on my new Pikesaber recommended by you. Don't let the idiots get you down and keep on doing what you do. I'm sure there's a lot of us out here improving our fishing directly from following your sites. All the best, John
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Well...couldn't have put it better myself! Well said bro. Got the same problem here...an egomaniacal control freak website host wouldn't let me post on HIS most acclaimed STRIPERS forums because my blog had ads in it... "Keyboard Warriors", as you so politely named them, and "Web Nazis" are the worst...little people that can fight their insecurities and personal problems from behind a pomputer screen. Great flies, by the way. Been fishing for pikes back home(Northern Italy )in the 80's and it was only me and a couple other guys then and everybody thought we were crazy or stupid; Imagine having the resources we have today! Keep up the great job. Thank you.
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Dave, you're the man!! Absolutely right!!! Totally agree with you!! Best regards from Portugal!
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Nicely said.
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the end

for one last time

2012-01-25T12:21:00.005Z

-LAST TIME I DO THIS –

You know there always some idiot out there who likes to shoot his mouth off without getting the facts straight or even having the decency to mail me and ask me about something before they start there verbal vomit so I’m going to set this to paper once again for the last time .

deercreek
Nick over at the company sends me new materials to try out and write about (pretty much like any review you would read in a fishing magazine) so I use the product whatever it is and I’ll write about it , now in my book that’s trying something and writing about it weather you like it or not , in fact I was sent some material a couple of weeks ago “breamer streamer” gliss and glint plus I loved it I wrote about it I used all the material and I sent all the flies back to nick art the site , now he puts these limited edition flies on his site for people to purchase and I can just inform you now I do not accept one penny for those flies that includes my time making them , the hooks I use, the post and package cost no not one penny neither do I want anything for them , nick will send me every now and again some eyes or some glue or some tack free uv which is great for me as I don’t have a lot of spare cash with a family to feed so these things keep me doing what I love to do and that’s tying flies .

If I feel I want to put a link on my blog or website then I will (no I don’t get paid for it) because I believe it is a great product and I believe it’s a product that will help you make a better fly and it’s up to me what I write when I write about it and the reason smartarse that I always include links to stuff I’m writing about is quite simple , I was getting bogged down with emails and messages from people asking where I was getting the item from so it’s far easier for everyone to include a link .

If I was to write about some amazing fly that I had made but not tell anybody what the material was then I would be accused of being secretive and not want people to know what I was using and being better than everybody else these same arseholes would then be on my back about that as well see my point.

I really don’t care what product you use I use what I think is a good product if I think something has a problem I will mail the supplier to find out about the problem , in fact some time ago I received a sample of a new croc glue from nick at deercreek and I had a problem with getting the stuff out so I actually phoned nick and asked him about this and he said they were waiting for the proper bottles to come in for the glue so he stuck some in another bottle so I could try it he followed up by sending me the finished product in the proper bottle which by the way was great if I’d had a problem with the product I would have said in the review .

As I said I really don’t care what you use if it works for you fine if you want to pay £50 pounds for a kit fine or a better kit at £20.00 that’s your choice if you don’t like the product then don’t click the link simple

Heres a completely independent review of the stuff are you telling me this guy is using blatant advertising as well

http://cpsflyfishingandflytying.blogspot.com/2011/06/product-review-deercreek-flies-diamond.html

I can’t comment on the laser stuff deercreek do I haven’t been sent one I haven’t asked for one if he wants to send me one then fine I’ll try it if not well that’s not a problem either if I find a review elsewhere ill post it on the site

Here’s something to think about 2 weeks or so ago I received a bottle of croc glue and a pack of gliss and glint plus, at the end of November I received some eyes and some small sample packs of new gliss and glint plus colours (enough for a couple of flies in each pack)…….does that count as selling out and major sponsorship you decide
I applaud nick for coming up with new products for the fly tier at reasonable prices and not ripping of the tier with high prices
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Piketrek
I have known the guys at piketrek for a couple of years now when they first contacted me about their pikesaber rod and they wanted me to test one out which I duly did and I loved It best rod id ever used (and trust me I have used a few) so if somebody asks me what rod I’d recommend for pike fly fishing then off course I’m going to recommend a rod that I’ve actually used and caught fish on. What a dickhead if you think I’m going to recommend a rod to somebody just starting out that I’ve not used and as I’ve said before the best thing to do is try some out a rod is a very personal thing and what is good for one person may not be good for another .

The guys at pike trek and not businessmen they don’t want to rule the world all they want to do is bring products into the market for the pike fly fisher at a reasonable price and off course they ruffled a few feathers along the way I mean a company with a product out there at 8 pounds is not going to be impressed when the same product comes out at half that price of course there going to be pissed but for a long time fly tiers have been constantly overcharged for stuff (uv products) all the guys here are doing is funding there fishing they are anglers just like us not suits

I do tie a lot with their products pretty much the same as deercreek and yes I have links to their site because A- this is a mainly pike fly fishing blog B- there the only people out there with a site just for the pike fly tier it’s not rocket science is it really.

Another interesting thing when I went down to the fenland flyer charity event (with a few hundreds quid’s worth of flies as prizes must have missed you contribution to the charity Michael ) I met up with the guys from piketrek and had a chat with them as they were sponsoring the event as the big company’s couldn’t afford to give stuff away under the economic climate so piketrek stepped in to provide prizes and they gave also a hell of a lot of stuff away on the day in the way of materials I also had a few packs of materials from them , the last time I had anything from them was back in august when I had 2 sheets of eyes and a couple of packs of body material……….blimey that’s really pushy the boundaries of free stuff isn’t it I should eBay it and retire to the Bahamas on all this stuff I get .

Piketrek are also like deercreek committed to bringing you the best product at the best prices which I write about and give people the option of buying if they so wish I just point them in the direction of where I get the stuff I tie with again if you don’t like it don’t click the link ……..
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Here is a link to the great site for the fly fisher that is global fly fisher
http://globalflyfisher.com/reviews/
have a look at all those reviews all that stuff they get sent have you been over there and had a moan at them for writing about stuff actually I remember once I had a fly tying problem and couldn’t find a product i happened to go onto this site and there was a review for the very thing I needed so I followed the link and bought one , that was my choice they didn’t force me to buy it they wrote a review of a product that I needed and thanks to that review my problem was sorted .
One of the great American fly tying forums
http://www.flytyingforum.com/
oh look Michael and steffen sponsored by j stockyards quick you better get over there and have a moan about that as well imagine that how outrageous is that a fly-tying forum sponsored by a fly tying company , I just can’t see how they get away with that
Getting the point now numnuts
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So get your facts straight pike and ferrets blog before you start shouting you mouth off i really don’t care if you like me or not I really don’t care if you visit my blog or not (obviously you do from your moaning about it) I do what I do because I love what I do and let me tell you I’ve been doing it a hellava long time even before the pffa existed in fact I still remember so called famous people coming to me for advice which I freely gave and still give. do you know last year I gave out not including the fenland flyer over 200 flies for people that were interested in pike fly fishing I do this for the promotion of the sport not for personal gain I received not one penny for this if there’s a product that’s out there that can make life easier then ill happily share it.

Writing reviews
When somebody contacts me and wants me to try a product out I’m more than happy to do this and I do not expect payment for doing it I tell people straight off that I will review the product and put a link to it either in my blog or website (I feel this is only fair to the person company sending it) and ill either write a review or do a video on the product after this if I use the product at some time in the future ill mention it and put a link in to the text which people can click on if they like up to them I don’t force them

I am not tied to any company’s at all so don’t have to hold back on reviews
Its also interesting to note that I have a lot of links to products websites and blogs and these I put up there because I use them and I pay hard cash for the stuff I use I’ve never approached these companies for free stuff yet i have the links on the pages

So there it is if you have a problem with anything I’m doing just mail me it isn’t hard my email address is in the top left-hand side of the blog and on the front pages of my websites
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I thank all those people who do visit my blog and all the nice emails comments and friends I have made through it, unfortunately you’ll always get lemmings that listen and follow all the crap that gets thrown around and jump on the bandwagon without knowing the facts

This really is my last word on this and the last time I will write about it as I really do have better things to do if you don’t like what I write the solution is simple don’t visit the blog I isn’t holding a gun to your head fella

Mcfluffchucker

"thanks for the comment man appriciated"

"Well...couldn't have put it better myself! Well said bro. Got the same problem here...an egomaniacal control freak website host wouldn't let me post on HIS most acclaimed STRIPERS forums because my blog had ads in it... "Keyboard Warriors", as you so politely named them,and "Web Nazis" are the worst...little people that can fight their insicurities and personal problems from behind a pomputer screen. Great flies, by the way..been fishing for pikes back home(Northern Italy )in the 80's and it was only me and a couple other guys then and everybody thought we were crazy or stupid; Imagine having the resources we have today! Keep up the great job..thank you"

and i really appriciate all the supportive emails , you know who you are

Tying big predator flies and other stories

2012-01-24T18:44:00.012Z

Tying big predator flies (and other stories)

The art of doing it

Making large flies isn’t as daunting as it looks sure there’s some real fancy arsed looking flies out there but don’t be put off from giving it a go, the only way you’ll learn to make flies is to keep practicing and your home made flies will catch the same if not more than that fancy made fly your saw on the internet and will probably out do it in terms of fly longevity as well the guy sitting in a tying house in Africa really doesn’t care if your fly falls apart after a couple of fish ,
Synthetics these days enable us as fly tiers to make supremely large pike fly’s and to be honest the only thing stopping you making monster flies well actually with today’s rods there’s nothing whatsoever from making and fishing the biggest of flies hell no.

but here’s the interesting thing all of the biggest fish I have caught over the magical 20 mark have come on small flies I’m talking 4 inches and under here , the my biggest fly caught pike to date is a stonking 25lb river Trent beast that took a small marabou baitfish fly in fact back then that was pretty much it for pike fly design a simple marabou pattern with a couple of googly eyes on a bronze bait holder hook with the holder shank barbs pressed down we were innovators back then having to make the best of it because nobody made stuff for us and actually with most companies back the catering in this country for the trout and salmon tier making pike flies was a bloody expensive exercise if you wanted to make anything over four or five inch’s
A bait holder hook this was all I had access to

Sunday blues

I work on weekends and I have to get up at stooped o’clock in the morning to get there on time and this weekend it was bloody freezing hence the hood and my back to the wind I wouldn’t have even fancied being out fishing today , I do have the distinct advantage though of being able to tie fly’s at work as regular readers of my mutterings will no doubt be aware I have burst of furious technical activity then 3 or four hours of nothing then another burst of activity so I tie flies in between , perfect

Travel kit

When I’m tying at work I have to think in advance what I’m going to be tying as there’s no way I can take everything (my bosses would have a fit) so I have a little hobby box that I can get the essential’s in hooks flash bobbins threads glues etc. and more importantly it fits into my work bag.

Bag o tails

so as I had decided what I was trying in advance (thunder creeks) so in addition to my hobby box I have a random supermarket bag to carry them in, couple of weird looks on the bus to work right there, I’ve included a few different colours in the bag, I’m doing some saltwater kits at the moment so I picked colours that were salty in nature and colours that I’ve used successfully in the past built into thunder creeks which are a fantastic little fly and will catch you fish no matter where your fishing , I’ll be using minnow patterns for trophy trout in the summer of course in this country fly fishing for trout with anything other than a size 28 dry fly on a silk leader is considered not sporting and is frowned upon from a great height , jezus h Christ if a fish eats another fish it’s a predator right so what the feck is the problem , well none in my book trout got teeth I’m fishing for em end off .

My office desk

This was me set up for my 9 hour shift great work if you can get it eh, I realise I’m quite lucky with this so I tend not to rock the boat too often, the vice im using is one I’ve had sitting on my desk at home for ages, can’t even think where I got it from to be honest but it’s got a really solid heavy base and it holds hooks up to size 9/0. To be honest it looks like one of those really cheap vices you get with starter kits but does the job and means I don’t have to disassemble my proper vice

first out the block is 10 of these 4/0 thunder creeks cracking little flies (ok at 4/0 not so little) I really enjoy tying them and haven’t done any for a while , I decided to give the heads a coat of deercreeks tack free uv and I was bloody delighted with the outcome a nice sealed shinny head that the flash peaks through how is a fish goanna resist this I’m also thinking perch in my local may well have a Nash at this as well as the saltwater species simple to make but bloody deadly , sometimes it really is just too easy.

Home grown UV 3D eyes

So I’d made up a load of the flies above and I needed to do a load of small pink flies so after I did the first one I went to put the eyes on and discovered I hadn’t bought the tiny 3d eyes with me now this was a bit of a bummer but then I had an idea, what if I just did it the old fashioned way and draw them on with black pen yup that would work and hang on what if I added some of deercreeks tack free uv to build up the eyes that may work problem solved and looking good as you can see below whoop whoop and so easy to do

I suspect I may be playing with this a bit more in the future on my tiny fry patterns
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BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

Brother and fellow fluff nutcase ken capsey over at pike adventures has been doing some really good stuff with the tallywacker so I decided I needed to get back to doing some big and beautiful natural flies after getting the inspiration I hit the vice and kicked a few out

Although this looks like a massive bulky fly it’s actually very light tied on a 6/0 hook the material is just placed on in small clumps so it’s actually plenty of hook gape the picture really doesn’t do the fly justice plenty of movement with the long Metz feathers some long lengths of flashabou and a single marabou feather tied into the front gives it ultimate movement, really enjoyable fly to tie

Slightly different version just with buck tail instead of the marabou feather and I’ve made the tail with gliss and glint plus to bulk out the length and add some flash and also give the tail feathers something to sit on , giving the impression of a bulky bait but actually being again very light despite its size . something else as well is the colour of the feathers, blue is a very underrated colour for the freshwater pred head no idea why more people don’t use it to be honest great in deep-water give blue a try for a few casts try it out I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised may even give you the edge over you mates

sexy maribou

As I said at the start of this post marabou was pretty much it when it came to fly tying materials was back in the dark ages (I couldn’t even get hold of full buck tails back then) so if I wanted a bit of length on a fly id add a couple of cape feathers as in the fly above, strangely enough despite all the fish I caught in the early days on marabou flies with the advent of new materials and new methods of tying big flies I’ve kind of left these patterns by the wayside a bit so I’m going to go and tie a load up and revisit my early successful days in fact by the time you have read this I will have already gone and done a video for one all being well it should be below , it’s also a great fly to make if your new to fly tying as it doesn’t involve any complicated methods to make and it will catch you just as many fish give it a go

And finally
Guess the fly pattern

Really that’s got to sting

Have a great week folks

Mcfluffchucker
(A cave in Scotland)

breamer streamer and fly storage

2012-01-15T11:35:00.006Z

THE ART OF STORAGE

For me it’s always been a problem finding the right storage for flies and for many and may I say I’ve been quite happy with the finsport wallet above especially when I’m traveling light but it does have its limitations when it comes to the likes of deer hair or bulky patterns , you see this wallet I think was always designed with the saltwater angler in mind and smaller patterns so when you get to using big flies for pike , once you get a few in the wallet it tends to start bulking up a little too much for my liking although that’s just a personal thing , but when you start chucking deer hair patterns like sub bugs into then it causes a slight problem as it starts to squeeze the deer hair out of shape which doesn’t look too hot to be honest so I started to look around for a suitable replacement that I could but in my boat box (I will still use the finsports though especially when I saltwater fishing as they are perfect for that , no metal parts to rust

One two 3 lock box

I was out with the wife shopping last week and I came across a very cool storage box that looked almost identical to my plano box that I have in my boat box so I picked a couple up as they were fairly cheap and quite sturdy as well and I was pretty sure they were the same size as the planos, I stood and held one staring at it for what must have been quite some time as an assistant came over and asked if I was ok and could she get me chair , she soon buggered off when I said no thanks dear I’m just looking to see how many flies I could get into it , god knows what she must have thought as she walked off probably I was breeding blue bottles or something ………oh well

So the insides of the box have lots of little compartments, these spacers just lift out giving you multiple compartments of whatever size you like

Ok so below is 7 of my original foam filled video boxes from my boat box and believe it or not the entire contents of those boxes fits into one box (above) I was pleasantly surprised because it means that I can now take even more flies fishing with me whoop whoop …. Anybody who knows me will know exactly how much I enjoy testing flies in the water watching them do their thing and when I catch fish on them well even better , but I got to say I was quite surprised at the amount I got into one box

Whats in the box -Regular readers will know this is how my boat box usually looks I have lots of flies stuck on foam on the inside the reason for this is that these are flies I use regular and this was the flies I was using deeper at the end of last season when I get back out I will probably use the same stuff as here but with a few new patterns (the breamer streamer. later in this post) and as the temps warm up ill have a load of sub bugs on there as well I usually then have two set ups on the boat one being a floating outfit especially for subbuggin in shallower water. Well it would be a crime not too

so back to the boxes as you can see I’ve cleared all the video boxes out and replaced them with the bigger storage option and actually it does and will make things a lot more tidy and organized on the boat for a change and I will actually be buying another couple to use .
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I will still be using the other boxes and wallets and to be honest I can’t bear the thought of an empty box lying there without flies in so by the time you read this ill have already started to fill them with spares , not that my flies fall apart or anything its just that I do tend to give a lot away to people on the bank and to boat partners in fact one boat partner never buys flies as he says its bloody pointless when he’s fishing with me ……ha

BREAMER STREAMER
( a new colour added to the gliss and glint plus range)

I got sent this new colour to have a look at and give an opinion on and as soon as I took it out the packet I thought mmmmmmm that would make a nice skimmer bream pattern or I may even stretch to a smelt pattern for bass in the surf, of course soon as I start thinking that I just have to go and start tying stuff up hey sorry it’s in my blood got to be done , I can really see me doing a lot of combos with colour and flash I really like it a lot

It has a lovely almost pearlescent flash running through it along with some thicker strands of what looks like gold crystal flash I don’t know but I do know it looks bloody good and will really look great in the water

EAT ME

The first one off the line and although not quite a bream in shape it really does look like a very appetizing baitfish and believe it or not took me around 3 mins to make this 7 inch snack, the belly is just a plain white gliss and glint plus and the top is breamer streamer I’ve also added for extra real effect some deercreek gator eyes, the hook is a bog standard 6/0 octopus hook available from pretty much anywhere , the other thing I like about this colour combo is that it looks like a dying fish you must have all seen at some point a dead or dying small shoal fish floating past you I think this colour is being added to the range around about now so if you want to order some head on over to www.deercreek.co.uk and give nick a mail if you want to purchase these very fly’s ready-made they will be with nick as limited editions hopefully by the end of this week.

with very little actual fishing happening for me just now due to family and weather im most certainly looking forward to a few weeks’ time when I can actually get out and throw some fluff it does get very frustrating when you make up some killer fly’s and you can’t get out to fish them but will be soon enough when I get some more rod bending action like below in the meantime I’ll just keep churning them out at the vice

if you fancy a bargain head over to www.fishtec.com they have their Jan sale on just now and there is some bargains to be had , although one thing you won’t find on pretty much any fly tying site is human hair well let me explain , sometimes my wife goes a bit mental and decides to cut her own hair (don’t ask she’s a redhead) so while she wasn’t looking I collected up all the bits and stored them away . well I finally got them out the other day and made this little baitfish on a 6/0 hook ok maybe not so little

THE HAIR OF THE DOG

Its named after a night on the beer not anything to do with my wife honest (if she’s reading this) , you see it’s supposed to be true that women catch bigger fish something to do with pheromones apparently and there is indeed reports of ladies indeed catching massive fish so who knows maybe there’s something in it , and I’ll be putting it to the test with this fly in the future , and if it turns out to be true then many wife’s across the country may go suddenly bald overnight viva the revolution

Mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

the art of crossover flies and memory loss

2012-01-06T19:22:00.002Z

Crossover flies
(The art of flies for everything)

So what is a crossover fly well it’s pretty much any fly that can be used for pretty much any species salt or fresh water, in the uk we don’t have nearly the same amount of species that our fluff chucking long lost relatives across the pond have and to be honest if your fly fishing for anything other than trout or salmon in this country your still regarded as a bit of a freak by both game and trout anglers, luckily opinions are changing although I still get a few odd looks

Colours can be really whatever you like and this colour above does work very well in the salt water especially for Pollock I’m not sure if the combo of yellow and black is something the fish associate with a food source in the sea, I’m not sure but this has always been good for me around rock marks , but then really we don’t really for sure know what colours a fish sees in the water so for all I know it could be the perfect imitation of a baby fish I really don’t know but it works so that’s the main thing . I’m also guessing from experience that this would do well for smallies as well.

Crossing over

So from small 1/0 saltwater flies I know ramp it up to a 4/0 pike pattern basically the same pattern but all ive done is tied it with more bucktail to give it bulk and uv creeked a set of eyes on to make it more baitfish like, but you really don’t need to it will still catch fish without the additions , so with this plucky alrounder there a million colour combos you could use so you can match the hatch pretty much with any localized colours , of course the other thing is you can churn out loads of them as well in a very short space of time check the video below to see how to make em …….

