back in the cave

see ya all tommorow

still tying the countdowns on

OK so I'm away chasing big pike on Monday so as always I'm still tying (ill probably be doing this Monday before i go as well) so more bait fish patterns are on the menu were I'm going there is a massive bait fish population so smaller patterns are called for as that what the predators are used to scoffing .......


below is a smaller bait fish at 5 inch's I've mixed sf fibre on the back with piketrek body as a belly material the material is melon Orange and if you look closely enough you'll see the orange in the center of the body

the fly below I've used sf fibre on the back , ultra hair yellow as a belly and yellow angel hair around the head section , the eyes are pike treks 9 mm soft gel eyes with an epoxy head quite a nice little bait fish pattern and a pattern that would fish well in pretty much any venue with a population of smaller bait fish

same principle as above on the fly below but I've substituted the yellow angel hair for red and Ive added red eyes

below just for the hell of it is an sf blue back , blue is a very underrated colour in this country i really wish more people would try it

below is a fly that's slightly bigger than the norm I've used olive sf fibre as a back pike trek fin yellow as a belly and berry red as a throat

FAST FOOD

OK so i decided some experimenting was called for with the pike trek materials so i decided to do a take on an old pattern (the mohican) which traditionally was an American fly made from bucktail so i decided to do a slightly different take on this pattern

so i tied a classic colour for me in white but it has white dna fibre in the mix and a nice red eye as a strike point I've always done fairly well on this colour in very clear water so I'm quite confident of this catching

another variation is melon orange and silver I'm thinking that the lovely fluid motion of the pike trek fibre will suite this style of fly i meant say that these flies are around 4 inch's long and tied on 6/0 orvis pike and musky hooks

OK so continuing on the theme below i think my favorite is the bottom one and this is sure to get a good bashing next week , so from sitting there thinking about old flies i came up with a new version of a classic sometimes you can just sit there and look at a fly and the ideas will come

so hope you have enjoyed today's flies and ill catch up with ya all on wed

tight lines

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

oh for fecks sake

so I'm preparing for my trip next week and I'm sorting flies out and I'm also taking a load of flies that i need to test so it then dawns on me that I've got no bloody room in my boxes or fin sports for any more flies and my board is getting kinda full again so i guess I'm going to have to get some bloody new boxes made pronto .........................

so i made another load of boxes and i have a few spare in reserve as well although by the time I've finished today ill have no room in these either

OK so on the shelf and I'm almost ready to start packing although ill only be taking the second shelf with me , only ha ha ha

so that's my lot for today i have to go finish packing

see ya all on Wednesday for a full breakdown of events and hopefully some fish pictures too

mcfluffchucker
(leaving the cave in Scotland)

on the road again

well as the week draws to a close my thoughts turn to next week when I'm out for a couple of days chasing some big pike in an old estate lake , I'm really looking forward to this one as the average water depth is only around 6ft and this will be perfect for the floating line and testing out some of the new patterns I've been working on the last few days , and I'm also looking forward to seeing my boat partner making a complete arse of himself as he has zero boat skills well he has to learn sometime and well ill be on hand to get him out of trouble if he breaks down like a bubbling wee lassie ......and as my boat partner will be reading this over the next few days and will no doubt try to retaliate ill just say the following NET - COST - WIFE see you next week mate he he he

shut up and eat me



piketrek materials continue to play tricks with my head i mean i think they have some kind of voodoo ju ju or something as ill be sitting there minding my own business and ill get that thought in my head "make this fly make this fly make this fly" so well i don't get no Peace until i do so of to the cave i go and here is the latest batch again all made with piketrek body materials

the throat on this one has been done with a colour called berry red a really interesting colour and I'm sure ill be doing a lot with it




again more big flies these are big your looking at 10 + for these i like sometimes just throwing some colours together completely random like so what i do is dive into the box grab a colour and stick it on the hook and then lay other colours over the top till you find one that fits or floats you boat this is what i did with the fly below and seems to have turned out OK for a bait fish pattern



of course i didn't really need to add the red i could have got away with just the 2 colour but hell if you don't try something you'll never know and i just fancied doing it so there i think it looks good and that's all that matters ......have confidence in something and it will work for you



