SBS gummy pike fly

TIE A PIKE/PREDATOR GUMMY

(no fly tying equipment needed)

Gummys are a fantastic little bait-fish fly for all manner of predator species , here’s a version I make for pike . Now you may think you couldn't make these in any decent size for pike but you’d be wrong you can actually make them as large as you like myself I like to make them in the 3 to 4 inch range this size will do just as well as any of the larger pike patterns .

You will need 

hooks – this pattern im using a 6/0

eyes – 8mm gator eyes

squid skin

a pro marker (olive)

a pair of sharp scissors

glue or epoxy (to stick the eye on)

(suppliers at the botttom of the page)

1- cut a four inch by 1 inch rectangular piece of squid skin and fold in half

2- start cutting downwards

3 - start cutting the rounded belly shape of a baitfish on the up cut towards the tail  

4 – this is the shape your aiming for , if you using smaller hooks simply reduce the size of the squid skin and if you want it larger increase the size of the rectangle 

5 – place the squid skin on the hook and check for size and make sure you don't mask too much of the hook gape you can at this point trim around the bottom to adjust the shape and size as you like

6 – when your happy peel away the backing try not to touch the sticky side 

7 – place the sticky side on the shaft so the sticky side is facing you , then fold over very slowly and match the edges together , start at the head end and work back , this stops any air bubbles being trapped (if you do get an air bubble just prick it with a needle) 

8 – when you’ve folded the squid skin and its stuck together this is what your left with

9 – now take you pro marker and add the back color (ive chosen an olive color but use what ever you like )

10 – mix up a small amount of epoxy

(of course you can if you wish use glue , I chose epoxy as the weight helps with the action of the fly in the water ) glue will still work but you’ll get a slower sink rate and a slightly different action because of the weight difference over epoxy 

11 – add a small blob of epoxy on each side

12 – place the eyes on 

13 – and allow to cure (I use a rotary dryer s I do around 10 of each in one go) if your using five min epoxy and making one at a time you can just hold it till it cures 

and there you have it a very fast to make versatile baitfish and no fly tying tools needed

(I used a vice in some pics so I could take pictures)

try different shapes and smaller hooks there all good and catch fish

the sky’s the limit with these

for squid skin please contact nick at www.deercreek.co.uk

http://www.deercreek.co.uk/CONTACT-US.html

happy tying 

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

STEVE PARTON R.I.P

It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of one of the angling industry’s legends steve parton , I knew Steve some years back when I lived in derby and worked in nottingham and steves little industrial unit making all sorts of fly fishing gear and dyed feathers rods and float tubes was half way between the too in long eaton so quite often I used to pop in for a bag of maribou or other material .

Back then maribou was the only real material I used to make large pike flies with and used to go into steves unit at least once a week to buy it , he was asked what I was doing with all the maribou , I then showed him a 12 inch mauler fly made from just maribou he laughed and said you need a bloody 20wgt to cast that bugger I can build you one if you want.

Steve was just one of the people I think you'd call him a marmite bloke (love him or hate him) because he always spoke exactly what he thought and that let me tell you used to ruffle a few feathers but a nice guy honestly you couldn’t meet , it wasnt even that long ago that I bought some chenille from him and he included a few extras with a card saying “free gift because im retiring”

I suspect steve will be at the pearly gates just now giving god an earfull , steve also did a whole lot more which will be no doubt covered by the magazine he wrote but this is just my way of saying see ya later fella 

steve you will be sadly missed mate  

a beautiful day in the deep freeze

AND WERE OFF

So by some miracle last Friday all the eliminates came together and we were able to get out to fish , we choose to go into the salty stuff to chase bass and pollock to say we were excited was an understatement , when your sitting tying flies all winter and its so cold the lochs have frozen over so you couldn't get out even if we wanted too and the cool flies are piling up on the tying board well it was enough to drive us to drink , so when the opportunity to go fish came up we jumped at it …...

A beautiful day in the deep freeze

 after a short drive from my house we reached are chosen and due to the destroyers weak bladder he took the sign literally   

 it was a beautiful day in the fish tank although to be honest the wind had shifted and was blowing a bloody freezing wind into us (I now know where the term freeze dried means) this was not what I expected and the omens wernt good but hell ain’t gonna catch a fish without a fly in the water.

As it turned out this spot was a no go for me as the waders I had on wernt the best for scrambling around rocks as they had zero stretch in them mental note neoprene next time , so I directed the destroyer to the spot where ive had fish before but I wasnt holding out much hope as I suspected that the fish just wernt there .