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Back to monsters

I’m a member of a great American fly tying forum and the hot core fly I do raised a few eyebrows and I had a few questions coming forward about one particular fly so rather than spend hours typing away , which to be honest cuts into my tying time I decided just to do a video (below) seemed to be the easiest way although why on earth it takes nearly 2 hours to upload a video that just under 10 mins long is beyond me maybe I’m doing something wrong bloody technology …….anyway here it is

"And remember folks every time you click on the video I get money for it so that will be only another 100 million plays and I can buy the family a snickers bar to share"

My day starts slowly

You know it’s so bloody cold just now I sometimes have to work myself up into the Zen state for tying so normally what I do is tie something completely different up to my normal monster baitfish , so I sat at the vice today and remembered that I had had a drunken skype video call with brother ken from pike adventures and we had decided to tie something up now the problem was I can’t actually remember what id talked to him about so ken apologies brother we will need to re schedule whatever it was …lol
So I decided to to tie up something else in the absence of memory and headed down the route of getting my perch box for summer up and running so I decided to warm myself up with a cruncher pattern with rubber legs I know for a fact that this will catch fish , its one of those patterns that when you make it and look at it in the vice you think mmmm yup that’s gonna work , its pretty much just a long shanked streamer hook cone head , rabbit fur dubbing and some green and orange sparkly dubbing throw in a couple of rubber legs and hey ho cool pattern …
im off just now to watch what looks like its going to be a very cool dvd called the dead drift from stealth films ill report back with a review in the next few days I flick it on when I got it and the film looks stunning crystal clear water and big browns .

Of course none of this helps when you can’t get out to fish but hey soon

mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

wow deer creek push it again

2012-01-02T14:06:00.002Z

I'm excited again , deer creek have been raising the bar again i for one am really looking forward to trying this stuff on big pike heads and i can just imagine the poss

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you gotta ask the question why pay up to £50 pounds for inferior kits that are not even tack free

The main advantages of the laser cured resin is cure time and the depth of resin the laser can penetrate. This means you can really pile this resin on which is great when making flies like surf candies etc. and still have the piece of mind it will cure quickly and tack free!!

Unlike other top resins (which shall remain nameless) this new product dries hard and totally tack free in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds (depending on depth of resin).

The laser itself has been designed with a specific wavelength for curing resins of this type and is very economical to run as it takes standard aaa batteries.

The kits will retail at £29.99 making them the best value for money pro kit around

www.deercreek.co.uk

bye bye 2011

2011-12-28T15:51:00.004Z

ANOTHER YEAR PASSES IN THE CAVE

(Adventures of a hairy fly fisher and fly tier)
So a whole year has passed already and not all plans have gone as I wanted and some have gone way better than expected, its been a funny old year right enough and I have lots of new stuff going down for next year so I guess this year has been a pre curser for the fluff chucking and tying extravaganza and the odd black Sabbath show thrown in for good measure in June.
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So back to the year just past, well I did a fair bit of fishing but not as much as I had wanted really due to my wife starting teacher training at university and me working weekends but this won’t be a problem next year I did however when I did get out caught some bloody nice fish and quite a few as well

Off course predators are always top of my list and I had some very memorable days with some very hard fighting fish and also so bloody frustrating days like the day below , where it was blowing a bloody hurricane and I struggled to find somewhere out the wind when I did I caught fish , but the wind kept changing direction so I had to keep changing spots , as even an anchor wasn’t holding and I must of missed at least 20 odd fish on the surface to subbugs because of the wind towing my line bloody heart breaking but a real adrenaline rush all at the same time and this was in bloody November in Scotland craziness

BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK
I did very very well on blackflies this year and variations off it, the best results came from black subbugs with some silver flashbou running through it this was a friggin killer and the pike attacked them full on aggressive style, the takes were very fast and very furious this is a fly ill be running with a lot next year along with some of my medium flashbou patterns which the fish also seem to love , the only trouble with those ones is that suicidal trout also love them but sometimes that can break a slow day with a bit of excitement

I also took some time out to do some rainbow trout fishing , now stocky bashing isn’t really my thing but I do love to eat rainbow trout , and grilled with black pepper it is awesome , I won’t however go and buy it from the supermarket as I don’t know where it has come from , or even when it was dispatched from this mortal coil , so I much prefer to get a 6wgt out and go and catch them myself and I always cook them as soon as I get home , so pretty much ensuring a great fresh flavour I intend to do a whole lot more trout fishing in the summer but not for the reasons you may think more on that in summer .

FLY TYING GEAR OF THE YEAR
The biggest thing to hit the shelves this year is without doubt diamond hard uv resin from deercreek (click the pic) this has overtaken another major but tacky product that’s on the market in the uk as the best for the fly tier , and actually kits start at 20 pounds uk , people are cottoning on to this and trying it and are starting to get very happy with the results , other uv resins claim to be tack free and at 50 quid a kit you would expect the best but from forum discussions ive seen it is curing tacky so people are switching to this in droves and to be honest I can’t blame them for 20 quid a kit and it cures non tacky …….check there site some top tiers are using it now

The other thing that’s taking the predator fly fishing world by storm is Authanic wire from predator bite here in the uk (click the pic) this stuff is amazing it really is and its changed my leader set up for the better if you haven’t tried then get yourself over to the site and buy a spool completely knowable and tooth proof, so if you’re a pike fly angler then you’ve really got to get your hands on some of this , I used to use titanium wire a few years ago but have knocked that completely on the head as I discovered that the stuff is like cheese wire and if a fish gets deep hooked then you can do some series damage to a fishes mouth I’ve know seen this first hand and won’t use it again .

The thing is I can no longer see the point of fiddling around with clips and crimps etc when you can just knot this stuff in seconds check the video below to see how easy it is

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GRAB AND GO KITS
I’ve also teamed up this year with predator bite to supply some very handy grab and go fly kits (click the picture) these kits are fantastic for those who don’t have the time to tie their own or are new to the sport , the best seller is my streamer kit which contains fly’s for pretty much any occasion and can also be used in saltwater, in fact this kit is proving popular with those going off on holiday to warmer climes as you get the box 8 great proven patterns and a spool of Authanic wire , so all you need is a 3 or 4 piece rod and a reel to go in your luggage and you off these flies will catch you fish anywhere in the world
BUNNY BUGS ARE BOLLOX

Ohhhhhh ok shock horror from lots of you on that statement but you know no matter how hard I try I can’t bloody catch fish on the things

I shall preserver though maybe next year, no idea why I can’t they look great they fish great hell id even eat them what am I doing wrong , I really haven’t a clue maybe I’ll go back and just do a simple plain Barry Reynolds type bunny bug and not do all the flashy stuff with them , maybe it’s just a fly that doesn’t need jazzing up

MONSTER FLIES

I do like to fish big flies sometimes and I had neglected making them for a while as id been concentrating on the smaller baitfish patterns in synthetics so when piking brother ken capsey over at pike adventures posted some of his big musky patterns (think they were called bettys) but anyway decided to add my own touch to them and I called them muskie busters , if you want the full recipe you can find it here
http://www.spanglefish.com/pikeandpredatorfishingflies/index.asp?pageid=296366
And there’s loads of other recipes on my site so please go check it out .
Ive fished with these at the of the season and they were bloody brilliant I actually had a pike hit the thing right under my feet but try as I might I could connect with the bloody thing check out the video below for my attempts

THE GLISS N GLINT PLUS PROJECT

EP FIBER

I’ve fallen a bit out of love with ep fibre lately as I’ve had so many new fibres to play with I’ve kind of left it on the back burner, not that ep isn’t a great material it’s the first synthetic I used all those many years ago when I had to get it from the states as nobody in the uk stocked it and for many a year I tied with it favouring it over my big natural flies of marabou and bucktail and this was the case for many years until new synthetics appeared , of course there was synthetics around but they were more aimed at the trout fisher and to be honest there wasn’t much in the way of material in the packs , so you’d end up spending 15 pounds on enough to make a pike fly , so importing it was the only really way to go .
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Off course these days there’s a massive choice out there for us pike fly tiers mostly aimed at the saltwater fly fisher overseas but can be easily used for pike flies , of course there is company’s in the uk springing up specifically for the uk pike fly tier and fly fisher ill list these later , as to ep well Im going to revisit it next year I have some ideas I’m going to try as I do like the colour range , the thing I don’t like is the price of the stuff in the uk , but now that I can mix it with other stuff i.e gliss n glint plus I can see some funky stuff going down with it in new ties ….

SUBBUGS

Ahhh the subbug (no its still not and never has been a dhalberg diver) has a large space in my fly boxes I always take at least a box of them with me when I go fishing and next year will be no different indeed not , if anything ill have more of them in different sizes and colours it’s a great fly and if you wanna see more check out the subbuggin site
http://www.spanglefish.com/subbuggin/
ADVENTURES FAR FROM THE CAVE

Ive got some outstanding adventures planned for next year including a trip to some pretty remote places where the fish have never seen a fly before including a 3 day trip that will see me and a buddy chasing some saltwater bass and remote trout in hill lochs in the evenings lets me tell ya folks that is going to be a stunning adventure in late summer
Ok those sites I promised you earlier in no particular order

http://www.pikeflyrod.com/ http://www.deercreek.co.uk/ http://www.predatorbite.com/ http://www.pikeshack.co.uk/ http://www.sakuma.com/

so with the year drawing to a close I look forward to the new year with fresh challenges new friends and plenty of fishing and let me tell you there will be plenty of craziness going on , again thanks to all those who visit and follow every single one of you is appreciated

mcfluffchucker
Signing off for 2011
(a cave in Scotland)

merry christmas folks

2011-12-22T15:51:00.002Z

MERRY CHRISTMAS

TO ALL MY VISITORS AND FOLLOWERS

its been a helluva year to be honest and I'm gearing up for next year all ready as i have lots of cool stuff going on , but id really like to say thanks to all who follow me on here and facebook and twitter i really do appreciate all the comments and mails i get from you folks its what keeps me going sometimes so merry Christmas to ya all and an extra big merry Christmas to my second family "the capseys" in Vermont and all my Friends who live in the state of Vermont

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off course with the Christmas season upon us its nice to see my TV provider is putting on lots of family friendly festive programmes cant wait for that one over Christmas drinks

another extra special thanks go out to old Friend ad swier who sent me a lovely signed edition of his book which is also a fantastic read check out amazon or other sites for it , its called
Passion for Pike: The Challenge and Mystery of Fly-Fishing for Pike by ad swier really good read and thanks again pal for the package and a merry Christmas to you over in Holland

so with my fishing done now till February weather pending , and the weather in Scotland over the past few weeks being horrendous and putting paid to any planned trips i thought i may as well do some sorting out and maintenance on some gear and sort some boxes out ,
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so first job is to make sure to slacken all the drags off your reels especially if you have cork drag rings , you should really do this after every trip , check your fly lies also for cracking and weak or damaged spots , worth checking your rods at this point make sure there is no grits in the sections etc and wipe them down with a damp warm cloth to get rid of mud and dirt etc .

i have quite a few different bags and boxes i have boat boxes , bank boxes light ,gear snatch boxes , species specific kit , etc etc so i need to sort all these out before next season so today I'm moving my day bag stuff back into my boat box , as if i do manage a quick trip out i can grab anything i need from the boat box and stick into my day bag .
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so below is my below is my boat box i had to take a load of stuff out for a trip that i was walking the banks so didn't need and really didn't want to take a big box with me

this is my light bank /boat bag from my last trip the green bag on top has a load of leader type stuff , pre made leaders, traces , lead core etc along with some fly boxes the pockets of the bag has a couple of reels and some water bottles as well as unhooking gear

getting stuff out the box and bag ready for repacking and a box of clousers that i take absolutely everywhere with me

OK so all the flies are checked for faults and hook damage and put on the foam board in the lid of the box , these are patterns that i use quite a lot so will have a few handy for quick changeover and means i don't have to dig around in boxes for patterns when I'm on the water , i guess from this picture you can tell what my favorite colours of last season where

done and dusted

so that the box sorted ready for the new season , i still have a lot tying wise to keep me busy till then and I'm really hoping i can get out before then though , so I'm going to take a little blogging break till the start of the new year , what with the festive period and having my daughter staying over and working on new years eve and I'm also helping out serving Christmas dinner to some homeless people in Edinburgh (giving a little back) i wont have much time to do anything till new year

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so with that I'm going to wish you all a great Christmas and a safe new year to every single one of you folks around the world

Dave Lindsay

(mcfluffchucker)

a cave in Scotland

small fly stuff

2011-12-21T09:55:00.005Z

OK so I'm pretty much known for my love of pike and predator fishing and fly tying , but it may surprise you to know that i do actually fish for other species as well perch , carp , trout species pretty much anything that swims and as much as i love tying flies my tying schedule for the predator stuff doesn't leave me a whole heap of time to make small stuff so that's were fast flies comes in ...
fast flies is a company i use when i need flies fast and cheap (well I'm Scottish) and these really do the job

these are a favorite for summer roach and carp that are digging in the mud
3 for 0.99 pence
and of course the dog nobblers , a classic pattern and a flie that perch absolutely love and i know a few monster big that have been taken on these as well and a bargain price of 0.99 pence for 3 that's value for money

so if you need some flies fast then check out the range from fast flies click on any picture

(please note i do not receive payment from fast flies as always i promote stuff that i know and use)

monster blog post alert

2011-12-14T11:04:00.007Z

The pat Cohen school of deer hair craziness

If you browse the internet looking around at flies you’ll have come across the name of fellow fly tying enthusiast pat cohen .well pat does some really crazy and cool deer hair patterns in fact he’s one of the masters of the art of deer hair so today I had a bit off spare time to play at the vice , which to be honest is a bit of a rarity these days as I’m usually doing flies for others , so I just thought well I may as well indulge myself so ahh hell let’s have a blast at a crazy cohen punk type pattern

These are great fun to make although you can’t hurry them; your own imagination is really the only limitation on what colours or even material you could use , half the fun of these is when you start doing the trimming , I usually like to use scissors when I’m trimming but with this one I started with a razor blade but switched back to the scissors for the fine trimming , you really have to concentrate one slip and it could be disaster not a thing to be doing after you’ve had a few beers

So a bit more trimming and a bit more cutting you can’t hurry this so if you have little patience then you’d probably best not bother as you may well end up throwing the thing in the corning to be done at a later time . as I got to the stage on this when that I was clipping single hairs in between the peacock herl again I enjoyed doing this and found it quite relaxing but it took bloody ages to do, can’t complain though good fun

so the finished product a mix of deer hair , guinne fowl , bucktail , dyed ostrich herl from www.deercreek.com and tied on an orvis 6/0 pike / musky hook , I do like this hook for subbugs and deerhair patterns plenty of shank length and strong and sharp as buggery
I love tying with naturals just don’t seem to do a lot with them as I’m usually tying with synthetics these days but I’m going to make a point of tying more with them I’m probably going to do a load more of these pat cohen type flies just for fun . so cheers for the inspiration pat

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mcfluffchucker gets technical in the cave

what a week its been , yea yea no blog posts i know but sometimes lifes like that , so it started off with my oldest daughter who lives south of the border had a birthday and wanted one of those blackberry things so she got one well she had done well at scholl and stuff so she deserved it , i then dicovered that you have this free messaging thing on BBM aperently , so she says dad you should get one then we could talk all the time , well i thought about it and realised that it would actuallybe cheaper getting one than me keep getting credit for my phone and texting her all the time so i also got one and yes it does work out cheaper.

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so being a bit of a technophobe i got the thing and then realised that actually it quite a cool thing as not only can i do all my email and tweets on it as well as being able to upload pics when im fishing so thats cool , the other thing i did do was do was try out a weather app , so i dowloaded one and so far it has been bang on in predicting hour by hour weather , which for an angler is a very usefull tool , so all i need to do now it try and not drop the thing in the river ....

vermont guys go global
they have some great offers on just now

Tis the Season and VFG are getting into the holiday spirit. Now through Jan 1st, we are offering 50% off all in stock flies, AND all custom orders put in before the 1st will also be granted the 50% off discount with coupon code. New stuff is being added! Still free shipping in the USA and bonus flies with every order! Cheers~
50% off coupon code: FISHON
http://www.etsy.com/shop/VermontFlyGuys

the guys really know there stuff and if your a trout angler brian does some fantastic trout patterns i actually have a couple in my box as well and as for kens flies well no indroduction needed you know those catch preds

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back to all things all things flytying

i supply a local company http://www.predatorbite.com/ with pike flies and the kits i provide sell very very well for him especially the streamer kits well the things catch fish when things catch fish people sit up and take notice and of course buy the kits .

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These kits really are the dogs both for the beginner or the seasoned pike fly fisher and are made simply to catch fish in pretty much any conditions on any water, but it doesn’t stop there this streamer although designed for pike is just as effective for pretty much anything that swims in warm water both fresh and saltwater (with the exception of bonefish). so if you’re looking for a grab box of flies to stick in the boot of your car for after work sessions or just a kit to stick in with your other tackle for when the goings slow , or maybe you’re looking for a Christmas present for a fishing pal then this is it , click the picture above to go and check the kits out there is something for all budgets and keep checking back with them as there will be more kits added all the time , plus a load of dedicated kits for saltwater species around the up coast line

ok so that was a shameless bit of self promotion but they really are quite good kits

“scream for me fly tiers”

You know when I’m in the cave churning out flies I like to have some sounds on, and I without fail have planet rock on there’s nothing better than some good ol riffing music when your needing a lift to get stuff done , sometimes , especially when I’m designing stuff I like to have it on and believe it or not even when listening to the likes of Sabbath or priest it really does help me concentrate and if I’m doing a fairly simple pattern then I’ll stick on some old school thrash metal then I can really churn em out fast , off course if loud raucous rock n roll music isn’t your thing then just tune in to what you like , just seems to me a lot of the people I know seem to a bit off rock n roll .

So with the old tunes steaming I long at full pelt I got the 150 flies done without scrimping on quality , you see the other thing is people know they are getting a quality fly because I make each and every one myself so I can stand by everyone that comes out of the cave , this is another reason I only tie for a couple of company’s and don’t farm them out , I mean the thing is if you put any of the flies either myself or ken capsey over at Vermont fly guys up against some African tying house shite then I tell you one thing the home made flies will still be fishing long after the mass produced flies have fallen apart and catching fish this I know to be oh so very true from what people have told me , in fact I have one guy who has a pattern that is pretty much a magnet for big fish for him and he refuses to tell anybody where he gets the flies from and my lips as well as the pattern are sealed up in my head , sure his buddies have tried to copy it by taking pictures of it and getting tiers to make them but they don’t work because there Is one very important element they are leaving out which again I can’t mention but this fly still continues to catch him fish , and let me tell you I don’t have even have one …….but the pattern is secure in my head ….lol , I guess what I’m trying to say is track down the local guy who ties and fishes he will have the knowledge and the know how to get you fish on the hook without the worry of a poorly tied African fly

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PORTMORE LIGHTNING THE NEXT HATCH

The portmore lightning has been making waves and has been catching a lot of fish , just one of those flies that sometimes tick all the boxes , the streamer kit from http://www.predatorbite.com/ has 3 different colours of lightning in it and I’m working on some new colours the one above is a classic black pattern but with fluro eyes the main body is made from synthetic fur kinda looks like and feels a bit like polor fibre looks good though think it will fish its socks off in this colour in low visibility water conditions yea digging it and I have a load of new colours that ill be launching next year so watch out for them over at the bites site

love the lightning

gliss n glint plusing again

Everybody who knows me , will know that I champion gliss n glint plus it’s a fantastic material and makes some wonderful patterns that really do look realistic in the water giving out some lovely pulsey flash as you strip pause it , so just for no reason than I wanted another one in my ever increasing gliss and glint plus box of baitfish but hey can you really ever have enough flies so I used the old classic red and white pattern , the main bulk of the body is white gliss n glint plus the head is done with plain old red angel hair laid on then folded back , simple fly but deadly for loads of species .

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Custom uv tool
(oops product placement alert)

I hate it when you get to the last dregs of a bottle of something and my uv bottles are no different Im forever having to lean the bottle upside down against things so I get the last drips out (well I am Scottish) so in a moment of shear daftness while making a fly my eyes came to rest in a long forgotten corner of my tying desk ,you will all have a corner you know the sort of thing mmmm there a 2mm bit of flashabou that will come in handy ill stick it over there along with a pile of other bits and pieces that ill use one day and so I spotted a long since dumped wooden hair stacker and then the penny clicked , the light build went on and a new use was found for it as you can see above . Ok so it may not be the greatest invention but it solves a problem for me

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THE KNOBULATOR

The knobulator ok so it’s a bit of a crackpot fly from me it’s just one of those things that I made for no reason at all except that I could, I was sitting tying up some streamers and my eyes spotted a popper head sitting on a hook from a project that id started ages ago but never got round to finishing, I decided that it looked like the family jewels so I decided I would make a fly from it and this is what I made , it is off course fully fishable and I will be using it when the weather warms ups it measures 8 inches and is tied on a 6/0 Orvis pike and musky hook the action of this fly will be like a glide bait strip and pause will see it glide left to right I really don’t know why I made this it was just one of those things and to be honest when I look at it sitting on my desk it does make me laugh, maybe I can use it as a booby prize for the next pffa completion…. Thankfully you won’t be seeing a whole range of knobulators in different sizes and colours in the near future.