HARD CORE BABY

yea OK so I'm still fooling around with this design trying different things and loving it the fly below is as you can see all black but it has an inner core of copper angel hair , can you imagine what that's going to look like in the water feckin radical , the eye is a 9mm conical eye this will give the fly the action of a glide bait due to the weight distribution of the eyes and materials



again another plus on the piketrek and that i love is how its keeps its profile even when wet and does make a really good bait fish but i must say melon orange is still my favorite colour


berry berry good

this is fast coming up as a favorite colour as well the thing is with the materials is although it may be berry red there is an underlying colour to these materials which sometimes only shows up when you hold it a certain way , well of course this adds a whole new spectrum of tying to me i mean imagine a predator sitting looking at a fly going past and say its not really that bothered well that is until it sees a quick clink of another colour then bang it has sparked its interest and that could be the key to the fish attacking or not think about it it makes sense

so with this in mind I've tied up the pattern bellow that has a great deep red colour but if you look closely it has a hint of electric purple so what I've done to enhance this is tied a core of silver angel hair i think this will be a killer on some waters and its a good size for a pike snack





so my posts over the next few days may be through and far between as i have unenviable task of having to choose what flies I'm taking as I'm traveling very light so space will be at a premium so i have to choose very carefully i have a lot of new flies i need to take and test as well as well so stay tuned

see ya all in the next few days
for the love of esox
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

eat my dust

i make no apology about again today banging on about piketrek materials but I'm really getting into the swing of using there pike body materials and all I'm doing is making you fellow fly tiers aware of this great product and to get you to have a go at using some of it ........simply because its feckin brilliant

HARD CORE

calm down not that kind of hard core I'm talking big flies tied on 6/0 gamagaksu sl hooks with very thinly laid piketrek body fibre in the center of the fibre there is angelhair just enough to give a nice flash in the heart of the fly as well as a very flashy belly

as you can see from the fly below and you can probably see the red angel hair poking through the fibre what you cant see in the picture is the pearl flashbou strands that lace the body of the fly and of course red and white being an all time favorite colour for pike for many pike anglers

so of course you can mess around with different colours but keep the same principle of an inner core of angelhair that will provide a flash and a strike point for predators along with the gold core I've added a melon orange head and I'm pretty dam sure this will be a fish catcher eye is a 9mm again from piketrek

ill be making a few more of these before i head of on a road trip next week

so sometimes you just got to go with red and white as i said before its pretty much a standard go to colour when pike fishing so i couldn't resist the chance to tie some up with and without fish gills the epoxy head will if fished slow this will bounce the bottom slightly faster and the fly will duck and dive a couple of short strips and a pause will make it glide from side to side.

OK so same fly but without gills and less epoxy will give this a slower sink rate than the fly above and when striped and paused the materials will give it a lovely fluid motion in the water that no predator will be able to resist

so a few more ties with the piketrek body materials and not the last . the stuff is very versatile and I'm thinking new ways up of tying with it if you haven't yet tried tying with this stuff for gods sake get out there and buy at least one pack of it i mean you've seen what I've tied in the last couple of days just think what you could do .

