as you'll be aware i have a few different boxes and bags for various styles of fishing boat, bank , roving , traveling etc and its nice to have the option to do what i like gear wise and be able to pick and choose boxes of flies to go with what ever water I'm fishing , although pretty much all the flies will catch fish i can make my chances better with pre picked flies for any given venue i choose to fish , for example if i head to a local venue filled with small baitfish then I'm not going to go down there with a box full of 10 inch surface busters , not that they wont catch but ill get more fish on the bank with smaller 5 inch patterns so its nice to have a box of these i can just throw in the bag and go, same thing with another venue where larger flies are better i have boxes of them ready to throw in the bag as well so its nice to be able to pick and choose if i do need to travel light or grab and go ......
i may be going off fishing tomorrow(didn't happen work stopped play) but its one of those situations where I'm not 100% sure if i will be able to go tomorrow or not till later , so i have a bag ready and its stocked for the venue i may be going to it includes
a box of tallywackers a few subbugs and some lightnings , a finsport full of leftys , thundercreeks and some flashy stuff and also a few bucktail baitfish ,
2 reels one loaded with a fast sink line and one with a slow intermediate
a box of fast food , i could really get away with just using this box has every fly i could ever need for the venue in question and covers a multitude of situations i may come across , this box is one of those cheap boxes from the craft store i was talking about in a previous post
the large finsport brother ken from Vermont fly guys sent me is a very handy bit of kit and i can carry a hell of a lot of flies in it of course i take full advantage off the fact i can get hundreds of flies in it ......... fits lovely into the ruck sack as well and leaves me room for another box of flies , if i didn't take it i could fit two plastic boxes in the rucksack i am after all traveling light
also in the kit is some basic items that you really have to carry clippers hook sharpener unhooking pliers a spool of fluorocarbon for my leaders , eye protection and that's pretty much all i need , i don't take a net i haven't used a net for year i chin all the fish i catch fastest and easiest way to get a fish out unhooked photographed and released in the shortest possible time, i would however advise new people to the sport to always use a net i am very confident in handling predators i have been doing it since i was a boy so i know what I'm doing you may prefer a net the choice is yours but that's my way
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something to think about
take a look at the chart i made above with regards what colours disappear at what depths now i tend to never really fish deeper than 35 feet and have caught on all sorts of colours , I'm still a great believer in stick it past there nose school of fishing and if it looks like an easy meal then they will have it even if there not hungry makes interesting reading, watch next week as i fill my box with 1000s of blue flies with UV flash .you can sometimes go overboard if you think about things too much so ill stick too what i do thanks very much
shes got the jack
OK so not a perfect jack pike copy i like it and its a pattern that has done quite well with muskies as well the gliss and glint plus from deer creek just goes from strength to strength and the patterns you can come up with is just fantastic , its now also available in the USA through http://www.bearsden.com/ and will no doubt account for some large fish this year
if you need a step by step for tying with gliss and glint plus head on over to my YouTube channel click this link and you ll go straight to a video on a very fast way to tie a gliss fly
http://youtu.be/X7HQ7Dqx6cQ
same jack pattern but with a white belly and a thin line of gold flash through the center
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the death of ep
well that maybe a bit strong of a word but i have found myself using it less and less leaning over to other synthetics which are just as good if not better than ep especially when it comes to price , not to say I'm never going to use it again , far from it actually i think the flies will sit nicely in between other fibers i use so with that in mind i was digging through the ep drawer (yes i have a drawer full of ep fibers) and it was while i was looking for something else i came across a long forgotten 3d mullet colour which i used to tie a lot of flies up with in fact before all the new synthetics we have now that was my fly colour of choice when the going got tough this colour used to always get at least a hit or two
off course tying tecniques have changed over the years as ways of doing things have so i thought it would be a nice idea to tie up one of my favorite back in the day flies using new ideas , and the above fly is the result quite happy with that
doing it with rattles
i was sitting admiring my latest tie above i had a ping on the blackberry the sound of an email coming through the airwaves , i love the fact with modern phones i can be sitting at my desk and be able to reply to my mails almost straight away , this was the case with a mail i had from ryuunosuke in japan who mailed me as he had bought some of pike treks fly rattles and wanted to know the best way to use them for his baitfish flies (saltwater) so this is just one way of doing it there is othere which ill cover in a later blog post.
as this isn't a fly tying step by step ill skip a few of the actual tying the fly itself steps and concentrate of getting the rattle in there , firstly i placed on my 2 lengths of ep fiber to give me the length of the overall baitfish there is a little croc glue on the hook shank to give the material an anchor point i then place the rattle towards the rear of the hook (this actually gives the fly a keel effect when strip and paused) secure the rattle on with a few wraps of mono thread
cover the rattle with a quality UV epoxy like diamond hard tack free from www.deercreek.co.uk only a thin coat all the way round and then zap it for a second to seal the rattle to the hook
the rattle is now bomb proof secured to the hookshaft and materials
you can now bring back your materials to cover the rattle , this isn't hollow tie style its just folded back over the top , and a shorter section folded back under the rattle to give a profile you can see that i have used not a lot of material as you can see through it , this has no effect on the overall fly pattern less is more with ep fiber
ive added in some gold angel hair a throat of red ep fiber and a mullet colour back again only a couple of thin pieces , notice you can still see the rattle through the ep
i then whip off and finish of with a uv head , im using deercreeks new lazer diode pen for this pretty much a couple of seconds and you have a solid head
the adition of an oversized eye finishes of the fly perfect
there you have it a built in bomb proof rattle in a baitfish , of course as i said there is other ways to do do rattles ill cover a few in later blog posts .
gotta go flies to chuck pike to catch and if your out this weekend take care
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in scotland)
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