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Redneck tying lessons
(sorry if the picture puts you off your breakfast)

Was throwing a few ideas round with brother ken in vt via skype the other day and he showed me a very cool fly that he had used a flexible glue on , I asked him for a quick look at the glue and bugger me it’s something that I had seen in my local orvis but wasn’t ever sure A- what is was or B- what I could use it for, so was delighted when I saw what ken used it for , however what did piss me off was the fact that ken buys this in his local craft store for a few dollors but mine orvis sells the same stuff for like 8.99 uk how can they get away with that because it’s for fly tiers they can add a massive mark up on it just shows shop around folks , there’s bargains to be had .

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So with the weather being so bloody awful the last few weeks with howling winds storms sleet and snow and pretty much everything else except plague’s , locusts and the black death being thrown at us the idea of going chucking great big pike flies around didn’t really appeal to me I don’t mind if I’m already out and it starts up but to actively head out when its blowing chunks really isn’t an option for me I’m afraid so not quite sure when ill get out again but in the meantime I’ve always got the vice and I have a few winter jobs to do with my gear so that will just have to do ……and I also have lots of saltwater fly kits to do so never a dull moment

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Tight lines if you are out and stay safe
Mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)

fame i wanna live forever ................

2011-12-03T09:34:00.003Z

just done a nice little interview with master class guiding services drew price you'll find the interview by clicking the pic below

i don't usually do this kind of stuff but drews such a nice guy and a hellava angler so i thought yea why not the questions were very interesting so go check it out and have dip inside my crazy head

i smell bait fish

2011-11-30T15:23:00.007Z

sili squid skin

nick over at http://www.deercreek.co.uk/ sent me some of his new sili squid skin to try out and see what i could come up with never one to step down from a challenge i got to thinking what i could do with it , so i didn't dive straight in with knocking out some designs instead i thought about what i could do with it . the skin itself is really nice and quite thick as well and you get a really nice strip of 7x2 for £3.99 id say compared to a similar version on the market id call that a great deal

of course most of the ideas you'll see with this kind of material is gummy minnows and although i was going to make some i decided to try something a little different so i cut out a foam head then cut out a slightly bigger square of sili squid skin and wrap it around the foam then using the infamous croc glue on the back of the foam hold it in place until it dries add a couple of gator eyes and you have a very nice looking bait fish if i say so myself , although the picture doesn't do the head justice

OK so that worked out good but i wanted to do something a bit different so i grabbed a 6/0 hook and did a pike sized gummy minnow hell why not i reckon this will be a killer on my local and it catches the light quite superb

pictured below is 3 minnows i have done with sili squid skin and the 2 flies at the bottom are tied using some new hooks deer creek are doing (bloody sharp) and you can see the difference in size to the 6/0 minnow at the top

the small minnow below has a few strands of flash through it and some yellow pro marker on the flanks

just a little silver minnow i did first off although i think i should have added a tail but i still like it and it will catch fish

the picture below shows how light catches the sili squid ,I've not used a flash on this shot very impressed with it and I'm sure these will catch big time , I'm not sure if anybodies used these for pike before but cant see any reason why they wouldn't work especially when there feeding on sticklebacks or small silver fish , and i guess they would take a load of saltwater species as well

OK so if you want to check it out here's the lowdown

SQUID SKIN KIT
Everything you need to make squid minnows. A full sheet of Squid Skin 3 strips of foil. !0 assorted hooks & 10 Pairs of Crystal eyes.

Price: £9.99

or buy it in sheets

SILI SQUID SKIN

Squid Skin is the newest & most revolutionary salt water fly tying material.
Available in 3 styles. Coupled with our Squid foils and Crystal Eyes you can create the ultimate life like bait-fish.
1mm thick
The only limits are your imagination.

Sheet size 7"x2"

Price: £3.99

http://www.deercreek.co.uk/Deer-Creek-fly-tying-materials.html

how the wind howls

2011-11-24T14:23:00.004Z

yup Scotland just now is blowing chunks ans the chance of getting out and chucking parrots about is pretty much zero so I'm going to hit the water early next week all being well
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in the meantime i have shit to do in my cave i have a new storage system for under my bench on the left hand side , (actually its a chest of draws) and i had a couple of 3 draw cabinets that were going to be put to use so i started on that this week

the cave - in need of a new seat i think

how many hooks do i need you can pick these chests and drawers up for next to nothing on local classified sites and they make great storage solutions for the fly tier i have millions of boxes of hooks all sorts of sizes and shapes for probably every species swimming I'm a tackle rat when it comes to hooks i have so many , the ones in the picture are the tip of the iceberg i have another 4 boxes of hooks in packets , the thing is i get asked to make all sorts of things for all sorts of fish so i like to have stuff ready to hand ......well that's my excuse

so another thing is that in this day and age well more so over the last 7 years is that there is so much new material coming out i find that space gets to be a premium in my cave well you have to have all the colours to play with don't you , I've now got to the stage where i have to label every box with whats in it or i just forget that i have the stuff .

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of course sometimes other stuff sneaks onto my shelves like the odd random fly box or reel again you can never have enough fly reels or fly boxes or materials or oh you get the idea right

I've also managed to source a new hook similar to my favorite gamagatsu sl but a fraction of the price I've done some stress tests on it and it seems to be holding up well it also has a nice little offset so i think this is going to be a great hook for my synthetic patterns ill be tying on it early next week so stay tuned

one of the lads in the pffa put me on to a new site in the UK for the pike fly tier so i went and had a look and thought it was a nicely laid out site with a great selection of flashbou , lines and odds and sods and what i must say is a great selection of synthetic yak hair in a load of colours so they get my vote , anyway go check em out and support UK cottage industry

hopefully ill be back on the prowl next week and back to normal so if your out this weekend have fun and stay safe , i have to work all weekend at my other job so i wont be doing much

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

summertime and the living is easy

2011-11-18T16:11:00.006Z

or should that be er excuse me its November in the UK shouldn't it be frosty

OK so I'm leaping forward a bit here you see because last weekend was the pike fly fishing associations annual fenland flyer for the Anthony Noland trust , its that kind of event where anybody can come along and fish club member or not , and indulge in a bit of fly fishing for pike or just to catch up with friends we usually only talk to on forums , what ever the reason its always a great day out and this year was no different

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ain't you that bloke of the TV

if you don't know who the bloke in waders is well let me tell you , his name is Charles rangley Wilson and hes done a bit of writing and film and TV stuff if you click the pic above it will take you to his site where you can learn more , well worth checking out ,

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having had a chat with Mr Wilson it was time for the off so i had a game plan which was to hit a couple of spots that i have caught fish before so 9.30 i was walking up to the first spot and with anticipation i cast into the somewhat clear waters of the old bedford , 30 Min's later i was still chucking into the clear waters of the bedford and not a lot else was happening oh dear this ain't quite what i had planned .

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well to be honest the next 3 hours wasn't really what i had in mind indeed fishing partner for the day Ernie (pffa membership sec)and myself both seemed to agree the conditions were bloody awful for here in fact it would have been better if it had been frozen over , we had a very bright warm sun way up in a cloudless sky not good and a rethink was called for pretty sharpish

a whole lot of nowhere

we decided to head to a spot around 3 miles away that did produce fish to those that dared make the trip so we started the walk , it was a gamble but one which could have well have paid off big time so we set off on a very pleasant walk , after about 100 yards we spotted a very big zander from the high bank pretty much cruising towards the far bank now this thing was obviously a high double , well i had to have a go so i crept down and started casting as i went but dispute my best efforts and casting in a tight fan in the area we saw it it was a no go so with heavy heart we went back to our walk ...
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pikesaber feel the force
the pikesaber (click above) has had the odd critic these are usually people that don't know what there talking about or haven't tried one but by the amount of them on show today obviously these people don't listen to critics and make there own minds up and I'm still proud to support them and i still say its one of the best on the market and it ain't half got some casting power check the picture above and just think of the power in that rod as it launches that line , hell yea
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final destination

if you look closely at the picture above you'll see way way way in the distance a pylon this was the upper limits of the completion and that was the final spot for us, we eventually got there and cast into pristine waters and cast and cast and cast to no avail , unfortunately for us it just wasn't happening for us and we really did luck out but to be honest we wernt the only ones today and the biggest fish out off 30 or so anglers was 9lbs something and quite a few anglers blanked , this is a hard venue at the best of times and you really need to know the water you can literally go hundreds of yards along this water without a predator being there and when fish are caught the spots are usually kept secret within pike circles .

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i have however learned a lot about fishing this venue and i look forward to getting back next year to put some theories into practice but i really enjoyed getting the flies wet and i had some new patterns that looked absolutely awesome in the water , but you know sometimes its just about getting out there

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meanwhile over in rednecks ville, brother ken from pike adventures has been out hitting the muskies and hes been having some infuriating fun with them sneaking up on flies and stuff but he managed to stick one , well done bro and on some great new patterns as well the thing is ken is able to tie flies and test them on muskys i mean threes company's out there that make flies that the tiers have never been a couple of thousand miles from a musky let alone wet a fly for them , nice to see ken going from vice to musky in the glint of an eye , you know if your going to buy flies make sure the person tying actually fishes for them , threes no harm in contacting somebody in a picture on a forum for advice or seeing if they will whip you some up .

ken and a real musky

(the musky declined an interview)

looking forward to my trip next year when i plan a grand slam

pickerel / northern pike / musky

ken brother get the spots together and see ya in the fall brother what a predator blast that will be folks

well i have to apologise for not blogging since the 8Th of November but i had loads of work on , i had more flies to do for the chaps at predator bite click the links to have a look

predator bite single flies

or if your new to pike fishing they also do a really nice line in pike fly kits pretty much a grab box that includes a roll of the brilliant authanic wire here's the link for the kits

predator bite pike fly kits

check em out as they do some great stuff , so with having stuff to do and get prepared for my trip south and getting back and catching man flu life has been a bit hectic , next week I'm back to fly tying and i have a million ideas bursting out and loads of bits of scrap paper with ideas on so roll on next week

see ya soon

mcfluffchucker

i write about what i like

2011-11-08T08:12:00.004Z

I LIKE THIS PRODUCT

(if carlsberg did uv kits this would be it)

BECAUSE I DO

i hate to start posts on a bit of a downer but im sick to death of idiots on the Internet you know the type keyboard warriors , well to those idiots i say this i write what i like and about what i like , if i choose to write about a particular product then its simply because i like it ,if i like it and it makes great flies then ill write about it to let others know about it , so don't tell me that im "ramming it down your throat" if i like it im writing about it if you don't like it then don't read it your choice but don't start giving it large about it again ill say this . i am not tied or paid by any company to promote products i do what i do because i like it end of ....... i don't do politics and im not interested in engaging you in your petty crap just go and fish .

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on the subject of new materials gliss and glint plus is now available in 2 very cool black colours one with a green flash and one with a reddish gold flash for it , im quite into black these days so was more than happy to get these 2 packs to play with

somebody saw one of these packs on my desk and said not a lot of material in that pack for pike flies , but actually there is enough to make quite a few flies with this stuff less is definitely more and if you use it sparingly you can make some great flies , there is definitely a thing in a fly fishers head that says i need to pile the material on to make a great big bait fish but actually you can get the same if not better looking fly by using just a few strands of material as the picture below shows , do you think the fish would notice if you use less material ........

the subject of circle hooks reared its ugly head again the other day and i found myself trying to explain the pros of them to somebody who wasn't ever going to use them anyway , but they are fish friendly and bloody good at getting fish on the bank . these days i don't even usually post pictures of flies done on them because it always starts a massive debate on the subject so rather than go through all that again if your interested in the whole circle hook thing click the link scroll down the page and you'll see a great article

circle hooks the truth is out there

a fly on a circle hook , just try it you may like em , the only bugger i find with circles is getting a decent fly box to store them in im sure something will come along at some point but in the mean time i use video boxes if you know something i don't please let me know

mixing things up a bit

you know there's no rule book written about fly tying so sometimes its just good to mix stuff up so that's exactly what I've done with this fly , for no other reason than i just wanted too and i was quite happy with the result

the main body of the fly is made from gliss and glint plus (ops sorry a blatant ramming there) I've used this as i wanted just a little glint in the body not a full on flashy body , added to this I've placed a few orvis woolly bugger feathers (is that a plug) and made the head up of normal prime northern buck tail hook on this is a gamakatsu sl12 6/0 bloody sharp

i must learn to use the close up button on the camera sometimes things are just a bit to technical for me but even though the eye is a bit out of focus i still like the picture .
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below is the fly in all its glory laid out and ready to go in the box i like the colouration on this and think ill play with a few more colours hopefully if the weather settles down a bit ill get out and about to test em , actually my bro over at pike adventures may want to play with the muskies before the white stuff sets in so it may go into a care package this week

so with that im off to do some more tying with materials that i cant name in case somebody thinks in blatantly pushing a product but if your interested in looking round at some lovely websites then go have a browse at http://www.deercreek.co.uk/ but please be aware you may find fly tying products there and id hate to think I've in anyway influenced you into buying some materials i just like the site as there's some lovely pictures on there

*please not any product placement in pictures on this page is purely coincidental , if you interested in any of the products i use please click on the relevant picture to go to the site , i have done this to save you time searching the Internet for the same product , isn't that a nice thing to do

mcfluffchucker

a cave in Scotland

p.s this is a blatant plug because its awesome and check the price

EAZI UV RESIN KIT

Our Budget resin kit the same resin just a longer curing torch (9 seconds) amazing value at

Price: £19.99

2011-11-03T13:29:00.005Z

A BACKYARD in NOWHERE
(A fly fishing western)

There has been a few pike fly fishing videos lately and to be honest most of them are fantastic the last 2 great works have been the musky country did from brad bohen and the lair of the water wolf by Barry Reynolds which set the benchmark for fishing videos

Then we have this DVD from some crazy guys from Denmark who head to the wilds of Alaska in search of pike on the fly. from the start you know this video is something different something that in the back of your mind you knew you wanted to see but you didn’t realise what it was until you saw it, this is that thing, it’s a pike fuelled shot in the arm done in a movie documentary style, in fact imagine the blair witch project with tarentino as the director and your nearly there and it all becomes clear why we do what we do

The one thing that sets this off from other DVDs and takes things to a whole new level is the absolutely stunning slow motion footage of pike hitting flies and going airborne this is really some of the best footage I’ve seen they really got it spot on.

Along with the stunning fishing there is a some great scenes with the local Indians who seem to be permanently drunk, the interaction with the fishers and the Indians is worthy of its own movie alone, but I won’t spoil it for you as to what goes on but I was actually laughing out loud while watching it, the only thing I can say is remind me never to get baptized in Alaska

This is not a how to pike fly fish or a look at me and my big fish type of film oh no it’s a whole new way of creating an entertaing movie for the fly fisher and it does have everything including some rather disturbing footage of a run in with a guide company who work out of there ( I was shocked at the way these people behaved)

a BACKYARD in NOWHERE official HD trailer from Sellfish Media & Smatis Film on Vimeo.

but it does make very interesting viewing , I think if there was a downside to this dvd it would be the length , at just under an hour I wish they had stretched it out to an hour and a half , they were up there for 3 weeks so they must have a lot of footage maybe just maybe there will be backyard pt 2 coming out I really hope so because this has me gagging for a sequel , the dvd extra is a really bizarre music video with the fellas dancing in a boat somewhere now I wasn’t sure what was going on to be honest and then the fly rods appeared and it all became clear

Do yourself a favour go and buy it crack open a beer and enjoy the next level of fishing videos
Click the link to buy direct

http://flyfishingwestern.com/

video killed the radio star and a free economy

2011-11-02T16:01:00.005Z

you know I'm all for a free economy and all that but you know theres limits to that and one thing that really gets me is money grabbing fly stealing tossers and i make no apology for what I'm about to write

i had a skype video call from a chap who wanted to chat with me and this is what had happened , he had bought a couple of pike flies from flies**line (not allowed to name them) and he was under the assumption that these were flies from Richard Todd at ukpikeflies.co.uk , now Richard produces some fantastic hand tied pike flies and they are of the best quality you can get , Richard like me puts a lot of time and effort into his flies .

so when i got the skype call i was shocked to see this fly had fallen apart before even seeing water , i looked at the fly through the medium of skype video i realised that it wasn't one of Richards i asked where he got them and i headed over to the site to find some really crap copy's of Richards flies , now like Richard i know that flies are copied that's the nature of fly tying and to be honest there probably nothing original out there in fly tying and we all feed of each others ideas and stuff and its a compliment when people do make flies that you have done and most of the time people will say where they got the idea ,i know i do if something is based on someones pattern then ill say so . because that show most fly tiers roll

but then you get the leeches like the guy who has had cheap shit copies made in china on crap hooks and then sell them as quality pike flies on there site at a fraction of the cost that the original tyier sells them for well listen let me tell you its a false economy because that fly you bought cheap will fall apart with one fish is you even manage to get it in the water so don't even bother buying that crap go to the original site (in this case www.ukpikeflies.co.uk) spend the extra few quid and get something that's going to last you a hell of a lot longer and more fish than that crap in the picture .............. and if your the owner of the site that sells that garbage you know its one of Richards flies don't try and deny it pal because i know for a fact it is along with the other garbage you call pike flies , stick to the trout flies

black is the new chartrues

I've been going a bit black crazy over the last few months and with good cause as its a devastating colour and all round fly to use the thing with me is i do like to tinker with flies and love to add a bit and try new ways to do stuff , the fly above i made with black ep fiber and green awesome hair flash through it , with this fly i tied the head bullhead style and trimmed it and I'm really happy with the results

this fly I've done with gold awesome hair but not tied the ep in bullhead style I've tied it hollow style , to be honest although i know it will fish fine I'm more happy with the bullhead style , but that's what its all about trying new things to see what works ill still fish this though

wig vid

2011-10-28T15:20:00.002+01:00

well had to happen i did a video for this black wig fly i was blogging about the other day , now i don't aim to make a professional video , that's not really what I'm about so please enjoy and hope you get something from it and as with all my other tying videos please feel free to share

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

halloween and cool stuff

2011-10-26T17:22:00.006+01:00

if your one of these people that have a funky iPhone and are a pike angler then check out deercreek very cool iPhone cover they also do them in trout and rainbow trout , i for one cant be trusted with mobile phones as they usually end up in the bottom of a boat covered in water (q my trip with bother ken over at pike adventures ) so i limit myself to 10 quid/dollar pay as you go phones which incidentally i think were made with the angler in mind , if you haven't yet lost a phone by it either falling out your vest while wading , over the side of a boat chinning a fish , or falling out your bag into a pool of water at the bottom of the boat (cough cough) then its only a matter of time .

so its that time of year when shop start to stock Halloween stuff , now im not really big into it in fact its only in recent years that the UK has decided to do the American full on festivities with it strangely enough we don't get trick or treaters round my door but then that could be something to do with answering the door the year before in a loin cloth and with an axe in my hand ..

but it does present a few possibilities for the pike fly tier in the form of materials like Christmas presents us with lots of sparkly flashy stuff halloween usually presents us with synthetics .