OK so we all have our own styles of tying I've adapted the flies above from ties i used to do with ep fibre and I've enhanced it so it becomes something different than other flies Ive tied hence the hard core fly , if i had added angelhair to the core of an ep it just would not have worked but due to the make up of the piketrek material it does work and ill be giving it a bloody good thrashing next week on a water that has some pretty hefty toothys in it so stay tuned for that one ...

tight lines flingers

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)

a new tying frenzy

been madness you get some new materials and bang you go into idea overload , i received some materials to review for the pffa site and so impressed was i at the quality of the product they received a coveted pffa approved product award for there materials i have been blown away by the quality of piketreks materials ,

so the last few days has seen me happily tying away at all my favorite patterns but with new materials so below is mid way through the session



this is similar to a fly i did a few days ago difference is that its twice the feckin size this just shows what you can do with these materials you can make really massive lightweight flies for pike and well sometimes you just got to give em something to chew on and of course I've used pearl gills on this one to add that touch



a perfect bait fish profile and with just a touch of yellow angel hair under the chin for a little added something , hook is a 6/0 gamagaksu sl the underbody is a white piketrek body material the back is my all time favorite colour melon orange the gill is a pearl 12mm the eyes are 9mm silver soft gell all but together these make a feckin awesome fly no matter what the size



PERCH IT UP
yea baby well it had to be done although I've not fished perch patterns for a while i really had to have a go a making one with the piketrek body materials just to see what could be done and here is the result a massive great big perch



OK so materials for this one are as follows hook is a gamakatsu 6/0 sl the underbelly is fin yellow there is a melon orange stripe running through the middle with some melon orange bunched around the throat area as a trigger point the back is mossy green add some green gills and 12 mm eyes and of course some stripes and you got a rather nice perch pattern


a different view of the perch imagine this coming through the water what predator could resist





arc chrome



arch chrome is another of piketreks colours and a fine one it is , it almost has a built in flash in the form of a slick glassy looking fibre use this on its own and add a few stripe with marker and you get a pretty slick looking fly arc chrome comes in at 12 inch's long and by adding an epoxy head this fly will act like a glide hard bait go get some

yea OK I've shamelessly promoted piketrek on my blog today but the people behind piketrek are just anglers like you and me who have gone out and got some bloody great products on the market so I'm happy to promote them whenever i can go check them out you be pleasantly surprised http://www.pikeflyrod.com/

tomorrows Tuesday tie off in case i don't get to speak to ken will be a free tie simply because i have so much on just now I've really not had a lot of time discuss what we are doing ..so look forward to seeing what ken comes up with ...

see ya all tomorrow
Dave mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

i just love this stuff

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE
AND THE FUTURE IS

FISHGILLS

if you tuned in earlier in the day you would have seen the above statement and to be quite frank you be quite right in thinking id lost the plot well i sort of have let me explain , there is some fantastic new materials out there in UK pike fly fishing land and its from newish guys piketrek

piketrek have sourced some really amazing new stuff for the UK tyier so i received a parcel for review purposes for the pffa and to be quite honest i was blown away by the amount of there pike body material in a pack if you imagine a pack of slinky fibre then times that by 4 packs that's the amount you get in a piketrek pack and let me tell you the length is between 11 and 13 inch's(thats some big ol flies) so that is a hell of a lot of fibre for £2.50 a pack and there is around 29 colours to choose from and out of those 29 colours you would be able to match pretty much anything that swims and more if your a predator fly tyier you really have to try some of this id recommended melon orange and a pack of yellow for the belly as a starter , the orange melon is just such a beautiful colour and when you hold it at an angle in the light you can see a lovely green sheen going through truly a remarkable colour the flys below have used the orange melon

so if that wasn't enough i then tried some of piketrek eyes now when i received these i thought OK just some normal 3d epoxy eyes in 9 and 10 mm but how wrong i was when i examined then i found that there is an almost rubber like feel to these eyes so you and actually shape them to your head or just have then normal flat as above great product

so that's the first fly done and i was very impressed at not only how the materials looked colour wise but how easily it tied i was able to tie up this big fly (1o inch's ) in a very small amount of time ill certainly be making some more of these up

the future

piketrek have sourced these remarkable life and fly changing gills and they have opened a door to a whole new world of pike flies i mean there is so many things you could do with these , unfortunately i was rather hurried this morning due to having to go to work so only got one tied but all i thought about all day is the many things i could do with these including using them on subbugs so keep checking back as i will be doing a load more next week

EAT ME

OK i used just a tad to much epoxy at the gill edge but I've never tied with these before so I'm sure ill be forgiven ill get it 100% next time .....................