 After a few cast into the surf I suspected the destroyer wasnt to confident in my madness so we de camped to another spot on the beach the tide had about 90 mins left till high tide so I was still confident despite the bitterly cold wind , we fished like devils for the next 30 mins jumping waves and getting flies into the zone , much to the amusement of the 3 bait chuckers to our left who by the way were in the spot that I wanted and wernt about to move anytime soon , so with the tide nearly up I decided on one quick spot change to another spot I knew further up around the point

we fished the other area for the remainder of the tide but we didnt have even so much as a sniff of a fish ok so to be honest I dont know why although I suspect we may just have been too early in the year and the fish were just not responsive to flies because of the cold I really don’t know but although frustrated by the lack of fish we were still glad to be out fishing .

Slim but deadly

 ok so although we didnt catch I knew it wasn’t down to the flies as I have supreme confidence in the sandeel fly above but you know sometimes its just the way it is and at least it wasnt snowing …...

so we headed back up the road with the stereo blasting out some funky progressive heavy metal tunes and already talking about the up coming pike trip next week confidence is high were ready  

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BACK TO THE VICE

 I had a large pike pimped bunnybug order to fill last week so I set about getting it done , I had actually run out of white magnum strips but no problem while I was doing the other ones the white would be on its way to me via an internet order , or so I thought , id jumped on to ebay and bought a pack of what I thought was magnum zonker strips but sometimes ebay buys ain’t what they seem and when the pack arrived it was probably OK for large trout flies but for pike if was a no no …....

so I set about checking my favourite online suppliers and for some reason none had them seriously it seemed like all the white magnum zonker strips had simply vanished overnight why is beyond me even the guys at pikeshack didn’t have any white, I eventually found some after a few hours hunting around again on ebay so I ordered them and sat back and breathed a sigh of relief it wouldn’t be here for a couple of days so I decided to muck around with some extra olive zonker strips that I had  

 and the result was this mad looking pimped bunny bug with massive eyes actually I really love this and think it will do quite well for the pike , the eyes are no super new design they are just bog standard Christmas decorations yup every year I see them sitting there on the Christmas tree and every year I swipe a line of them and the next year the wife says “have you seen the Christmas decorations” no dear , more are bought and after Christmas they find there way into my supplies box and so the cycle continues my dear wife thinks shes going crazy

oh and the zonker strips came , but they were still the wrong size , i ended up going into Edinburgh and seeing if the lovley guys and gals from orvis could help me , well would you believe it they only had them in stock on the shelf now isnt there a lesson to be learnt there 

BIG BAD PIKE LUNCH

dont get me wrong ive tied big tandems before in fact all those years ago back in the 90s I used tie a fly called a mauler which was made from all maribou and was great in the water but when it was wet it was like casting a big wet sock so I didnt really pursue making them although I did actually sell quite a few , so fast forward to a couple of months ago and fellow deercreek pro staff pter dahlstrom and ben treppa from http://wishinyouwerefishin.blogspot.co.uk had been doing a few lately and it got my mind thinking about big hungry mommas so with the advent of lighter materials like gliss and glint plus I could make up some monsters that actually would weigh very little

highland pike mk1 16 inch

 the highland pike why the highland pike well no reason its just a name :-) the way to build these is actually fairly simple although does take a lot of time because its articulated and despite the look there is very little in the way of materials in this which really does add a lot of movement in the water so the first one I was quite pleased about but decided that I wanted something with a different colour and slimmer profile so had a re think and came up with

LOWLAND JACK mk1 17 inch

 so the principles in the tie are the same as the highland but ive scaled back on the gliss and glint plus and although you may not see it ive custom blended some yellow in with green to give it a more jack type look and ive added a pair of large googly eyes to it and blacked them out with sharpies before sticking them on this one is really floating my boat and im pretty sure im going to do ok on this this year better make 2 each as one will no doubt find its way into the destroyers box

MIXING IT UP

 theres some great coloured lures out there and if you think you cant match those classic colors

with flies then think again of course you can and if you think a little outside the box then you can really get some great and unusual colours on the go , ive done this with this classic fire tiger pattern. ive mixed orange gliss and glint plus with a plain yellow synthetic fibre and added a few strands of magnum gold flashbou and the result is a very nice colour combo hard to see in the picture but there is a really nice even mix of color on this variation of a classic

 the other thing you may not realise is that you can also troll these on conventional fishing tackle simply buy adding a wiggle fin at the front of the lure (I pre build them on short wire traces) they can be trolled nicely behind a boat or even better if you have a down rigger these will be deadly sometimes it just pays to think outside the norm.