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and so today id just picked up my son from school and i head to head to the supermarket for a few provisions and as i walked down the frozen chicken isle i spotted a display off witches wigs

and a rather fetching young lady on the front a bonus , now this stuff is made from the same stuff as a lot of synthetics and it cost me 3.00 UK pounds for this wig and the stuff is around 15 inches long so quite good value for money , this one is black and was the only colour they had but no doubt if id looked around the town center i could have found different colours

just to show you how much stuff there is in one of these wigs I've placed a tin of tuna (line and pole caught) on top and as you can see there is plenty, and as i needed to do lots of black flies i guess i struck lucky .

watch this space for some flies im going to tie with it tomorrow and remember next time the wife wants you to go shopping head along with her you never know what you'll find

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

cold days and new ideas

2011-10-18T12:00:00.006+01:00

i have no problem with asking for help if i don't know how to do something hell that's how you learn things helped enough people in my time and don't mind doing that at all . so when it came to thinking about a new idea i needed help , you see id seen a video on you tube with a chap using lead head jigs (no not on the fly) and the chap in question had used a stinger hook for these walleyes and actually did a great job on catching those short biting fish ,.

well I've had that very same problem before with predators you know so i got to thinking about incorporating this into some of my flies , i thought this would work very well with my sub bugs , trouble was i had no faith in the holding power of the stinger hook i just couldn't get it out my head that the connection would break on a decent fish , with that in mind there was only one thing to do , in times of indecision a call to my my redneck brother ken capsey at pike adventures was the the only option as he uses the very same stinger hooks on some of his flies .

after a skype video call with brother ken and a nifty little demo and some choice words from him (glue the crap outta it dude) i watched him do a test on the stinger loop and yup im convinced a fish and gonna break it

so lay down a bed of thread , i just use a normal sewing cotton

now as brother ken says glue the crap outta it , this will completely seal it and make it rock solid

using a stiff plastic coated wire tie in one side to the side of the hook shaft , then slip on your stinger hook and whip the other length of wire to the shaft , pinch both pieces of the wire together at the rear of the hook and whip down so the loop sits directly out from the back and not flat , this will mean you hook will sit properly and not to one side

the finished sub bug with a small stinger hook , I've gone for a small circle hook as circles are really the dogs rowlocks when it comes to hook ups and really its the ideal thing to use i think and you'd be able to get away with using smaller sizes of hook and being assured your not going to compromise on the hook up strength

this bug is designed more on ken capseys sub bug head over mine as kens heads seem to get the fly deeper on a floating line whereas mine will just trip under the surface , it all down to the packing of the hair but anyway i went with a smaller packed head and plastic eyes to give it a cool glide-bait action

the business end yea im liking that

the finished fly looking great in my book and hopeful it will fish like i think it will. test day coming up and i think ill do a few more just to make sure
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i was tying some flies up the other day and i got this particular fly down to being tied up in 2 Min's yes just two Min's so thought id share this really quick tie fly with you the possibility's are really endless when it comes to colours so knock yourself out and have fun with it , the video takes 8 Min's but that's because im talking through it but you get the idea , feel free to share this as with my other videos on your blogs or website , just let me know where there going

have fun if your out and a massive thanks to ken for the walk through and settling my mind

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

whats in the box jock

2011-10-14T14:06:00.005+01:00

thanks to Bob Cozzo from Ely, Minnesota for a mail asking for a bit more detailed explanation on what i carry in my boat box , well happy to help bob here below is the contents of my box unpacked and on the living room floor (the wife is out)

my boat box is completely different to my bank bag and that again is completely different to what id take if i was traveling ultralight but more on that in another blog post , i tend to choose water specific flies these days that match what the fish are probably used to seeing swimming about , i also include a few flyer flies flies that id maybe not use on a particular water , so depending on season and what the fish are up to my choice of flies can vary greatly in both colour and size , the flies above represent what im hauling just now , again this can change from trip to trip

so whats in the box then

i carry a large ziplock bag which i put all my spools of leader materials this keeps em altogether and easy access on the boat if i need to change leaders i have all the spools in one bag ready to go

a couple of plano boxes one has all the deerhair head flies , I've learnt through experience that deerhair can be flattened if stored incorrectly , there is also a deep clip lock box that i have a reel and some spare spools in it fits great in the box and again keeps everything together , i also have in this picture a sea fishing rig wallet that i keep all my traces in ready made up and ready to clip on to a leader although ince discovering authanic wire it doesn't get out much now

i also carry a small range of tools and unhooking equipment i carry a few styles of unhooking pliers short ones tend to be what i use most as most of the fish i catch are usually lip hooked or just inside the mouth but i always carry longer ones in case i do deep hook one but this has yet to happen , knifes are also useful to clear weed of props and a million other things , i also carry a multi tool again a million different uses for it and handy to have in the box especially if you get a hook in the hand .

a longer type clip box is a recent addition to the box fits in a corner quite nicely and for my use carry a couple of spools of authanic wire a pair of small sharp scissors for cutting the authanic with , and i also keep a small box of cross lock swivels in here that i use on the end of my traces for quick change of fly , again all easy to access in one place , i also carry a small roll of electrical tape this has many uses from using as a finger guard when stripping line in the wet to covering cuts and using to mark you line to keep you fly at a specific depth in the water , a million uses

when every thing is packed away it all fits quite snugly into the box , the box itself is a daiwa seat bot that course anglers use in the UK , im not sure if you can get them overseas if you then a large plastic cool box will also do the job if you can get one with a hinged lid even better

the inside lid i have lined with a cut to size yoga matt and used a hot melt glue gun to stick it down on these i tend to have the flys im going to be starting out with and flies i want to try in the water also a great place to store used flies to dry , make sure all your flies are dry at the end of the trip if not take them out and dry them separately

i have a rapala clip on unhooking and scissors tool kit that your supposed to clip on your best , i clip it to the side of my box and i always have ultra fast access to a knife and unhooking equipment , and that's that hope it was helpful to you bob

on the vice

been a busy week for me topping up predatorbite with flies so ive had little time to play with my own patterns until last night when i decided to whack out a couple of buck tail patterns which came out better than i expected one in black with black flash

and of course one in chartreuse with a nice green flash through it like this pattern quite a lot will be playing with a few more of these patterns

while i was doing the predatorbite order i was churning out the flies and wondered how long it was taking me to do a rainbow trout pattern so i timed myself and i managed to tie a fly in 2 Min's so with that being so easy i decided to make a short video on the tie , the video actually takes 8 Min's or so but im talking through it but you ca tie this no bother in just a few Min's , a quick and easy but great looking fly enjoy

enjoy and see you all soon

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

adventures in diamond hard uv

2011-10-07T16:15:00.008+01:00

ADVENTURES IN DIAMOND HARD UV RESIN
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DIAMOND HARD TACK FREE U.V. RESIN is quite amazing stuff and unlike other torch activated uvs out there this stuff really is tack free and cures in seconds and most importantly it wont break the bank , there's quite a few things you can do with uv but its not in my mind a complete replacement for epoxy or glue it has its use along side these products , and one thing i really do love about it is doing what I've blogged about today

these eyes are called sea eyes , i got these from rutland fly fishing in the UK but i don't think they do them anymore you can however get them from lake-land fly tying they are exactly the same ones here's the link aluminium sea eyes they are sold in packs of 25 for the ridiculously cheap price of 2.50 UK basically they are like dumbbell eyes like you get on clousers but these are made from aluminium and have a really cool recess that you can stick in your own 3d eyes so of course this brings up a gazillion possibilities for the fly tier , and the other bonus is being aluminium there are very light which in turn reduces the sink rate of your fly over the trad metal dumbbells , these ones being large are also a great option for the pike fly tier

I've used these eyes quite a lot in past and before id have to mix up a little 5 min epoxy then ad a bit to the recess then place the eye on top then add a another little bit of epoxy on top of the positioned eye then wait for it to dry before turning the sea eye over and repeating the process this takes a bloody age to do and you can only do a limited amount of eyes at one time before the epoxy goes hard and you have to mix a new batch up

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as you can see in the picture above the handy dispenser makes it really easy to drop a little bit into the recess of the eye

i then place the small 3d on top and push down with a bodkin as you push down the diamond cure will overflow a bit at the sides but don't worry about this as it will even itself out on the next step

just top up with diamond cure to completely seal the eye in , it will form the shape of the eye just don't overfill the eye for the best results , you can always just add a bit at a time curing as you go till you get the desired effect and thickness

curing takes seconds with the very cool half the price twice the job of other similar looking torches ultrafire uv torch and seconds is really all it takes , the torches come in a an amazing 19.95 UK with batteries fitted compere that to 34.oo UK on other sites well that's quite a saving for the same torch

so having set the eyes you need to prepare the hook i still go with the old build a dam on each side of where the eye is going to sit (you can just see it with my rubbish photography) im also using a clear mono thread from uncle Greg over at piketrek and its only 1.50 UK for 200m another bargain

so what i do know is add a covering of diamond hard over the thread and on the spot where the eyes are going to sit , you only need a small amount on there

sit the eye on and whip round a few times to hold it in place add a small blob of the diamond hard to the dumbbell whipping

then zap it for a few seconds and that's all you need

this has set rock solid and you wont be able to shift it a great solid bond

ive just decided to do the most messy fly in the world just made up of angel hair and nothing else plenty of flash and plenty of movement

some red angel hair tied in under and in front of the eye and fold back and secure cant beat some red in head

there you have it a great looking sparkly fly with a rock solid eye , of course you can pretty much add any kind of eye you like to the dumbbells , and its fast and easy to do give it a try ,

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and that's me for the week no fishing due to bloody awful wind this week here so maybe next week ill maybe get out who knows if i don't at least i can get onto vice for some entertainment

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

welcome to scotland

2011-10-03T19:50:00.007+01:00

you got to just shake your head sometimes , id looked at the weather forecast and it said bright with 10mph winds , not the most ideal conditions for pike fishing but sometimes you just got to go with it , and that's what i did the forecast said the wind would die down and to be honest i could handle 10mph even rowing by hand so with that in mind i arrived at the loch with a 50/50 confidence but sometimes its just great too be out in beautiful surrounding's

i was on the water early to make the most of things i like to get on water early first light if possible give me a better chance of being on the money when the underwater dinner bell goes off , so i rowed up the loch to my first spot and tried a few patterns around the area for a few hours .

there was nothing much going on using the intermediate line fishing down through the layers so i decided to change over to a floating line and an ugly Betty fly on the surface to see if i could get them agitated to take a surface fly making some noise i fished around the edges on some of my favorite lies where bank access is difficult so threes a bonus right there

with the wind getting up even worse and only a few half hearted nips at the flies i decide to take a break and dig up a late breakfast and think about what i was going to do next as i wasn't coming off the water till i had a fish to the boat , i knew the conditions were getting even harder with a now scorching sun beating down and the wind up to way more than 10mph i seriously needed a rethink on tactics , sometimes a radical change is the way to go on a hard day , the bummer is if this water was in the states id just stick on a gurgler and go largemouth , well it ain't its Scotland so a rethink is the only thing i can do

my thinking was black yup plain old black flies on the bottom ya see the water is still pretty green and rubbish visibility and i figure on such a hot day i figured the fish would be down on the deck , so i rigged up a 5 inch subbug in noir (black to me and you) i also changed to a stripped bass intermediate line as i still wanted to search out the layers with this fly , first cast i let the fly go right down and did a strip pause strip and within a a couple of pulls the rod arched over into a satisfying curve FISH ON BABY the bug does it again

a first look as it shot to the surface very annoyed at getting caught out

the way the bug was sitting in the pike mouth i guessed id pulled the fly right past its mouth anyway the fish couldn't resist the passing snack and it nailed it check out the teeth

just got to love those predators and on a day where conditions were bloody awful i was delighted to be holding a well earned fish

and there you have the killer bug , this is highly visible in the water and the 7mm animal eyes give it the action of a glidebait in the water , used with the wonderful authentic wire from predatorbite.com give this sub bug maximum movement in the water i mean this thing really does look like a fish in the water

so my box of shinny stuff was confined to the box all day , as i carried on to miss a load of fish to the bug mostly turning at the side of the boat in shallow water that all they wanted black bugs .

so with the wind getting up i decided to head back to the dock and home as there was white caps starting to happen and that's never a good sign . its really quite rare to have a day like this in Scotland at this time of year and from now on i think the weather will go down the pan its already being forecast snow for the end of October , but ill still manage a couple of trips out and hopefully a few more through November if the snow holds off well you cant believe the forecasters
got a busy week ahead lots of tying to do so stay tuned midweek

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

time flies

2011-09-29T19:36:00.002+01:00

has it really been that long since i did a post on the blog the 19Th of Sept for gods sake i mean i didn't realise it was that long , indeed time flies well in this case busy doing them , as is well documented i supply limited editions to a few websites and i had a load of flies to do for the chaps over at www.predatorbite.com so that has kept me busy for quite a while if you want to check out the fruits of my labour click the pick below

I've also been tying up some sparkly beasts for my up coming trip strange that the tin next to the flies says money bank because these flashbou flies really are that money in the bank flies , although they all look the same they are all very much different as some are weighted some have rattles but they all very much catch fish .

full bodied rattle flashabou fly

somebody on facebook mentioned the other day on the fact that id used chenille in one of my ties and i explained that i have a lot of uses for chenille from bull body's and heads on flies to using it to create an illusion of bulk in the water on softer materials like flashabou and ep , easy to do so take a look at how i do it to keep a great fish shape in the water

so after having tied in your tail section of materials tie in a rattle (these are from pike trek and are cheap as chips and a great loud rattle) the slight weight of the rattle also gives the fly some action , in the old days i would either glue the rattle on or tie and varnish it , well those days are long gone ........

by adding a very thin layer of deercreeks diamond hard UV resin
and adding the torch for just a few seconds you get a rock hard bond and let me tell you it is a solid bond and there's no way a pike will destroy the rattle no matter what , in fact the rattle may be the only thing left once all the materials have long gone

so with the UV cured only after a few seconds and completely tack free i then hollow tie some material in at the front of the rattle this covers the rattle and your now ready to add the chenille to form the body bulk , all you really need to do is form a small ball in front of your last piece of material you can do this with just a couple of inches of chenille

so now i take a section of the chosen head colour and hollow tie it in , at this point i tend to add a dot of clear varnish to secure the tie before pushing back

now its been pushed back you can see how it sits around the chenille ball and starts to give it that shape you want , this is also the shape it will stay in the water .

tie in another shorter head colour (in this case pink) and then a final shorter section ,whip finish and then either varnish or as i do now a small blob of diamond hard UV

and there you have it a great looking fly that keeps that all important shape in the water and still has that amazing movement that only a fly can have , when you look at something like this in your hand , you just know your going to catch fish on it

so that's my box sorted out for this weekends fishing trip and boy do i need to get out , the crazy thing is we are nearly into October and the weather is barmy really bloody hot , this time of year id expect to be putting that fleece jacket what i am in fact doing is digging out my shorts and preparing surface sub bugs crazy crazy crazy .. welcome to Scotland

take care if your out

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

life

2011-09-19T10:10:00.005+01:00

ROCKS

ENJOY THE BUZZ

gliss n glint plus and diamond hard uv

2011-09-16T10:10:00.005+01:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS

well that's what i thought when i got a package through the door yesterday with a nice diamond hard UV resin kit from http://www.deercreek.co.uk/ now i use various epoxies and i indeed if you read my blog regularly you will know i also have a UV drying case that i can put multiple flies on so i was keen to try just one of these torch kits .......

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the one thing that really shocked me was when doing some research into the torch i found a UV torch that was exactly the same for a wallet breaking £47.00 pounds the guys at deercreek do there torch as a stand alone product for £19.99 and you can actually buy the whole kit from deercreek at £29.99 . im really shocked at difference in price on quite a few sites you cant buy a branded kit for any where near that money , so hats off to deercreek for not ripping people off and another reason why i support cottage industry , shame on the others

what i wanted to do was 2 things with the diamond cure , i wanted to A- see how it worked just for sticking eyes to flies and B - how it did a full UV head covering the eyes . the first thing i noticed with the torch when placing eyes on was how easy it was to do and a firm bond was easily achieved , the one disadvantage of uvs though is that you don't have the option to re adjust the eye position which you can do with 5 min epoxy but that's a small thing and if you get the position correct in the first place then it shouldn't even be a problem , of course you may wish to stick them down with something like croc glue first if doing a full head .......

i then tried to do a full head covering the eyes and giving it a solid lightweight head , the first thing i noticed was that how fast it cured 3.2 seconds with the ultrafire torch quite incredible and very easy to work with .

as i said above it is very easy to use the 15ml applicator bottle makes getting the right amount where you need it a very easy job (see above) without the pointless need for lots of different applicator caps and replacements are only £4.99 the bottle size is ideal for the desktop fly tier all in all a very nice user experience
after applying the diamond hard resin in between the eyes i then five it just a few second (3 to be exact) and the head is solid well im not surprised with the power of the light , all in all im very impressed with this and to honest i thought i wouldn't like using a torch but im now a convert , of course ill still use all my other epoxy products because i have uses for all of them . this like croc glue will be another that i will find myself using every day, wonderful product , my next plan is to cook up some UV resin sandeels for an up and coming trip i think this kit will do the job brilliantly .
breaking news
HOT NEWS, Internationally famed Irish A.P.G.I.A. leader, Lawrence Finney recently tried Diamond Hard after every other similar product & was "gob-struck" by just how good it is. This came after Lawrence had issues with a different UV resin.
All his buzzers he tied for a customer all stuck together.

On showing it to several other A.P.G.A.I. members, who were more than a bit sceptical. They ordered it on-sight.

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if you wish to see more or order the full kit (at that price you'd be daft not to) click on the picture below

(dont people be fooled into buying other overpriced uv kits this stuff is rock hard and tack free)

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flying the colours

i also got through some new colour of angelhair type flash in a lovely rainbow trout colour from deercreek this was just a sample pack and will be available through nick in a few weeks (ill blog when its available ) unfortunately i was only able to do a couple of flies with it as it was a only a sample , i really look forward to tying some more up when its available .

i really enjoy tying with gliss and glint plus as you get some fantastic looking flies and the flies I've posted on the blog today are in fact only tied up with one colour and that's white (with the exception of the purple flash) I've used sharpie and pro markers on the fibers to create some great looking flies the fiber itself takes on the pen colour very nicely and doesn't lose colour in the water

so instead of tying lots of different colour fibers into a fly just try tying in one colour i.e white and then go to town with the coloured pens quite amazing what you'll come up with and you don't need to be any kind of artist to do it it , its not that hard to add some stripes or spots give it a go .

gliss and glint plus isn't expensive just £2.69 for a generous hank and if you use it sparingly with another colour you can get half a dozen large pike flies out of it just remember with this material less is more

if you want to try gliss and glint plus you can get it from the link below

http://www.deercreek.co.uk/Deer-Creek-fly-tying-materials.html

if your out and about have a great weekend and remember support cottage business

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

life in the cave and freinds flies

2011-09-10T12:51:00.008+01:00

so I've been busy with the naturals and been pretty much stuck in the cave tying up some patterns that friends use ,but by adding my own twist to them nothing drastic maybe just adding a new colour into the mix or a different eye colour you know the score , the cave below (that's only half of it by the way) is where i sit for many a happy hour relaxing creating patterns and generally turning my back on the strains of life

good freind and deercreek tying team member jens from Sweden chucked up one of his new perch flies on facebook the other day and i looked at the fly and thought what a great pattern , jens has had great success with the fly for his perch populations so i thought id tie some up in bigger sizes for pike as i thought it would do really good for them so i set to work.

so my first idea was to actually make a duel pattern that i could use for both pike and sea bass that i sometimes fish for and jens pattern ticked the boxes above is my first version using the new fluro eyes from piketrek quite impressed with the overall effect and look of the fly ,and i think it would catch fish whatever situation you find yourself in

and pretty much identical fly but used spectrum flash from piketrek instead of gold off the previous fly love the pattern so big thanks to jens for the inspiration buddy look forward to fishing it my recipe is below
hook - 6/0 sakuma manta / tail - whitting farm saddle hackle / flash - piketrek spectrum flash / body -piketrek spectrum twist / with a saddle hackle wound round the body / eyes - 8mm fluro eyes in green -

and for n o other reason than i opened a draw and found a lump of gold flashabou in one of my draws i decided to monster up a big pike fly again for no other reason than i could , this is actually quite a big bulky fly although its weight is minimal as you'd expect being made from flashabou , the trick with this to give it some nice bulk in the water is to tie in a small amount of chenille an inch below the hook eye , tie it in a ball and the next lot of material you tie in will give it some bulk to form the appearance of more bulk in the water , without having to resort to lots of material which ultimatley makes the fly heavier .....

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looking at the fly above i suspect it would do well on water with high bream content which pike would feed on but being copper and gold it may well also do well on waters with stocks of brown trout in

of course flashabou is a lovely material but the only downside is you can only get one fly out of a pack , but there is another option and that's going over to piketreks site and grabbing some of there superb spectrum flash now as you can see from the fly above you still get a great looking flash fly (this one is done in harmony angel) but the difference in price is that a hank of this stuff cost £2.50 and you can get 4 7 inch flies out of it , so its simply down to budget but both work just as well .