*now just a note here i have to say i get stuff to review all the time and one thing i wont do is lie about something if i think something is shite then ill say so i get grief for this sometimes but I'm an angler first through and through and if i wont use an inferior product then i wont expect anybody else to , i get no financial gain from reviews and neither do i expect it if you have something that you think is good enough then great but don't expect me to lie about it if its not up to scratch.......

the thing about piketrek is they are anglers first and demand the same levels as i do so that why I'm more than happy to promote there stuff through my blog and why don't you click any of the pictures above go over to there site and try something i can assure it will be the best money you will have spent i for one will carry on supporting these guys even though Greg won the fenland flyer this year but i wont hold that against him .........

tight lines flingers

Dave mcfluffchucker

a cave in Scotland)

love to tie

fly fishing for me is a hardcore addiction full stop otherwise why the feck would i fish in conditions like this short film below filmed in early in the year



but there is another side to the sport and that's tying flies as most of you will know but i saw a post on another blog that said whats the point of tying flies is if you don't get out and fish them ,

well there is a point to it i mean you get people who tie real imitations of some wonderful insects but they don't fish them oh no there is a massive collectors market out there for flies as there is antique fishing tackle well i mean you wouldn't go out and fish antique fly bamboo hardy fly rod that's you've just paid a few grand for would you well whats the point of buying it then .....

likewise if your a football fan whats the point of going out and buying your teams shirt if your not in the team or ever kicked a ball in your life

you see fly tying doesn't have to be about tie fly go fish fly catch fish on fly tie another fly etc etc no for me its about creating things of beauty by using your own hands bits of feather of other materials and its also very therapeutic there nothing better than after a shit day at work sitting down at a vice and creating a fly your soon relaxed ...

fly tying is an art form in itself

fancy a go then here is an easy one to do



sometimes if you listen to another persons bullshit for long enough youll start to belive its true best thing in life is form your own opinions

tight lines

winters back

bloody hell just when some of my local waters have started to defrost this morning i arise out of my lovely warm pit to discover a layer of the white stuff its been bloody snowing all night and as i type some hours after getting up out of the pit it still comes down so that's bugged the plans i had for the next few days so i guess its down to plan b ...........TIE FLIES

not that that's a bad thing i needed to get some smaller bait fish flies done for an up and coming predator hunt with the pike saber to a small water that holds a great head of pike and a lot of larger fish so ill get to but the saber through it paces with some big fish hanging on .....stay tuned march 10Th for the result and full write up on this amazing rod ...........

winter cave


so here the view from this morning ideas a flowing and bench kinda untidy but i know where everything is and i can lay my hands on most things in a flash so materials to hook.....



what i needed was a smaller profile bait fish as the majority of the pike and zander where I'm heading down south feed on small roach so i need to match the hatch so to speak but me being me i cant help but throw in something different to the mix can ya spot it on the flies







these flies above will do the job i think and I'm quite happy with the way they turned out and ill be even happier with a big green fish hanging on to them ......



here's what i throw into the mix ......angel hair as a belly material but not quite going the whole length of the fly just a touch to give it some contrast against the green





mixing things up is always great fun and sometimes an idea works and sometimes it don't the fly above is done with an slink n flash back and an yak hair under belly interesting mix but seems to compliment each over quite well



the flies ive been doing today although being quite small (5 inchs) in pike terms have a great profile on the them so will still give em enough to chew em below is a couple with eyes and one that I'm just about to eye up all the flies you see on today's blog have been made with 6 thin bits of material but when but together they have a great wide profile that stays wide in the water .......





so no doubt ill still be at the vice tomorrow as the snows still falling so tune in and see what I'm up to

tight lines fellow fly fishers around the world
Dave mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)