“if you wish to puchchase any of these the link is here”

http://www.spanglefish.com/hookeyeandfly/index.asp?pageid=469047

DUAL SUPREME HAIR FLY

  nick over at www.deercreek.co.uk has just started stocking supreme hair if you havent used it before it makes great small baitfish patterns or even better sandeels the fly above is tied on a 4/0 clouser hook and is around 7 Inchs long (if memory serves me right ,im at work just now writing this) and this particular pattern will catch fish really anywhere you fish it both freshwater and saltwater , if you havent tried this style of fly before the you really should it takes no time to tie and is deadly in the right circumstances if your not sure on how to tie these there is a step by step on my tying predator flies website here (this a free to use and share website and I make zero money from it are you listening mikey pikey zero , nowt , nothing) just for the love people

http://www.spanglefish.com/tyingpredatorflies/index.asp?pageid=283316

RATTLEY THINGS

 also hot of the starting blocks this week are some new thinner but twice as rattly rattles , im a big fan of rattles for murky water or jig flies and these fit the bracket very nicely for smaller patterns , if you need any help on tying with rattles heres the link to my free website (did you see that mikey wilson from paas I said free as its always been)

http://www.spanglefish.com/tyingpredatorflies/index.asp?pageid=281413

£2.75 for 20 you just cant go wrong at that price heres the blurb from uncle greg at piketrek and trust me uncle greg know what hes talking about

"Our pike fly rattles have proved so popular that we just had to have some longer ones made for using in bigger flies.

These are a full 5mm longer than our standard rattles, which means that the balls inside have much more room to move around in resulting in a much louder rattling sound. There is also more air trapped inside to improve the neutral buoyancy once they're submerged, which means that they won't affect the way your flies fish.

The greater length actually improves their usefulness in another way, as it makes them more simple to use. Daft as it may sound, having more rattle length to cover up and hide makes it much easier to tie flies as there is more room to tie other materials to.

I had a mess around with these when they first arrived the other day and I was impressed by how easy they were to use and how I could whip fibres along the sides. They cover over really easily with Spectrum Fibre whipped and varnished over them and a simple body dressed over the top tied down in front of the rattle.

I've yet to try the flies I made but they look really good and I can't imagine them not working really well, especially in water that is carrying some colour. And they're loud!

If it's noisy flies you're looking for then try these!"

 A massive shout out to my brother from another mother and vermont fly guy ken “i like barbie” capsey who actually got out to do some chucking with small zonker leeches and stumbled on a this rather nice looking trout respect bro .

Well the blog as you may have noticed has been a little quite over the winter with me posting only 1 post every 2 or 3 weeks , this is simply down to not fishing due to the garbage weather we have had , normally I start to venture out after predators come feb but with winter continuing right through to pretty much spring with ice and snow still on the ground its been a hard start so ive not had that much to write about really except myself and the destroyers fly tying antics over the winter .

This will hopefully be changing in the coming weeks and id just like to thank all those folks who still kept coming back over the winter and left comments for me on my sparse posts and those fellow bloggers who like me kept at it during the quiet spells …....cheers heres to a cracking year of tight lines and bent rods

and to the arseholes out there both near and far “FACE BOTHERED”

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)

sticklebacks and other stories

 FAVORITE TIERS PT 1

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

BOB VEVERKA (USA)

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

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

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

 

 PLAYING WITH FLIES

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

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

 Mk 1  

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

MK 2 

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

SPRING FISHING

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

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

And heres a couple I made  

BUGZ

HOOK – 8/0

BODY – olive maribou

FLASH – gold flashbou

EYES – christmas tree decoration

THREAD – phantom thread

SIZE – 7 inchs

MARIBUNNY

HOOK – 8/0

BODY – barred zonker strip

FLASH - gold flashbou

EYES – seaeyes with green gator eyes stuck on

THREAD – phantom thread

SIZE – 9 inchs

AND HERES A PIKE

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

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

mcfluffchucker

( a cave in Scotland)

life in the cave continues

 THERE'S SOME IDIOTS ABOUT

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

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

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Kicking out the cobwebs

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

Support your local tying shop

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

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

CHROME BAITFISH 

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

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

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

–

BIG DNA BAITFISH

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

CRAZY DAYS OF WINTER

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

dunb redneck alert

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

HARD AT WORK 

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

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

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

GLISS AND GLINT PLUS RAINBOW TROUT 

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

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

SANDEELS 

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

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

STREAMSIDE DIARY

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

tight lines folks

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in scotland)