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ODE TO A REDNECK
my brother ken is getting some man time in just now so i wont speak to him till at least tomorrows night , but when i spoke to him the other day he was saying "dude you gotta start tying more naturals man " simply because all those years ago it was the very fluffy feather fly tying that got me and the VT crazy talking , so again with if you ask me ken being the master of the splayed fly id steal his idea and make half a dozen up , as to be honest im actually getting right into doing them and im also really looking forward to getting out and putting them through there paces , so once again thanks brother for setting me off down that path again and hope you dig my version of your fly and if it does half as well as yours do then ill be happy ....

so this week i may get out later in the week , we have some kind of monster wind heading over the Atlantic just now and its due to hit sometime tomorrow night on the west coast of Scotland (Glasgow's area) with 80 miles an hour winds and 27ft waves apparently so i for one wont be trying to get a line out on a remote hill loch so if you are going out well id say don't earn some brownie points and do some diy .

thanks once again for your attention and not resenting the fact that's 10 Min's of your life you wont get back because you read my drivel ..... although i really do appreciate the kind messages and emails

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

rods and flies

2011-09-07T09:56:00.010+01:00

been so bloody busy yet again this week , have so many flies to do , writing to do and a particularly cool fishing trip to try and plan for both salt and fresh water on the same days 2 days running more about that after i do it but im very excited about it as the saltwater mark i couldn't get anybody interested in going as they said there was no fish there ahhhhhhhh how do you now you haven't fished it , i have and i caught fish there but only scratched the surface there , there a world full of armchair anglers who will happily fish your spot once you've done all the leg work , luckily Ive found somebody just as daft as me to do this so that's one to look forward to next month

my brother ken over at pike adventures is always going on at me to tie up flies with naturals as he says its what i do best , and to be fair i have let natural fibers slip a bit by the wayside for no other reason than that there's some much new and exciting stuff in synthetics out there , so i set to work on some killer nearly all natural flies , these are basically split tail flies that you may normally see on tarpon flies but ken has done so great stuff with these and i also have done not to bad on them so i just pike sized them and there ready to go

these flies are all made with premier materials and will shortly be available in premier kits from predatorbite.com watch this space and these will be strictly limited edition so you'll need to get in there fast watch this space .

i have also designed these flies so they will also be happy in saltwater so great for the occasional saltwater angler again although they are tied on saltwater proof hooks it always worth keeping you used flies separate from unused flies and wash em down with fresh water when you get home .....

4 PIECE PIKE FLY ROD

SPEC
Specifications (built for tropical saltwater fishing and immensely powerful in the butt)
9 foot length
4 sections
Full wells cork grip Alloy reel seat,
up locking.
Fighting butt.

9/10 wgt line
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this rod is a very nice bit of kit 4 piece which is easily better for traveling than 2 or 3 piece rods and I've never suffered from having a 4 piece , the thing i like about this rod is that it is very forgiving in its action and would be fantastic for a first time angler the line up dots make getting your rings lined up an easy job if your in a hurry the other thing strangely enough is the fact it also has a fly keeper ring which is always a bonus , im constantly amazed at the fact that you can pay 400 /500 / or even 600 quid for a fly rod and the thing dosnt come with a keeper ring .

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the rod is rated for a 9/10 wgt line although i think you could easily fish an 11 wgt on it although 10 wgt is amble for pike but its nice to have that option , the day i fished it i had a rather bracing wind in my face and i was pleasantly surprised when my Rio pike/musky line coupled with a big 9 inch deercreek gliss n glint baitfish cut through the wind no problem and got me a good line out , i managed to bully a couple of fish up around the 8/9lb mark and to be honest they didn't stand a chance on this rod , which is good as you want to get them in as fast as possible , i look forward to getting something a bit bigger on it to really put its through paces , i also look forward to getting out into the saltwater with it as i think it will perform brilliantly ...

retail on this rod is £165.00 including UK post and packing (overseas buyers just get in touch with them for a price) and to be honest that's a heck of a good price for a rod of this quality
if your interested in purchasing this snazzy bit of kit then mail Simon direct in the UK here

mailto:sales@kayakuk.com

Simon also does a very neat line in kayaks so if you fancy one contact him on the email above and he also does kayak courses for anglers check his site out at (click the pic)

so see ya all soon

twinkle twinkle shinny baitfish

2011-08-30T15:29:00.010+01:00

hell that was a week and a half , where has the time gone , well her indoors has now started university which will see her becoming a maths teacher "yea i cant work it out why shes with a dumb ass fly tier like me either" but because of this change in home circumstances i now no longer work during the week and i look after the kids and house , well that takes me only a few hours after i drop the kids at school , so that gives me the rest of the day to do flies , and i still have my weekend job as well , so things are most defiantly on the up and its taken me a while to get into some kind of routine hence no posts ........

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with an upcoming mission and the fact i had some nice shinny flashbou in a draw i decided i needed to top up my bigger all flash baitfish patterns , you know they get a lot of hammering and do need replaced i try to keep em fishing as long as possible to get value for money , you see i only get a couple of 7 inch flies out of one pack of flashbou and at around a fiver a pack that works out around 2.50 uk per fly , so although a fantastic fly bloody expensive so i like to make em last
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ok so first of the starting block is a classic silver and red head baitfish the red head is done with angel hair and a 6/0 sakuma manta hook .... when this baby hits the water fish take notice
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same pattern all i have done with this is to add a slight bit of weight on in the form of a couple of eyes "courtesy of http://www.pikeflyrod.com/ you may think that by adding eyes it wont make much difference put trust me it makes a difference from the action of the fly above this one experimentation is the key
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MILLIONAIRE JACK PIKE

gold flashbou just looks expensive and if your fishing a water with a high population of smaller jacks then this is a helluva pattern the thing is you don't really need to think to much about the coloration's as as long as you have gold and green in any kind of combo you will catch fish with this pattern again tied on a 6/0 sakuma manta
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millionaire row

2 different styles both slightly different in the way they swim

the bottom fly is completely unweighted and allows you to fish it very very slow and working the fly to give a fantastic fluid motion in the water and depending on your line fishable at all depths a real killer of a pattern , the fly above it has a bead chain eye and works like a sink and draw pattern pause it and it dives down head first strip it after a pause and you'll get the fly doing dying bait impersonation's because the bead chain isn't that heavy so it just off balances the fly to give you that killer action ........

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moving back to the classic colours i also had some pearl flashbou pearl on its day can out fish any other colour out there particularly with waters high in silver baitfish populations and the red spectrum flash from http://www.pikeflyrod.com/ really does top it of nicely and as you can see produces a different shape of head than the angel hair , don't worry about getting the red head all nice and neat with the same length of flash , being a bit different can be the difference between fish and a long day of nothing

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give a bit of a wiggle

threes always new ideas out there that you can play with i personnely love the magic heads from http://www.petitjean.com/shop/en/magic-head.html although purist will say "oh no that's not a fly its a lure " well actually if it helps me catch fish trust me i bloody well use it it and you can stuff your size 22 olive up you jacksy matey I'm fishing for big bad predators here thanks very much .

but there can be a problem with these heads as what your effectively casting is an egg cup and a load of fluff so when your trying to cast it it can end up just spinning round and round as it is quite wind resistant , I've found that by using a size 2/0 head on a 6/0 hook you can counteract the spinning head and the action will be the same as using the bigger recommended sizes for the bigger hooks if not better .... just my view on it through trial and error

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so with that the week draws on and hopefully ill get a few more patterns in the box for an upcoming trip this week that is of course after I've done the washing , cleaned the house and fed the children .....

mcfluffchucker

(a clean cave in Scotland)

sometimes it just dont go your way

2011-08-20T09:36:00.009+01:00

i had a phone call from a fella i supply flies to who just happens to own his own fishery "Dave can you do me some flee" well yup i could so i duly set to making 50 flies that he wanted to put into fly kits , when they were ready i phoned him up and said i could deliver them out to our usual meeting place (a supermarket car park) no bother he says how does Thursday sound , great for me as i had a day off from work , so when he said well you may as well come up and fish then in in that case .......errrr doesn't take much working out that one I'm there

so my big boat box was left behind and i chose just a few boxes with some choice patterns , and a single rod , i planned to not go out on a boat and just explore around likely looking spots casting a fly wherever i felt looked fishy , well the place ain't got a massive amount of features so it can be chuck it and chance it and the forecast wernt too bad so a few hours would do me fine before i had to head back into Edinburgh to work

when i arrived the water was like glass flat calm with the odd trout on the surface , whenever I'm faced with water like this the first thing i always want to do is chuck on a sub bug i mean how could you not want to fish the surface on a day like this ........

i decided first up not to use the sub bugs , the main reason is id forgot to bring them "duh" so i chucked on a silver and red big flashabou pattern that I've done really well on up here before , so i stuck it on an intermediate line and set to casting around , after a few casts i had a couple of pulls next to the stick in the water , i actually saw the little jack roll in the water , you know that thing were you catch a glimpse of gold after a short tug ......still gets the old adrenaline going

i tried in the spot for around 30 Min's but to no avail , i mean not that i minded how could you get annoyed not catching fish in such stunning surroundings , but i decided to move down to an area where theres sometimes a shoal of perch and of course where theres prey theres predators

dispite my best efforts and concentration on this spot for an hour i didn't even have a tug , i did try a few differnt flies but nothing was doing the job here , i even had a couple of hill walkers sit and watch me for for 5 Min's but they then left very upset that i hadn't caught 20 salmon and kept them amused while they sat and watched ........

so i gave up on this spot and decided to head round to the other side of the loch and actually it was just as well i did as this big bugger of a rain cloud was starting to head my way and i really didn't fancy getting soaked through ..............looks like a big fat tornado welcome to Scotland in the summer

id been trying some red and white patterns with various sink rates and with the water over this side being a bit cloudy i also had a bash with a classic orange and chartreuse pattern but nothing seemed to be doing the trick , i suspect that with the bad weather heading in the pike may have been put off a bit as something was up as all action had stopped completely , even the daft rainbow trout had not tried it on . so i dug deep in my box and found one of ken capseys designs in the form of a big muddler headed surface fly of course id added my own take to it as we as fly tiers do ......

so the water i was fishing was not very deep so i just kept the intermediate line on and fished it kinda boobie style although it was still on and just below the surface becuse it was quite shallow , well i chucked it out and managed to miss a bloody fish twice , i thought i may be able to tempt it again so i stuck the video on just goes to show there not always way out in front of you ......anyway above is what i captured

after i shot that bit of video the rain decided to come down so i decided to head back to Edinburgh and i may just have enough time to go home first get something to eat and get changed before i head to work ..... the fly above is the fly that got the old heart racing and i really enjoyed fishing it , thanks to my brother ken for the inspiration on that one.

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so as i headed back the heavens opened and it came down like a monsoon i did get some strange looks as i boarded the bus but hey i get strange looks even if I'm not holding a rod , you know I'm the guy that is always sitting next to the only free seat on the overcrowded bus so you get used to it , i actually managed to get home with 5 Min's spare before i got the bus back to work , i didn't even have time to change so i headed out the door i my fishing clothes and a cold hot dog in my hand , yea nobody sat next to me on the way to work either ...........lol

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all in all still a great day

(mcfluffchucker)

a cave in Scotland

scrap materials and sticking eyes

2011-08-17T11:23:00.009+01:00

SAVE THE PLANET THROW NOTHING AWAY
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so tying big gaudy predator flies is great but there is a down side you always seem to have bits left over that is not enough to make a big 6 inch fly or even a 4 inch fly but of course you always have the option of making a very small fly of a couple of inch's long that will catch you you no end of predatory species and its always worth bearing in mind that even a very big pike or predator will take a smaller fly my biggest pike a river fish of 25lb was taken on a fly of just a few inches long its probably the equivalent to us nipping in to the shop for a snickers bar just because we fancy it ........................:-)

so you can see just in the bottom right of this pcture that i had some scraps of spectrum fibre from www.pikeflyrod.com left over from some patterns i was doing , so rather than throw those scraps of material I'm going to do a small predator baitfish pattern , so a 2/0 gamakatsu sl hook goes in the vice

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being scrap material the lengths are sometimes a bit odd but this adds to the overall effect of the fly so on it goes to create the body and body length , I've used as i do in most of my ties a clear mono thread as once its varnished or epoxied it goes invisible , so I've tied the scrap lengths in right up to the hook eye
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scrap material and tie it in facing forward of the hook eye , this will be tied in hollow tie style , again don't worry if the lengths or odd this wont matter a jot when the fly is wet as it will all stick to the body when wet and not look odd at all
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coming together nicley

xt is add the back in , really whatever colour you have lying about or fancy the black spectrum flash above was around 5 inch's lone and all I've done is laid the spectrum on top so 3 inch's is running from the eye to the back of the fly and 2 inch's out the front so when you tie it back its gives you a nice back profile as you can see from the picture above
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s case a blue gator eyes from www.deercreek.com nick has a great range of eyes in various sizes and is well worth checking out , on the underside of the fly I've given it a spot of red permanent marker between the eyes , this is before i add the epoxy although adding any kind of epoxy head is purely up to the individual tier ...
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and most of these means i haven't got time to sit and add pressure to eyes while the glue drys , so my solution to this is to use some plastic non spring pegs yup they have just the right amount of pressure to hold eyes in place and apply just enough pressure to keep the eyes in place while the glue drys and when your doing a few of the same pattern it really does work well , in this case i had batches of 5 flies to do of one pattern so i tie 5 flies without eyes then glue the 5 sets of eyes on and rack them as in the picture above ......

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once I've done the 5 ill start on the next lot and when I've tied up the 5 flies the glue will be set on the first set , so they are replaced with the next ones and so you do this until all the flies are done perfect I've used the absolutely wonderful croc glue on the flies as its really the best I've ever come across for eyes so far croc glue can be bought from www.deercreek.co.uk

one of the many flies I've done over the last few days this is called the portmore ghost a fantastic slverywhite bait fish with an orange UV inner core a really tasty pike snack if you want to buy any of these flies head on over to predatorbite in the UK they also ship worldwide

ready to go

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if your on face book search out the pike fly fishing association and you'll find you'll be able to join the clubs open group , which we set up to provide information on pike fly fishing without having to join the club itself it more an information and discussion page , although a lot of the club members are also on there as well to add input , well as it happens there was a discussion popped up on a certain kind of wire leader , well me being be i decided to preach on about authanic wire on that thread , and turns out a few people hadn't heard of it so I've done a little video on this amazing leader so please feel free to watch it and share it if you like it will give you an idea just how easy this stuff is to use well tell you what ill let the video do the talking enjoy

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remember a fishing brother is for life a fly is only as good as its next fish

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

back to the grindstone

2011-08-12T10:53:00.008+01:00

so back to my favorite thing tying flies and I'm happy to say the whole thing has come together nicely and I'm starting to get into the swing of things as to where everything is

i had a request from a Friend to do him some big pike tubes , as you know I'm not a massive fan of tube flies for pike but he wanted to try them so why the hell not tie some up for him , his request was was something incorporating green / gold / and orange so i set to work

the first thing i did was get some of piketreks creature skin now this works pretty fantastic for body's as you get a great bait fish belly kind of shape and it seems to fit really nicely on a long tube the tube above is about 3.5 inch's long so all I've done here is tie it down at each end to get that belly shape

the finished product 6 inch's of rather nifty looking pike tube fly bait fish

you can see the rather cool shape better when its lying down , rigging this is quite simple really , just either use a normal wire trace through the center of the fly and attatch hook or take what i would consider the best wire for the job authanic from predator bite the reason is with authanic if you want to change your fly all you do is simply cut of the hook and re tie another fly on , this takes no extra time than if you were changing a normal fly .

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again as i said though I'm not a convert to tubes for pike but i think they would have there place in a zander / walleye fly fishers kit as these fish can sometimes just nip at the back of a fly so therefor it stands to reason that a tube would probably produce more fish to the boat than an ordinary j hook

so i got to thinking what other applications you could use tubes for well poppers may be a good one so I'm making a few up and sending them other to brother ken for a testing (if the post office can get them there before winter )

i got as far as getting the foam popper head on the tube , the foam by the way is another great find from the tech dept at piketrek (uncle Greg to you and me) this stuff is highly buoyant and takes a sticky holographic paper really well , comes in big lengths as well so you can get quite a few poppers out of it awesome value for money ...

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so with that another week passes and i have an invite to go fish a place next week that will be a travel light job so should be interesting getting kit together for that so watch this space and if your fishing this week hope you get a few tugs

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

done and dusted and ready to rock n roll

2011-08-08T17:29:00.016+01:00

that's that done then , new desk is built ,well a few final tweaks over the coming weeks will more than likely happen but pretty much 99% there , its been a painful few weeks as i have ideas going through my head and i cant get them down at all on a hook as the things are all packed away , i do however have a new idea for a new set of pike tubez that will be sold through nick over at deercreek hopefully by the end of this week all being well and I'm well excited about these ...

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so back to the desk , well i used to have my own room in the house that pretty much was a tying room but then my son had the cheek to be born and the room was going to be needed so i had to re think everything , and the ideal solution was to use me and the wife's bedroom , what i hear you cry "how the hell do you get away with that" well actually we have a massive bedroom and being married not a lot besides sleeping goes on so with the aid of a couple of big tasteful screens I'm able to have a great work area with some great natural light and without disturbing the wife's karma .

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well it was all working well and good and if you follow my blog you'll know that i do churn quite a few flies out and love to invent new patterns . until that dreaded day when the wife says to me "darling i think we should decorate the bedroom" well i wasn't going to get away with just hot doing my bit so i had to pack the lot up and just do it . well i finished the room and her indoors was delighted with the grey look , and to be honest it does look good so she was well happy with the job and the new furniture . so i kinda guessed it was maybe time to do a slight redesign of the back area of it and just have shelves along the back so they were duly built and as you can see i needed just to unpack everything ..........

OK ill tell you now i only use scrap wood when I'm doing stuff like this and even the last reincarnation like this one is done with wood that would have otherwise been chucked into a landfill so please don't have a go at my carpentry skills , as you can see from the picture above i have a fair bit of stuff to unpack and i had planned to do it on sat just gone , but it was our first wedding anniversary and if i even went near fishing gear on that day it would have been the only anniversary ...............so i had to wait till today

for now I'm just sticking my rods at one end of the bench i shall build a box for them to keep them secure and tidy i mean a man can never have enough rods really can he , i do have a storage space for all my flies and tackle but the rods don't fit in that space so here is where they will have to live , not a problem for me really and when the screens across you cant see them anyway

OK so unpacking begins in Ernest and i think I've done a good job in my thinking of how I'm going spread the resources on the desk , i need to know where stuff is i don't want to be raking through box after box for a long shanked 6/0 every time i want to tie a fly or think mmmm i know i had a pack of size 24s somewhere for those roach flies , so labeled plastic boxes is the way to go for me just now , and i also have a clearly defined area to tie on i.e the pine square of wood at the front of the desk which also has a cork board behind it to stick scissors and dubbing needles and anything else sharp works for me although you may have done it differently but a desk is a very personal thing

so a few boxes on and the fly board up and things are going well

most of the boxes in and filled with assorted goodies and i have a great area of space to work in and still with a lot of natural light during the day as you can see from the picture

no desk is complete of course without a coffee cup on it and i actually only had 3 cups while i was doing this and it took most of the day to do

and a cool cave it is as well

plastic storage boxes work really well as you can write on them with permanent marker and if you change the box contents you can just wipe the writing of with a damp cloth , and yes that really is my wife's hair , she cuts her own and being a natural redhead the colour is perfect for crayfish and shrimp patterns and something were a bit of a rusty colour is needed , and of course its also infused with the female pheromone which is supposed to attract fish , must be something in it as it works with blokes ..........

you can see from this shot how useful the cork board is and with it being so close to the tying area everything is bang to hand , i need a few more stickers for the tying area so if you have any give me a mail ......

and the finished product I'm well happy with the layout and how everything has fitted in , i still as i said have a few tweaks to do , as I'm going to change the storage bins to the left of the picture to plastic ones with lids and remove the actual shelves , as this will also give me a bit more storage area , so all that remains to be done now is get some flies tied ......

happy days

mcfluffchucker

(a new cave in Scotland)

back soon

2011-08-04T09:29:00.000+01:00

online trading

2011-07-29T10:14:00.006+01:00

as i said in a previous post id ordered some new stuff for my perch and roach project and am quite excited about the prospect of having a bend in the 3 wgt from some feisty coarse fish , and my order arrived very swiftly from UK company tacklebargains who i have ordered a few things from over the years and always found them to be very good on price and excellent on delivery with stuff normally turning up within a few days of order even with the budget postage option .

so my stuff duly arrived and i was well happy with the results and it was everything i wanted and more , the one thing that wasn't in the order was a tackle bag on the invoice it said that it was coming via a separate courier so i sent a quick email to peter at the company and i received a reply within the hour explaining that they had just sold out of the product and it was being couriered direct from the stockists this i really didn't have a problem with and i know that with my previous dealings with the company that i wont have a problem and even if in the unlikely situation that i did it would be dealt with promptly that is what i call customer service which these days is sadly lacking in a lot of company's .............

an 11lb brown trout on the 3wgt caught by one of there customers i thing the perch and roach will not be a problem

so it brings me to the point about online company's if you need something and you don't have a particular online retailer you go to so what do you do , well i think about 99% of us would do a google search for the item needed which as you will have noticed will bring you up thousands of results , and if for example you want a spool of fluorocarbon you'll be faced literally with a mind boggling amount of hits , so you probably have a look at the first few pages of hits and i doubt many of you will get further than that , so your next step if your in the UK will be to look for a UK company so you ll click on a result that has .co.uk at the end of it and that's you done .

or so you think , because a lot of company's on the net don't actually carry all if any of the stock they advertise on there websites and you may be faced with thousands of items and every conceivable breaking strain of line well that's all well and good but if you order something its likely that it will have to travel first from the warehouse to the guys house/office when he orders it then it will have to be re packaged to go out to you , this sometimes can take a couple of weeks so you can see the problem right there , just because they are in the top search results doesn't mean they are the best what you need to do is send a mail to the company and ask if they have it in stock and how long from ordering will it take to get to you . if its more than a week then its more than likely that they don't have the item in stock do your homework and ask questions legit company's will happily answer any questions you may have

so this brings me nicely to tacklebargains.co.uk now i have over the years bought a few things from them (first about 8 years ago i think)and the one thing i like about them , besides the prices is the fact that they actually have physical stock at there warehouse so when you order somebody at the actual company goes and picks it of a shelf and sticks your name and addres on it before the courier comes to warehouse to pick your parcel up and deliver it to you .they also remove stuff they have haven't got so are constantly on the case and as i said there customer service is second to none ....... they have a vast array of fishing tackle far to much for me to list here so click the picture above and check one of the best in the UK and some of the cheapest prices ...... if you scrool down there sidebar menue youll find the fly fishing section but dont forget to check out there bulk hooks great for the fly tier

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)

3wgts and flies

2011-07-27T15:22:00.004+01:00

im blessed indeed with first rate bosses who don't mind me tying flies at work as with the job i do im very busy setting stuff up for the first hour or so then im pretty much around if clients need me so i can get away with tying no problem , so more often than not somebody coming into my office will be faced with this on my desk and i had lots of questions from people but now they just kinda look at me with a "poor boy" type of look and leave me to it .........:-)

so with my impending perch trip coming up , and the forecast is for rain at the end of the week although its like the caribbean just now in Scotland , and before you all head over here or up here let me tell you its only like this once every 2000 years in Scotland it will be back to snow tomorrow ho hum welcome to gods country , but the bonus is that if the weather is a bit off then it will keep the numpties off the water and ill be left to fish in peace and quite

so i needed to get some cone headed buggers done as more often than not the fish are done hugging the bottom on the shallow venue i fish for them in , brother ken had sent me some awesome streamer hooks a while ago and these were perfect for what i wanted to do , interesting at this point i can point out that as you can see the picture above is slightly blurred even on the macro setting on the camera always had that problem with close ups , but then after a year of owning the camera i accidentally push a button and it comes up with super macro setting , holy mother of god why oh why don't i ever read the instructions , the photo below is using the super macro setting ho hum ................:-)
so with my new David bailey type skills (famous photo dude if you didn't know) i took some more of the patterns im going to use if the weather holds up tomorrow the pics below are just smaller bait fish patterns

and a few more close ups (loving the super macro) im sure Jens over in Sweden will approve he likes his small perch flies

boxes of fishy goodness

fly fishing purists look away now

OK now this is a very grey area in the UK some fly fishing purists are going to cough and splatter into there cream teas down by the chalk stream , yes correct there's rubber things in the fly box . well i make no apology to those tweed encrusted toffs , you see i believe that fly fishing itself is all about the delivery method of your chosen lure / fly i say lure because a bait fish pattern isn't really a fly as such the fly part is the delivery part as i said i.e the rod and reel .

so when i go out fishing i like to sometimes catch fish and if i can maximise my catching them by having the odd grub or tiny rubber lure then so be it and the purists can go and drink earl grey in there lodges ....end off

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so i had my new 3wt arrive yesterday and i must say i am greatly impressed with it and the reel provided i didn't want to spend a massive amount on new gear but on the same token i didn't want crap and its always hard buying new rods over the net as you cant have a cast and see how it feels , i would have gone to a shop and bought one but unfortunately for me the only place i seemed to be able to get a 3 wgt was from orvis and i really didn't want pay 300 pounds for just a rod so the net it had to be and i got the rod reel and line for a great price of £69.06 here's the deal i got brook trout deal great price i thought , and i thought worth the chance , funnily enough i was speaking to Ernie the pffa sec and he said he had bout the very same rod for stream fishing and it was really good so looks like i struck lucky on this deal .

so as the weekend approaches i hope you all get out for a throw wherever you are in the world

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

a small change in direction

2011-07-21T13:17:00.003+01:00

I'm off chasing perch next week , not my number one predator to chase , simply because i find it very hard to catch the little buggers i sometimes catch them by mistake while pike fishing , my biggest on the fly to date is a fairly impressive 3 and a half pounds , although a great fish its somewhat tainted as i was chasing pike at the time so not really a targeted fish not that it matters but it does to me a bit ..........

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the venue I'm going to fish is a slow moving canal and if you've every fished a canal you ll know they can be bloody featureless places at the best of times so staying mobile is the key to the approach on these venues so fly fishing is perfect for it really although sometimes casting can be a bit tricky . so to the flies well fly tying Friend in Sweden Jens sttevoll has great success in fly fishing for perch and recently came up with some great flies so i borrowed the patterns and tweaked a little bit to suit my needs

bait fish

the first ties are based on the Jens baitfish quite a simple little fly but looks great comes in at around 3 inch's and tied on a 2/0 tiemco hook and a nice natural colour as well

same thing again except this one has a big eye compered to the body and a nice chartreuse body and the peacock herl tops it off nicely

bugs

bugs is pretty much all you can describe these as but Jens does fantastic on them so if it works for him then its got to be worth a try in my local

a slight variation on Jens pattern in that I've used a normal chenille on the head section and ive also used plastic eyes (these actually come from a blind its the bead you use to pull the blind up and down )

so with the box now filled with these creatures im fairly confident of getting a result but i may do a few more colours yet

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synthetic K-19

my synthetic version of the k-19 didn't quite work out what i had in my head and i ended up with a baitfish instead but i know what i did wrong and ill try again later but cool bait fish none the less

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

back to natural

2011-07-19T19:06:00.003+01:00

BACK TO THE NATURAL SHIT

(ken capsey style)

i have been side tracked by the vast array of synthetic fibers out there and what can be done with them lately , and i was having a break in between having lunch and going to work and i was browsing pike adventures brother ken capsey pics on facebook and a particular fly of his took my eyes and i though that's sweet but what if i did this and did that to it mmmmmm may work out or it may turn out a pigs breakfast only way to do it is to try it so i did and this was the first result the K-19 in yellow and gold

i was quite impressed with how light this was for a big 7 inch fly so i tied a few up and posted them on my facebook page , well one of my friends asked if id got the idea from a Chinook salmon fly , well to be honest i didn't but i had a dick around the net and did find some great looking Chinook flies and could see how he would have thought that but just goes to show there's nothing new in fly tying just the stretch of our imaginations , and as I've said before improvisation is the key to some great patterns..........

THE K-19

(yellow / green and gold version)

i could have put eyes on them but i really didn't feel the need on these ones as i plan to use them as slow sinkers rather than deck bouncers , i am however going to do some deep water versions of the fly , well it would be rude not to really wouldn't it

THE K-19 pink
(pink and pink flashabou)

you may laugh at a big pink fly but trust me this colours has saved me from a few blanks on hard waters . OK other times it hasn't but you get the picture don't you, give something different a try may save the day and im sure there's a few waters that haven't seen a pink fly before especially in the UK .....dare to be different

K19 - silver baitfish

i also have a very cool idea for a synthetic version of this fly and ill hopefully get something down on an iron shortly i need to put a little thought into it first stay tuned

this is a very easy fly to make and i shall be doing a video tomorrow for it (time permitting) so thanks for the inspiration brother .

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mcfluffchuker

(a cave in Scotland)

the full shooting match

2011-07-18T12:47:00.005+01:00

the whole shooting match

got to hand it to uncle Greg and the trek boys , they keep coming up with amazing stuff and fantastic offers for the predator fly fisher both in gear and tying materials i mean check this out

SPECIAL OFFER!

All three lines that you need in one pack. If you are tooling-up with 11 weight fly lines for pike fly fishing look no further.

3 fantastic quality weight-forward taper lines that will cast large pike flies with ease. One each of High-Floating, Slow Intermediate (1.5" per second), and Fast-Sink (equivalent to Di7 or 7" per second).

These are top-quality lines with a very supple finish, which is extremely pleasant in the hand and shoots through the rings like a rocket. Completely memory-free and as tangle-proof as you can get.

We use these lines ourselves here at Piketrek, now we wouldn't do that if they weren't any good, would we? Watch any of our Youtube videos if you'd like to see them work. Cast really well on a Pikesaber or any other rod that can handle them.

SPECIAL OFFER! THE FULL SHOOTING MATCH FOR £37.50!

sorry to say that's a bloody bargain if your in the market for a new lines well what you waiting for

AUTHANIC WIRE

now I'm hearing on the grapevines that some people are slagging this off , well you know it makes me laugh when those very same people haven't tried it , i mean how on earth can you slag a product off when you haven't even tried it , in my book this stuff is going from strength to strength with a lot of predator anglers changing over to it , I've also sent some of to the states to a couple of hardcore guys who i know will really dig it ...........

so in conclusion to these idiots i say until you've tried it shut the f**k up I'm sick to death of these know it all dicks who dispute only being in the games for 10 Min's they think they know ever thing there is to know , I'm sure you all know people like this and you probably even got one in your local club ..

click on the picture for a wire which will change the way you fish

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have fun

mcfluffchucker
(a cave in scotland)

free speech for the dumb and the scrap baitfish

2011-07-14T18:20:00.009+01:00

we all have it you know those bits and pieces of scrap materials that fall on the floor or in your waste bag and let me tell you even after a few months that stuff mounts up , i mean have a look at the picture below and check out this Ziploc bag absolutely full of rubbish , bits of deer hair from trimming sub bugs bits of synthetic fibers fro right across the range i use bits of flash etc etc if you can tie flies with it then Ive probably got some in this Ziploc bag .

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OK I'm hearing you fellas I'm hearing you say whats he got a ziploc bag full of crud for should that have not gone in the bin or something ....... well actually being a Scot I'm bloody proud of getting value for money outta everything i use and just think about the amount of stuff in that bag , i mean if it was available commercially what would we pay for a bag that size , probably quite a bit for this special blend let me tell you and just look at it colourful shinny stuff that's gotta work for something right.......read on

birth of the mcfry

you got it i came up with a really great solution so that nothing is wasted at all and its really simple and you can make these little fry in loads of different sizes the ones featured are tied on 3/0 Aberdeen's i have done them on very small hooks also and also I've done them on 6/0 hooks and let me tell you they work big style

this fly above has got a plain old straight uniform body and a couple of eyes croc glued into place , the method of doing this is very simple and only takes a few steps in fact i may well do a vid for it , but it really is simple all you do is lay down a base layer of cotton thread and place a thin layer of glue on the shank , then tie in some black buck tail for the tail , now here's where you can go to town with your imagination because you could also use just sparkle flash , marabou or any other product you like for the tail , i just like to use a little buck tail
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then all you need to do is wax a section of your thread and take a pinch of your waste product from the bag bet tween you fore finger and thumb and roll it between them on the thread , it will then for a kinda weird looking colourfull rope that you just wrap around the hook shank and keep repeating the process until you reach the hook eye , if you want a thicker head or body just bring your thread all the way down to the back of the hook and add another layer in ......

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the eye is simply glued on at the end and allowed to dry , the fly below I've added an extra wrap of the dubbing to create the bigger head profile

so there you have it folks the mcfry OK it may have been done before but couldn't find anything similar to it , and let me tell you this fly in the smaller sizes is deadly in streams where there is a lot of very small bait fish , this fly will catch you fish wherever there is fish that eat smaller fish try it you'll be surprised .........

if you didn't quite get to grips with my wacky tying instructions and want a video step by step then please mail me at the normal address and if threes enough interest ill happily done one for the folks

remember free speech is a right even for the dumb that's why i say nothing

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

reinventing the wheel

2011-07-12T14:15:00.004+01:00

was supposed to be away fishing today but it got cancelled last min due to my Buddy's car being in the garage hell these things happen so i thought id blog up what i got up to last night .
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reinventing the wheel

or in this case , dan blantons flashtail whistler OK not actually that the fly needs anything done to it i mean its a killer fly full stop and has caught hundreds if not thousands of species worldwide , so why tinker with it , well just because we can , as fly tiers we are always looking at new things to do with patterns and evolve existing patterns that's what I've done with this simply because i can

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I've changed the design slightly from Dans original and this one comes in around 6 inch's and I've replaced the small bead chain eyes with big plastic sea eyes (predators like eyes) although they look big and heavy they really are not being made of plastic , you can use epoxy or stick on eyes on them as they are recessed matter of personnel taste i think

a simple red and white basic pattern that will catch fish wherever you go

of course as is normal with me if i love a pattern ill end up making a few , not that i lose a massive amount of flies in fact i hardly lose any at all its just that i end up giving loads away

all the flies above are tied on sakuma mantas as i don't like to use an overly heavy hook on these flies as i think it makes it sink t0o fast and effects the action of the fly , just a personal observation , of course if you want to fish it on the bottom then a heavy hook is a better option

so with that its back to the bench i have some some new ideas i want to play with

peace

mcfluffchucker

thundercreeks and dawn raiders

2011-07-06T17:48:00.008+01:00

so i had a day off work today and Stevie slight had sent me a text yesterday as if i fancied a morning session , well er ye bloody right i do as i text ed him back that night feet up in my office at work , OK then ill pick you up an 3.45 WHAT 3.45am oh bugger well at least there wouldn't be any traffic on the road on the way there so why not i can have an early night

dawn on the loch

eventually found a windy but not uncomfortable spot to fish so it was out with the flys and try again after a few cast i decided to get the fly alongside a patch of Lillie's bound to be a fish there somewhere i thought well i was right as the fly landed i did a couple of strips and bang a kamikaze rainbow trout attached itself to my fly , oh well at least a blanks off the cards even if it is the wrong species those rainbows can make a bit of a mess of tinsel flies

punk whistler accounted for the first pike of the day although a tad on the skinny side hey fish is a fish i guess

sometimes you just get it right eat fluff toothy a dam fine scrap this fish gave me as well look at the size off gob on it get a good sized trout down there so fly size isn't really a problem but i guess you got to wonder why they take small flies is it the fish version of a snack

this mornings session was cut short due to some incoming weather , by the time we got back to the dock the weather had turned nuts with big swells going down the loch so calling it early was the better idea

here comes the weather ......................run
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The original Thunder Creek was tied in 1963 by Keith Fulsher to imitate baitfish. The fly is tied in a variety of color schemes and sizes to imitate the baitfish of your local streams, lakes and oceans. The fly has been successfully fished for numerous species from Atlantic Salmon to Tarpon. to bass to perch and pretty much anything that will eat a minnow One of the keys of tying the Thunder Creek is that it should be tied sparsely according to the book but hell you dont get anywhere by not taking the odd chance or 2 ......

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so i decided to tie up a batch for some upcoming stuff and i know my boat partner will end up with a few i don't mind as the times I've fished with him his chat has been good and he does provide a good biscuit i wont name him as he shuns publicity although he has been known to grace the odd angling mag with pictures of fly caught zander

a minnow without a cause

this is loosely designed on the thundercreek as you can probably tell by the head although the actual tie itself is pretty much completely different , as I'm tying this for predators so i need a bit of meat on the bones on this fly ill maybe do a step by step later . the fly above is done with a rattle eye and a layer of 30 min z poxy , this allows me time to play with the eye position if i need too before it sets

again the same as the fly as above but a bit more bulky

team minnow

the flies are all tied on a sakuma manta 6/0 a fantastic lightweight and bloody sharp hook , the fact that its lightweight as well gives it a fine balance with the materials when in the water giving a slow but steady sink rate which means you can explore all the water depths with an intermediate line .......

below is the fly wet fantastic profile

of course this is just one colour combo and there's thousands you could do , these flies come in around 4 inch's long but you could do them a lot longer if you wanted just tie to suit you and your target species

happy hunting

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

onwards and upwards

2011-07-04T11:58:00.003+01:00

so without a doubt its been a fecker of a few weeks and ive had a ton of rubbish dumped on me from various sources and heights so i had to take some time out to sort stuff out , you know life throws you a few curveballs sometimes and you just have to deal with so i did and am now getting on with it not a lot i can do about it so pretty pointless dweeling on it so therefore onwards and upwards .......

I've been an angler since i was a boy growing up on the tweed and in all that time I've had the odd staining nettle sting and ant bite but never really had anything serious while I've been fishing which is quite strange seeing some of the places i fish you'd have think i may have come away with more than a few Midge bites ........so imaging my surprise when i was at work and i discover this beauty on the back of my leg , i had had an itch when i went to my bed the night before so something must have got me ouch oh well as i said before onwards and upwards oh if threes any doctors reading this any ideas .

with all that's been going on my fly tying karma had taken a back seat but I'm now getting some ideas , here's a couple things i did just before my karma left , although I'm feeling that itch and have patterns going through my head so i think there may be some serious tying going down this week .

the superfloat baitfish

uncle Greg over at piketrek sent me some of there new and very cool superfloat fly foam now Ive only just scratched the surface with this stuff with a popper type fly (above) I'm thinking along the lines of using this for an off the bottom type Bobbie fly with this and all Ive a few ideas with using piketreks creature skin tubing , first results look very promising so stay tuned

bucktail baitfish
i also decided to do a few deceivers , again deceivers are a staple fly in a lot of fly anglers boxes and one of those flies that just keeps catch and catching , of course there is a million and one different colour combos you can use ,this is just an example and a colour i fancied and these take so little time to make you can fill a box in an afternoon

overtaking the world

my fly boxes all used to live in various fishing boxes but they seem to be spilling out all over the place just now , i should really get to grips and start sorting them out properly

inspiration for this week

i sometimes forget what i have in my materials boxes despite having a great idea were everything is sometimes i forget what i actually have in my boxes so when i was digging about a found some cool colours in sf fiber and some and some h20 , so ill add some white bodies to them and think ill have some cool bait fish patterns (see I'm getting my mojo back) ...............

so onwards and upwards stay tuned

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

friday fly cook and other fishy storys

2011-06-24T10:42:00.012+01:00

THE FRIDAY FLY COOK DA DA

"its a perch Jim but not as we know it"

hook - bloody sharp

body - white shinny synthetic stuff

back - olive shinny synthetic stuff

yellow red and black bits - super dooper perm marker

eyes deer creeks super dooper real life ones
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OK so my trip yesterday evening was to really get a hard fighting fish to test the drag of my newly purchased piketrek fly reel (see yesterdays post) so here it is rigged and ready to go i was determined to test this to the limit ...

the loch has a micro climate of its own i kid you not as we drove there it was a beautiful evening when we got there it was spitting a bit of rain by the time we loaded the boat and headed out as you can see it was pouring down so it was hoods up and tough it out .

5 minutes later and the picture below shows just how much of a micro climate it is crazy place , i half expected snow 5 Min's later but the sun stayed out and the wind picked up again but you can normally find a sheltered spot although tonight the wind wasn't bad enough to head for cover , and as the evening drew on we knew it would probably die down completely

we fished for around an hour before i hit into a fairly reasonable jack pike that put up a right account for itself and really did test the drag system these fish really do pull hard and just don't give up i tightened the drag almost to the limit and the rod doubled and the drag did exactly as it says on the time i must say i was bloody impressed , of course ultimately longevity is the thing with drag systems and i plan on using it quite a lot

thing had slowed down quite a bit after another downpour so i decided to switch over to a bigger flashy pattern in the hope of just getting a fish annoyed enough to snap at the fly even though it wasn't particularly interested in a meal but sometimes if you keep casting in the same area you'll no doubt annoy something enough that it want to play hard fish ....

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well in this case it was a rainbow trout that got annoyed with this crazy ass ed big shinny thing that was in its mud hole and it promptly attached itself to my hook ,again these fish in this loch are fin perfect fighting speed machines and even though this one was only 4 or 5 pounds it really went for it , funnily enough it threw up a very long spine so had obviously been feeding on other fish although i don't know what as there was no skin left on the bones obviously i had the encounter with the big ferrox the other day and obviously the fish in here seem to be taking a liking to smaller fish perfect for the predator fly angler ...........

we decided to head over to an area that has some weed on the surface and fish around that , both of us have had fish from this area before so we set up and i cast a line and it fell a bit short of where i wanted it , i.e inch's in front of the weed bed so i stripped back (slowly) just in case and then recast , unfortunately i missed judged the cast and overshot the mark and ended up right in the middle of the weed bed , bugger stuck fast .

i did however think i may be able to point the rod at it and pull it out i applied steady pressure and the crack the running line parted from the head section oh FFS we had no choice but to motor over and retrieve it by hand , the fly was stuck in a top weed so grabbed it and retrieved it funnily enough it actually broke behind the joint so still fixable because believe it or not i only lost a few inch's of the running line .....
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OK so that was somewhat unfortunate but hey it happens , so i changed reel (remember the spare spool thing i was talking about yesterday) so i loaded up an airflo t7 with a Rio striped bass intermediate and chucked on a perch pattern (seen that before somewhere) made from sf fibre and slink n flash and tied on a gamakatsu sl 6/0 , so while i was messing around with that we decided to head for another area with slightly deeper water

we hit the spot and threw the anchor out and started to cast the first cast i had a couple of tugs which was encouraging but nothing solid so i decided to switch down to a smaller fly (the perch is fairly big) i decided that it it may be smaller jacks nipping at the tail end so i went down to my version of a Dan blantons flashtail whistler , i clipped it on and fired out a long line , just as i did i heard a splash at the side of the boat i looked down and then realised that it was my reel spool the frame was still on the rod , oh really give me a break 2 major f**k ups in a day .

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as you can see from the picture below my backing showed the way to where my line was , i cursed a couple of times and Stevie said to me "hope you've tied the backing on" well i always do that but as soon as Stevie said it i though shit did i tie the backing on well after 5 Min's of carefully pulling up the backing by hand i felt weight and it stayed till i got it back in the boat i had done what i normally do and tied the backing to the reel what had happened well i hadn't tightened the locking nut down properly , the first cast had loosened it the second had made it come off, that's a lesson well learned ........

so with that i was surely due a little luck so i whacked the fly out again and was rewarded with a small jack , oh well looks like my theory was right and it was just small fish in the corner , with that we up sticks and headed back to the most productive area of the loch to see if we could prise a few more out before sunset , sometimes its worth taking a chance this time it didn't work in our favour but do the same thing again the next day and you could hit gold that's fishing for you

so another area and the wind has died done a lot so we fire the fly back out , Stevie my boat partner has a couple of follows from small fish i decided to take thing a bit easier so i sat on my butt and took a couple of easy casts counting the line down to explore different depths as i sat in the zone counting down i felt a whack on the back of the head Stevie had cocked up a cast and got me a cracker if i wasn't sitting down i would have got it in the butt ...ouch

so will no fish for a few hours (don't you just hate those quite periods) we decided to hit a few spots but to no avail we decided to give it till 9 pm (about an hours fishing time left) and Stevie also suggested that we hit an area that we hadn't fished before , so we hit the spot and bang second cast in a channel between the weeds i hooked up what would be my last fish of the day a feisty spirited beastie it was as well.........happy days

and so with the setting sun that was it another trip under the belt

stay tuned for some great adventures and again if your heading out be safe , and tell somebody where your going and what time you'll be back it does make a difference

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

the tug is the drug

2011-06-22T08:01:00.012+01:00

i received today an awesome new reel (yes i paid for it) from the lads at piketrek the guys there really know there stuff , and when i was told there was a new purpose built fly reel coming into there stable i knew it would be a good quality and great value product and i wasn't disappointed when i took the plunge and got one and the one thing that struck me straight away was how light the thing was , i have flies that weigh more , well OK maybe not but it did feel incredible light maybe it would heavy up a bit when i go some line on it

so i loaded the reel up with a Rio outbound short (intermediate line) and despite the spool looking quite shallow it took it and the running line and some backing with space to spare i was impressed , what i was also impressed with was the fact it was still lighter than my airflo t7 10/11 which has been my workhorse reels for many years in fact even with the line on it was still lighter than the airflo without a line on very pleasantly surprised .

the other thing i liked was that the drag was similar to the airflo in the fact that its an easy to operate size not small and fiddly its pretty much the same size as the one on the airflo I've set the drag to a few different setting and tied my fly line to my son and got him to walk gently up the garden and I'm very impressed with the smoothness of it and to be honest it felt like i was using the t7 drag the reel itself uses aircraft grade aluminum and can take up to an 11 or even a 12 wgt line , this without doubt is a serious bit of kit and blows a lot of similar priced reels out of the water , the only down side for me is that there is no spare spools available for it , but this is being worked on , fantastic bit of kit

so i headed off last week and was having a lovely fish when we decided to go into to the lodge for a cuppa and a leg stretch , and got to chatting to the owner about flies and stuff and he mentioned he would like a big perch fly hmmmm hang on Ive got a few ill go get one for you , so i trotted off down to the boat to get one and he was suitable impressed and asked me to do 10 for him absolutely no problem here's the shoal ready for him

so having done perch patterns for my client i then sat down to check some emails when skype started singing its song , it was Friend and super Vermont fly guide drew price from guide service http://www.drewpriceonthefly.com/ now I've been having a few skype problems so it was good to catch up with him and get some inside fly info and what he was telling me was go heavy go flies that get down to the bottom in amongst the ambush points for the preds .

well red rag to a bull and i went with a big yellow perch pattern you see below , yellow perch are pretty much the same as our European perch except there yellow and they also but up quite a fight on a 6wgt so i came up with the fly below , what I've done is tied big dumbbell eyes underneath where the eyes are so the provide the weight and are quite hidden , the eyes are big because sometimes i think they make a great strike point for predators , although this theory is totally unproved and there camps for both arguments there , anyway I've finished off with a coat of UV resin around the head this gives a fantastic overall shape in the water and also helps with the action

still doing some prep for my up coming USA jaunt and i did OK on yellow and black flies for smallies last year so tying up a few more just to top the box up , i have a better idea of what i need for this year so i wont be taking as many flies , besides i can always tie up at kens if i have a flash of inspiration cheers brother

these are tied on tiemco tmc811s i was turned onto these by ken over at pike adventures great hook for small bait fish or clousers and very sharp

see you all soon and wherever you are cast safe

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

nice dental work

2011-06-17T11:11:00.015+01:00

so finally i get a few days of work and by good fortune friend and fishing buddy Stevie was of as well , so we decide to hit a local water , the alarm was set for 5.am and i even had an early night , unfortunately i had some horrible heart palpitations at 3.30 am which menu i couldn't get back to sleep (probably the excitement of the trip) so i was well ready for when Stevie turned up .

its really a crazy place to fish this , it can be bright sunshine 5 Min's away from here yet the loch itself could be having its own snow storm crazy place with its own micro climate but still beautiful peaceful place to fish

so having set up the rods and managed to not break anything and stick bits of rods in our hands we set off , my plan for the day was to use an intermediate line and large light flies so i could search the water at various depths the main depths we would be fishing would be around the 4 to 12 foot range the bottom is pretty uniform with nothing much in the way of features so we started by just drifting slowly for a while we started in around 5 foot with the water fairly cloudy and within a few casts id hooked the first of the day , and man did it go bloody thing was on steroids and just did not give up plenty of aerial aerobics from a very annoyed predator great fun

first of the day always a good feeling that after that 1st fish even if you don't catch another at least you haven't blanked

so we fished around for a bit and fishing partner Stevie also had another hard fighting fish which put a smile on his face , we fished around for a while with only the odd pull and dropped fish , we then decided to anchor up in various spots for the rest of the day , sometimes it better to anchor up and fish an area for 20 Min's then move a bit and anchor up again and fish around the boat this way i believe you cover way more fish than drifting , sometimes you can cover the same fish 3 or for times while anchored and then it while hit your fly on the next cast if your drifting your covering a fair bit of water but are you missing fish only my view .

nice dental work

its interesting to note that we were catching fish and getting nips on the fly when the sun came out as soon as the sun went and it got cold the fish stopped but i noticed there was more trout rising as the sun went behind clouds , but on other days i know Stevie has caught fish when its been raining up there (who knows why i suppose that's why it keeps us on our toes) but we didn't when it rained this time funny old place ,

saber power

so the sun came out and a change of fly (id been fishing big flashy patterns) i decided on a smaller blantons flashtail whistler just to fish that bit deeper well first cast and i had a fairly fast retrieve and i had a quick nip at the fly as it was around halfway back , i cast out past the same area again and f**k me i had a follow from the biggest brown trout id ever seen this thing was a huge ferrox it turned right at the boat and i got a good look at it just under the surface i swear this thing was the size of a 25+ lb salmon only a lot deeper this thing didn't get that size by eating bloody buzzers that's for sure i was quite shocked at the sheer size of it and trust me I've seen a lot of trout and salmon growing up on the river tweed this thing was a monster ....

after i had calmed down we continued in the same area and i managed another one on the whistler

this was to be my last of the day despite a couple of missed fish , Stevie however managed to catch a mad rainbow trout i think the fish thing the flues are minnows or sticklebacks or something , i don't catch a lot of rainbows fly fishing but Stevie does and this fish was absolutely nuts and gave him a good run for his money
so altogether i had 5 hard fighting crazy pike to the boat i think Stevie had 6 and the rainbow not a bad day out , OK no big girls showed but big fish for me isn't what its all about those fish in the 6 to 10 lb range really give you a fantastic fight and to be honest id rather catch fish like that all day and if a big girl comes along then that's just the luck of fishing its just good to be getting out there doing it with great company ............till next time I'm happy

---------------------
AUTHANIC WIRE

its the dogs danglers

i did a review of this wire a while ago and put it through its paces with knots etc , well yesterday i put it through its paces with toothy fish well after half a dozen fish the wire was still like new ,not a mark on it and ready to fish again , this stuff is quite incredible it ties just like tying up a soft braid I'm a total convert to it . OK you may say its bloody expensive but here's a few facts

5m = 16 feet

OK so if you use a trace of 12 inches that's 16 traces ,so that works out at around 62.5 pence (around $1.21) per trace , so that's just over 5 UK pence (8 cents) per inch of wire , so if you say need to chance the first inch of your trace after 30 fish (going on reports) that's 30 fish per 6 inches of trace = 180 fish per trace (presuming your going to say i wouldn't fish with less than 6 inches of trace)

so that's 1080 fish per £10.00 ($16.12 us ) 5 meter spool
tell me that ain't great value for money

of course there's a lot of variables on this but i guess you see where I'm coming from go get some and see the difference click the picture above they also do 10 meter spools but you need to mail em ....

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BEST OF LUCK FELLAS

big go get em to buddy's ken and Brian who are fishing the lci out on Champlain this weekend , the big difference is that ken and Brian are going to be doing it with the fly rods when most will be chucking plastic go get em boys cant wait to see how ya do

so hope you all have a good weekend if your out and about hope you get a few

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)

3 day weekend

2011-06-15T17:39:00.004+01:00

i work hard sometimes i think i work too bloody hard so now the summers here threes a lot of groups at my work who have finished for summer so that means I've been presented with a few days off , which let me tell ya is like gold dust , so I've grabbed the opportunity and am heading out in the big blue yonder and wet some fluff and let me tell ya I'm bloody glad of the opportunity to get out

so the patterns ill be using will be pretty limited as if i cant hook up on these then i may as well go home , perch patterns and red and white flashy patterns should pretty much cover it

with that in mind I've actually managed to reduce my boat box by half as well all I've really done is shifted a few flies into different boxes and some of the smaller patterns i don't really need for this trip , so I've cut back on loads , i do like to cover all my bases on trips and like to have the right pattern for what ever the water throws up i mean if i see a load of roach taking to the air with a predator in tow I'm more likely to switch over to a flashy pattern fish just below the surface than a deep fished clouser if you see what i mean , so i like to have all the bases covered .

when i do big flash flies i pretty much always used flashabou because that was it , that's what you used for these flies , but although there is no doubt these flies catch fish but the down side is that they don't last very long with predators teeth . I'm now thankfully to say i don't do that many with flashbou these days due to the massive range of synthetic flashy materials out there you can now tie something just as good if not identical to these flies but the fly will last 3 or four time longer and the new synthetic flash materials are cheaper than flashabou so for the regular angler its way better value .

the 2 flies above are very different in there main body material the top flies body is made from flashabou the bottom is made from spectrum flash fibre in silver now i think a few things here

1-you get a better body shape (both are tied in the same way)

2- the spectrum lasts at least 4 times longer in action

3- its a lot bloody cheaper than flashabou

4-its easier to tie spectrum
5-spectrum retains a better shape in the water

of course I'm not saying ill never use it again everything has its place and if your happy in using what your using then you wont want to change but all I'm saying is give it a try , i seem to have gone off on a tangent there yes I'm still going fishing.

it has to be said i do carry quite a few perch patterns in various shades , colours , and sizes and i just cant help making them and off course in Scotland threes usually perch in most pike waters so always a good plan to have a few .........

so hopefully unlike last time ill get out and the weather will be good this time unlike the hurricane the disposed of the last trip here's hoping

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

125 not out

2011-06-12T15:22:00.003+01:00

let me tell ya a story , i went over and fished with ken at pike adventures last year and it was a blast , most of the time we were on the water like 4am and off by midday simply because of the heat so that left us the afternoon to drink beer and dick around tying flies , the fly below was the first i tied for ken showing him a method of tying with ep fibre of course i gave him the fly and here it is below in a picture from a skype call yesterday 13 months after i had tied it .

so whats so special about it , well ill tell you what , the fly above rocks big style not only has it caught fish let me tell you this fly has caught caught ken 125 fish yes 125 fish on one fly and its still good to fish the hooks still sharp and it was still pulling them in yesterday , tell me that's not the dogs bollocks or what , well that's the quality you get when dealing with people who know what there doing ...........eat that Mr f mill of course you don't want them to last because people wont need to keep buying them , trust me folks go local go cottage industry for your flies its the only way ......oh please don't mail me i don't tie commercially anymore but i will put you onto some trusted fellow fly fishers if you need some doing

so when i get there in July ill be tying another for him and this one will be going into retirement in a frame that is of course as long as the daft redneck don't put it up a tree or something

e.p bait fish on a 4/0 manta

crap picture but I'm at work so it will have to do , this is one of many bait fish I'm tying up just now for the VT trip , these things will catch anything that feeds on small fish but I'm mainly wanting them for the pickerel ill be spending a day chasing

of course when chasing pike and predators its always worth having a few natural match the hatch patterns to play with if things get tough so the natural bait fish becomes a yellow perch with the aid of a few marker pens

so the picture below shows 4 ep bait fish the top two are just white body's with a mullet 3d fibre as the back colour the 2 below are the same pattern but with pen added just goes to show how you can completely change a flys look just by adding some colour or stripes , you get a whole different look no doubt a few more will appear over the next week or so

well with my last trip cancelled because of the weather I'm happy to say i got a rare day off work this week so I'm going to be putting some fly in the water , its a hard job sometimes balancing stuff i had to work crazy long hours last month to pay for the flight and this month I'm doing the same to pay for the tons of cosmetics and stuff to bring home for the wife and kids oh and maybe some bit and bobs from troutfitters .............:-)

laters brothers and sisters of the fluff
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

a weeks gone where

2011-06-08T10:55:00.008+01:00

I'm quite astounded to be honest , i really don't know where this week has gone , i have been kinda busy at work and managing to get a few flies prepped for my USA jaunt , in fact I've just stopped of in orvis on my way to work as i needed some more of my favorite hooks (when I'm feeling rich) the gamakatsu sl12s its just an outstanding hook for some patterns end of , so ill be getting some musky flies tied tomorrow

muskies in lake Champlain have a chequered history and much to long to be going on about here if your interested in the history of the Champlain muskies and the ongoing work carry on reading if not skip down to the fly pic
Missisquoi River Muskie Restoration is Underway
WATERBURY, VT – The muskellunge, a famed and highly-prized sport fish, may once again establish residency in the Missisquoi River, thanks to cooperative efforts yesterday by the states of New York and Vermont. The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department gave its recently-established muskie restoration effort a boost Tuesday when it stocked 250 four-month old muskellunge in the Missisquoi River Delta. The fish were donated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The muskellunge is a unique Vermont natural heritage species. Lake Champlain and the Missisquoi River are the only locations in New England that historically had a native muskellunge population. Local people, especially residents of Swanton and people of Abenaki descent can remember stories of their ancestors fishing for and catching big muskies in the area.

Muskellunge were native to Lake Champlain’s Missisquoi River and Missisquoi Bay but the population that last existed upstream of the Swanton Dam was apparently lost in the late 1970s following a chemical spill that occurred on the upper river.

“The muskellunge has a unique role as Lake Champlain’s apex aquatic predator among the lake’s fishes,” said Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Wayne Laroche. “It also was important historically on the lower Missisquoi River as an almost mythical large fish that was present but very difficult to catch.”

The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department recently completed a genetic assessment of a very small number of muskellunge caught since 2005 in the Lake Champlain Basin.

“In the last couple years, anglers have reported catching an occasional muskie in the lower Missisquoi River and Missisquoi Bay,” said Shawn Good, Chair of the department’s Muskellunge Team, and the fisheries biologist leading the restoration efforts. “Through a very successful outreach effort, we were able to work with local anglers and taxidermists in the Swanton area and obtain tissue samples from a number of these incidental muskie catches. Genetic analysis of these tissue samples reveal the muskellunge anglers have been catching in the area are not from the original native strain.”

“The muskie that anglers have been catching in the Missisquoi came from the Great Chazy River in New York, as their genetic makeup is identical to the Lake Chautauqua-strain muskie the NYDEC have stocked there for many years,” said Good.

Good says they now know some of those fish make their way down the Chazy and out into Lake Champlain to the Missisquoi Bay and River.

There are also a small number of muskellunge in Otter Creek. These fish originated from Pennsylvania following a Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department stocking effort more than 20 years ago.

The department’s genetic work also showed that the state record muskellunge, a 38.22 lb. fish caught in the Missisquoi River in September of 2005 by Chris Beebe, came from fish stocked by the State of New York in the Chazy River.

Source: Department of Fish and Wildlife
-------------------------
i myself have spent the past 6 or so months of this year researching locations and fly types colours etc , so when i hit the ground in the states in July myself and ken will have a bit of a head start on tracking down these elusive VT predators and we will be spending at least a couple of days chasing them , they ain't called the fish of a thousand casts for nothing , OK so your thinking nearly 5000 miles dude you crazy , well no not really you see there is always by catch while fishing for them , bass , northerns etc so I'm happy to go hunting and I'm there for 2 weeks so its all good

a musky fly yesterday refused to give a statement

make no mistake this is a big fly a fly that really gives em something to chew on complete with epoxy head top give it a very slow sink and draw action , i know the colour is right i can feel it in my bones

to give an idea of size the fly is laid on a dinner plate next to a knife and fork i guess you get the picture when i say I'm not messing about with small flies on this one and this colour combo has already landed musky via a Friend i dropped a few to last year so I'm halfway there but hey nothing is certain in fishing they may want something completely different but that's the fun of it
another one of my targets is smallmouths ,now i have to admit that i find these fish the kamikazes of the fish world , they really don't give up ever and they fight like stink brilliant fish . the bigger ones i caught last year all took smaller ep bait fish patterns so i reckon the same type of fly but done in gliss n glint plus will really have them hanging of the hook this is one part of the trip that I'm really looking forward to got to love those smallies

of course no trip to the land of big burger and would you like to super size your fries sir would complete without chasing some large mouth bass on the surface that really does get ya going , bloop bloop bloop WALLOP bucket mouths are cool to catch , even when you don't hook em its still a blast although how they manage not to get hooked is beyond yours truly maybe I'm missing something but i did land plenty last time and learnt a few tricks .

I've decide to give them a super sized surface snack (below) made by a great new method , that i showed ken over at pike adventures on skype video and he was like oh very cool method as it involves rattles and a few other key ingredients which I'm not going to go into as its going to be the winning fly on the ditch pickle (sorry Brian) this fly is really a mover and a shaker and yes Brian ill leave ya a few fella but till after the pickle ...............

so with that I'm buggering of to play with some more materials

later folks

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

friday fly cook

2011-06-03T09:50:00.004+01:00

a tasty predator treat

overall length 7 inch's
hook- 6/0 oshaugnassy (piketrek)
thread - clear mono (piketrek)

eyes - 8mm gator eyes (deercreek)

belly - white slink n flash

back - olive sf fibre

inner core - red ep fibre (any synthetic can be used)

bowfins in july

2011-06-01T13:03:00.003+01:00

ive just booked my flights for my trip to the usa in july

this is what im going on

chasing species like bowfin on the fly

they have a mouth full of hardware and one things for sure with a mouthfull like that

i wont be holding it like this

back to the vice i need stronger hooks

the good ol gurgler meat version

2011-05-29T13:18:00.013+01:00

the gartside gurgler needs no introduction , a legendary surface fly that has caught a gazillion fish worldwide , from peacocks in the amazon to sea bass and trout in the UK , and of course largemouth in the states , if i was to take just one fly for top water work in the states this would be it .

has to be said though i didn't even own one of these flies until last may , yes id heard of it it was even on my list of stuff to make and play with , but just never got round to it , so last year when i traveled to see ken at pike adventures in the states he said it was a fly i would need , but don't worry about tying one up as he had plenty (well he did until his box got run over by a BMW that's another story) and around day 3 of my trip we headed out onto the big lake to chase large mouth bass on the surface he gave me one to play with (yes i nicked it at the end of the trip) it is now a very very chewed up gurgler that ken gave me and the thing caught me a pile of largemouths check it out casting into jungle cover bass

me being me i decide that i wanted to sex it up a bit and do a triple whammy give em something to chew on version (pike in mind as well) i also thought that we were missing quite a few fish on these which although apparently this does happen a lot i thought a may be able to shorten the odds a bit by changing the style of hook as have experienced myself first hand the misses i thought a hook with a wider gape may be partway to getting more fish in the boat (ken may well say I'm talking shite) but below is my version of it

OK so you may think threes not a massive amount of difference to kens but I've done a few things different , the hook is a 4/0 sakuma manta (for the wide gape) and I've replaced the feather on the hook shank with some UV chenille from the piketrek chaps , to give it some bulk

i struggled for ages to find the same foam as ken uses and then by a quirk of fate i was about to throw away a child's life jacket that was damaged and thought "mmmmmm life jackets float whats inside them" one pair of scissors later and i found myself with identical foam to kens , and enough to make thousands of gurglers brilliant so surface to say I'm going to be busy at the vice for the next few weeks

from the picture above you can see kens original on the bottom and my version above you may think from looking at the 2 together that there isn't a great deal of difference size wise , well my picture below shows that there is in fact a whole heap extra meaty goodness on my one and that will sure shake em up .

although I'm not going to do them all massive as ken says sometimes they only want small stuff so i will be making some identical ones to kens , well hey who am i to argue with him the brother fishes it almost every weekend and evenings and he likes the meaty version (trust me if he didn't he would say so)

so the fly above has a bit more curve on the back did i design it like that for any reason actually no i just didn't pull the foam tight enough when i tied it , sometimes mistakes work out good this one looks like it will be good

i didn't get a massive amount of tying time yesterday due to having to work but i have some really radical ideas on some additions for this fly so i will be putting these into practice tomorrow as I'm really hoping to get out on the water this week as I'm quite burned out with work (unfortunately i have to work so hard as the bloody flights are well costly) lessened learnt next year I'm going in may when it will be cheaper to fly , but the fishing is so good threes no way I'm not going end of story .................

later brothers and sisters
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

the friday fly cook

2011-05-27T16:13:00.004+01:00

simple marabou streamer

this is an early tie from way back around 2005 or maybe earlier , a great catching fly very simple to make and made to represent a perch .

hook - 4/0 Aberdeen

thread -clear mono

tail - grizzled hackle

flash - gold (any gold flash will do)

collar - chartreuse marabou feather

the tail section is made up from half a dozen grizzle hackle feathers simple tie in the flash , then tie in the feathers towards the front of the hook then wrap the marabou around the hook shank , tie off and varnish the whipping and that's it .

of course you can do a million and one colour combos and sizes with this fly and it really does catch fish give it a blast

leaving on a jet plane (nearly vt time)

2011-05-26T15:18:00.003+01:00

the fly fishing dream team
(or nightmare on Champlain street)

so its that time of year I'm about to book my flights to the USA and do some serious fishing and drinking and generally raising hell with my partners in crime above , you know my wife sees it as me skiving off on holiday but i tell her , its not a holiday I'm going fishing ,if i had bass in this country i wouldn't go dear (outright lie there fellas) she doesn't believe me you know ,but how on earth can i explain the rush i get when a large mouth hits you fly on the surface in crystal clear calm waters , or the expectation that at any moment a fish will come tanking up out of the Lilly pads and crush your fly , how can i possible explain when I'm up a mountain fishing 4 inch deep stream for native brookies on dry flies how on earth can i explain the great time on Brian's porch eating great food from his BBQ and drinking firewater while dodging bugs from hell that are intent on killing you from a great height and speed and the rolling around laughing after the thing puts a dent in the woodwork and misses your head by a few inch's , or lying in a hammock in my brother kens back yard drinking a cold beer and chewing the fat

the brotherhood and comradeship of these guys and the great fishing times we have is what keeps me going back every year ,fellas your the greatest see ya in a month I'm busting to get there already

TODAY'S COLOUR IS PURPLE
as some of my close friends know i don't do commercial tying really anymore burnt myself out doing over 3500 in one year was too much , and I'm not a guy who wants to be the big shot know it all I'm better than you fly tier , in fact i was tying flies for pike in this country when nobody else was even thinking about the sport , all i am i a guy that enjoys what he does and is happy to share the knowledge that's that no hidden agendas nothing .

i tie flies for 3 company's and that's it each company gets limited amounts of flies tied by me and i don't get any pressure from any of them , each company get unique flies and flies that catch fish the latest and the last company to get flies made by me is a company near Edinburgh called predator bite now these guys also produce a really superb knotable trace wire called authanic wire i know a few guys who now swear by it for fly fishing , well these guys asked me to produce some flies for there website and i was delighted to do it and I've managed to produce some really serious big but light flies at an very reasonable price and the guys have already caught some some nice fish with them click the pick below to check em out

i love tying flies and developing patterns and i just get a kick out of seeing them on the wheel like the picture above, you just sometimes look at something and you know its going to catch fish , again these are available on from the chaps at predatorbite as an exclusive these would probably work quite well for sea species as well as pike , there is some funky new designs as well that are going to be sure fire fish annoyers

so having tied a massive amount of flies this week I'm going to take a couple days off before i start my next project which again will be something off the cuff but really sexy , and a pattern that I've used on and off for quite a few years but never really talked about a lot because they can be a bit fiddly if you want to change flies but theres a product out there that has made it a lot easier to use these flies , all will be reviled next week .

tomorrow ill be sticking up a new fly for the Friday fly cook so tune in

peace
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

busy times and twittering

2011-05-24T10:33:00.005+01:00

have now scummed and am now on the twitter network I've been looking into it for a while and decided it may be a good place for all those that follow the various website and blogs i do , so when i add new stuff to the sites i will update it on twitter as well as facebook , this way people will be able to keep track from one place either twitter or facebook , it will also update and post on facebook site when i post on here ...... new technology eh click the link below to follow

back to normal fly tying post

busy this last week oh hell yea I've been busy i had a major fly order to finish part of which is in the picture below so that took up a hell of a time as i had to fit it in around work and family i choose not to do many commercial ties these days and i tend to pick and choose very carefully where my work goes , these will be on sale shortly via a website and i will post when there up there .

so i busied myself getting this lot done it was 100 flies which i was supposed to deliver today along with going fishing for the day (rare day off ) so i did them and then realised when i was packing them up that i had actually only tied 90 i had actually miscounted the entire lot , oh bollocks i was supposed to deliver them today and i was working last night so the only thing left to do was to take some stuff to work and tie off the last ten , I'm very lucky to be able to do this at work because I'm usually busy at the start and end of my shifts and nothing in between and the great thing is my bosses don't mind me doing it , so often people will walk in to my office and find the fly wheel going round with assorted flies stuck to it as below last night , the funny thing is i often get to have some great conversations with people about fly fishing .

the box below was to be today's test box sadly with the high winds and devastation suffered over the last few days in Scotland (although nowhere as near as bad as the USA tornado's) the trip today was abandoned so they will have to wait that's the way it goes

new patterns

jack pike ( 8 inch's) epoxy head

belly -yellow body fibre (piketrek)

back- Lindsay's jack pike green gliss and glint plus (deercreek)

hook - sakuma manta extra 6/0 (sakuma.com)

eyes - gold 8mm (piketrek)

thread - clear mono

I've also been experimenting with some new colours in gliss and glint plus in fact these colours are so new threes not even a name for them yet , I'm also playing around with using less materials but creating a bigger but lighter fly as you can see things are coming together quite nicely . just wish i could get out and do some fishing .

later folks

mcfluffchucker

the friday fly cook

2011-05-20T19:01:00.003+01:00

THE FRIDAY FLY COOK

(gliss and glint plus perch)

hook - sakuma manta extra 6/0

body - gliss and glint chartreuse

throat - red angel hair

eyes - gator eyes

large rattle

black and red markers

tied in thin sections hollow tie style as per video here

new patterns and bloody kids

2011-05-18T18:43:00.004+01:00

i tied this the other day and was quite impressed with the finished item , its nothing spectacular just a standard type 6 inch bait fish and in classic red and white and some flash through it courtesy of gliss and glint plus i also did a video step by step for it and my buddy Stevie was round today dropping some stuff of and had watched the video and asked for a quick look , and was pleasantly surprised at how big it actually looked without tying a whole lot of material into it .

Stevie is away down south next week to fish chew and asked for a couple in this and some new colours i have received so every happy to help i have made a start on a few patterns for Stevie pictures once I've done them but there looking good

i made a start on a few of the above pattern and decided that they may well benefit the addition of a rattle I'm a great beliver in rattles for extra sound and attraction so added one and to be honest you would know they were there unless you looked very closely and they have only a negligible effect on the weight of the fly so why not

in the picture above the middle fly doesn't have a rattle and from looking at them you wouldn't really notice unless you shook them , the rattles are tied in just where the red head finishes at the back of the fly , this really is a great easy fly to make and you really don't have to have the skill of a master fly tier to make them in fact the video below shows how easy it is , yea i know I'm not getting any Oscars for my performance but those who know me will realise that's not what I'm about i have no interest in being the big name know it all , i do this simply to spread the word on what is a truly wonderful sport ............enjoy

oh and the video ends a bit abruptly my 4 year old bus mad son came in and started shouting out bus numbers and bus routes , luckily i know his moves so turned it of before he started ahhh children

spread the word and feel free to use my videos on any websites you like please just link back to where you found it .

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

good clean fun and bargains

2011-05-14T11:25:00.011+01:00

had an email through facebook yesterday (my profile is pike flies if you want to hook up) lovely chap called Andy , well he had been looking top offload some tying stuff as he was pretty much only doing salmon flies now so had no need for all the synthetics and DNA stuff hooks etc etc and as he was in Edinburgh wanted to see if i was interested , well er yup i was so a couple of emails were exchanged and i meet Andy at haymarket train station this morning to do the exchange and it was great to meet a fellow fly tying enthusiast i just wish i could have stayed and talked longer but i was on my way to work , so thanks again Andy , i did however have the feeling that the CCTV there was probably watching this strange long haired guy handing over cash and receiving plastic carrier bag in return , i was expecting the police to show up and try and bust me . you ever get that even though you completely innocent you cant help feeling what your doing is wrong and the feds are watching waiting to swoop on you for dealing in fly tying stuff .........:-)

eurovison song contest joke "whats blue and cant sing .........................blue"

HEY MISTER WANNA MOVIE

OK so I'm not going to get any Oscars for my performance in this video I'm not really into producing hi quality fly tying videos i just stick my digital camera on a small tripod and shoot , the reason i do them is quite simply I'm asked to , and I'm happy to help the video above i did for fellow facebook Friend and fly tier jens from Sweden , who makes some pretty amazing salmon flies , well he has also got some great places to pike fish and he has started to do the odd pike fly as well and pretty good they are as well , so i wanted to give him a bit of a head start on things and knowing Jens he will add his own slant to it as well cant wait to see what he comes up with .

the only down side with doing videos on a camera is your restricted to time and how much memory you have to play with and you can only upload 15 min videos onto youtube so if you want to do longer videos you have to do them in a few parts which is a bit of a pain , so i try to keep them to under 15 Min's if i can , and it took me nearly 3 hours to bloody upload the thing whats all that about ....

trying to beat the clock while fly tying is no easy thing and no doubt ill have to in the future do 2 part videos for more complex flies as although the video is a bit rushed know people did enjoy it , i can rush these kind of flies out dead fast but when you trying to explain things it can slow it down a bit , but hey the finished product is all good and will catch fish

a slightly closer view of the final fly , i like to call these hot heads as the head is always a bit more of a vibrant colour than the rest of the body , will these catch more fish , well hell if i know i just enjoy tying the things and its in colours ive done well on before so i have faith in them and other people have caught on these so alls good

my desk remains suitably nearly tidy after the video , this is my get away space and has fantastic light in the afternoon , i always enjoy my time here .....

on a separate note ken over at pike adventures son kaiden just walloped out his first trophy bass at 18 inch's on a fly rod and he did it all by himself , well done buddy great fish makes it even better when your dad caught nothing ........lol

have a great weekend

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

brokeback baitfish (no not the same as the movie)

2011-05-11T18:04:00.000+01:00

evo stick - serious glue
This is a really good all-purpose glue and has a few uses for the fly tier when not using epoxy . It has not failed me on sticking eyes to flies It stays pliant for long enough to get the job in place and you can still re position the eyes after 10 Min's if you wish to , and is fairly strong after a few hours, and totally dependable after 24 hours. Once set, it repels water, and still retains a little pliancy. so it has its a lot of better points than normal super glue which you have to get right pretty much every time due to its instant stick and some super glues have a really annoying white powder that forms and you have to wash off ....

My only criticism after using this product for a few months now (yes one 33g tube) is the tube itself, which after initial use has a top that's a pig to unscrew as the glue goes into a rubber like bung in the top , but what i do is use cocktail sticks to puncture a hole in the top and i still get enough out to do what ever job I'm using it for , if it does get to the stage of being too thick to get out i just get in there with a small pair of long nose pliers very easy to pull the offending blockage out and at around £5.00 UK for american buyers you can get it shipped to you but I'm not sure if you can get it over the pond it may be a different name , but still worth getting

PIKE TREK SAMURAI PIKE FLY HOOKS 6/0

uncle Greg over at pike trek (click the pic above) sent me some of there new samurai hooks which a basically a half circle hook , and i studied it for a while , turned it this way and that mulled a few ideas over before finally committing material to hook , as the shank on these is quite short so obviously not to much space to work with , but as with most new things sometimes i need to think about things for a while to get the best out of them

so having committed material to the hook i thought of a way of creating a bait pattern with a broken back so as you can see in the picture above I've tied the material in from the eye to the back of the short shank , the material as you can see leans on the back of the vice , i do this to make sure if I'm tying a few of the same pattern i get the same length of body every time .

when its not on the back of the vice it hangs down looking like a fish with a broken back obviously a big turn on for predators

after tying in the back all I've done is hollow tie 4 thin clumps of orange around the head (bad lighting sorry) of course you can make this as thick or as thin as you like i like to give em something to chew on sometimes . i will tomorrow do a video for this so stay tuned .

THE CAVE IN FULL PRODUCTION MODE i had a late start in the cave today as i was celebrating the fact that the doctor had told me the lump on my breastbone was actually my bone and the feeling i was having a heart attack for the last 6 weeks was in fact just heartburn caused by stomach acid which foul tasting liquid cleared up pretty much straight away , i should learn to go to the doctors as soon as I'm not right and not leave it .

so after getting back from work i tanked into a bottle of fine red and then finished the wife's white which of course meant i had the head from hell this morning and didn't get cracking in the cave till 1pm which was a real pity as i had the tying head on today and i had to leave for work at 3pm so drinking i am not doing tonight ................

i did manage to get another one done before i left I'm more of a natural colour well it would have been rude not to again another broke back bait fish

fly fishing redneck brother ken capsey over at pike adventures has done a really interesting blog about a flys life in it he shows a fly i tied in his dungeon last may and hes still catching fish on it today go have a read , pike adventures not only a great read but he has some great pictures

Friend and legendary Vermont guide (i swear he is part fish) drew price is also making me sick as a pig by getting into some awesome small mouths actually its just getting me fired yo for my trip in July and sending me to the vice to make even more smaller clousers , anyway check Drew's antics out here dp on the fly again great blog and always a satisfying read

right I'm off to do some video

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

the mother of invention

2011-05-08T16:30:00.002+01:00

hell i love tying flies i get sheer pleasure from it and sometimes i get to fish them as well long story but yes i do get out now and again but those with family and work pressures will know how hard that can be sometimes especially with the line of work I'm in so i do get a lot of pleasure from what i do sometimes though necessity is the mother of invention

i was siting thinking the other day that i needed some really big surface baits for pike put didn't want poppers i wanted something that was going to make a lot of noise on the surface so i sat and thought about things i had used in the past and hey presto the gurgler popped into my head i thought OK what if i could have a gurgler head with a big synthetic broken back bait fish behind it hell that would click all the right buttons son i set to work

a 6/0 sakuma manta extra was on the cards for this one because it has a fantastic wide gape on it which i suspected i may have needed for the amount of foam i was going to use this really did have to stay on the top and go nuts , i cut a rectangle of yoga Matt foam (that stuff is cheap and loads of it) and placed half on the hook and bound down with normal sewing thread in red i knew once i got near the head it would pull up gurgler style making that lip that spits the water , having tied it up the lip wasn't quite at the angle that i wanted , but that could be fixed easily at the end of the tie . but i was getting the shape i wanted

the next thing was to get some material on there , i thought at first it may be tricky to hollow tie a load of material behind the foam , but it turned out actually to be no problem as i pulled the fibers back with my fingers well there no way was getting a pen tube over that sucker was there
stepping back and looking at the overall shape i was was more that happy with it

the quick fix to get the angle correct to spit water was quite simple all i did was build up a dam in front of the foam this i found could be made to have any angle you like simple really

adding eyes was a simple affair all i did was a five min epoxy on the back of each eye , i didn't want to do a full epoxy head on this as it would have weighed to much

so the final all singing all surface dancing gurgler bait fish I'm actually very impressed with the thing , I'm not saying Ive designed anything new hear i suspect that the bill fish fly anglers may have designed something similar although Ive not been able to find it through searches be interesting to see if there is anything out there if there is let me know would love to take a look at it

I'm planing doing some video of this in action hopefully next week i suspect it could be quite spectacular

tight lines brothers and sisters of the fluff

(mcfluffchucker )

a cave in Scotland)

perch perch glorious perch

2011-05-04T19:05:00.004+01:00

WELCOME TO SCOTLAND

(and another fine sunny day in Edinburgh)

today was yet another fine sunny and warm day in Edinburgh id risen out of my bed quite early this morning despite going to bed late because i was watching zombie stuff on the TV i should have really been tying flies but i was zonked as Ive been working fairly hard i couldn't even manage a decent conversation with ken when he called yup tiredness is a horrible thing i had all the ideas i wanted to tie in my head but couldn't muster the will power to do anything , it has as well been the hottest April since records began here in Scotland so that takes its toll as well

so this morning i decided to get a few on the hook , i also had to drop my son at nursery so i had a few hours before i picked him up in a couple of hours time , i had promised him to go off to town and check out some buses and go to the bus timetable shop (his version of my orvis) so i set to work on some thing that were floating around in my head

i did quite well on smallies last year on small fish snacks so wanted to improve on the selection i am taking i want flies that look a bit like whats in there lake and what there feeding on , i have a far better idea now after hammering them on bait fish last year so these are the first of the production line

yellow perch

this is a duel edge sword fly as although its small compered to a lot i tie (this is only 4 inch's long) and tied on a gamakatsu sl12 in a 4/0 an incredibly sharp hook and god hook for this kind of tie , this fly I've given a little bit more meat in the way of ep fibre as i want it to be a bit more of a slow sinker the material will help do this and offset the weight of the hook although the hooks don't weigh a lot I'm hoping the smallies Will maybe see this as either a small perch or a black nosed dace but I'm hoping they will just not examine it and just get it down them

perch/ black nose 2

following on the same Principal of they may just hit it because it looks tasty this fly is tied with half the amount of material than the one above it , i want this to fish close to the bottom by tying it more sparsely the weight of the hook will get it down there faster that the other fly i really don't need to test these before i take them over or fish with them because i know from many years experience what these flys will do i spent many many many years on the water experimenting with fibers and hook weights and fly actions , you see a lot of people will chuck a load of feathers on a hook and pronounce it a killer fly before they even put it near water which is crazy i mean imagine making a massive bad ass fly takes you hours to finish you pronounce to the world its the next greatest thing and it has all the action of a brick , get some watercraft fella I'm sure you've all seen this Joe know it all down your local before .

so i managed to get half a dozen of these made before i went to pick son up and we headed of into town to pick up some fabled no 14 bus time tables and a McDonald's (he gets one McDonald's a month before you mail me about all the crap that's in them) its a father and son treat and as you can see by his face he loves a good chip

I've also on the bus to work today thought up a bit of a radical fly to make incorporating the idea of a gurgler its really starting to eat at me as to how t make it and i think i have it sussed out the bummer is I'm not going to be able to do anything about it til Friday when I'm off work , I'm at work writing this just now and ill be getting home around 9.30 pm but then I'm up again at 3 am to come to work and ill be here till midnight tomorrow night as its an election and im working the fecker ...........hey the moneys god and it will pay for the ton of Rosie's jerky ill be buying when i visit ken ............rock n roll baby ...........but hey ill throw that fly around in my head tomorrow and see if i can improve on it and ill do a step by step development in pictures on Friday night

have a great weekend people

Dave Lindsay

(a cave in Scotland