fast food , orvis and life from the cave

Thanks to the brotherhood

I start this week’s blog with a heartfelt thanks to all the people who kindly got in touch with me and have sent fishing gifts to help my buddy who lost all his tackle in a fire I have been truly humbled by your generosity to one and all and including the stunning donations from nikki price at flies of fancy in the usa and Andrew turner in Scotland for the bag of lures, will shaw from lineslinger.com Eric Larson’s uncle for the generous gift , al mabon for the rods and assorted tackle , trout flies for the cool box of , well trout flies and to the guys and girls that have stuff in transit to me I that you all from the bottom of my heart …..

On the trail

My 5 year old was of school today something called Victoria Day; to be honest I haven’t clue why they would name a day off after some dodgy old queen from the 1800s who had no contact with the common person on the street why we would celebrate it is beyond me , but I digress so I was taking my boy into town for a promised fast food snack , more to get him out of the house for a few hours to give his mother a break , so surprise he orders a happy meal , although why they call it a happy meal is beyond me I certainly wasn’t happy paying that price for 4 chicken(cough) nuggets and a few fries along with some plastic garbage that’s supposed to be a tie in for the latest kids film , but I kept my mouth firm closed as my son was obviously having a great time

And of course what my wife always forgets when I offer to take my son out for a McDonalds(other delicious fast food joints are available) that only a few shops away and just round the corner is orvis mmmmm very convenient well actually I needed to in there as I had some materials I desperately needed to pick up more on that later ……

Weekend first

So before I had headed to town with my son for the McDonalds and Orvis visit id just completed a long weekend at work and course I decided to take the traveling fly tying kit with me and this time I had a bunch of yellow and orange flies to do for a client so I set to work, I’m lucky that my bosses don’t mind me filing up the office desk with fur and synthetics and bits of random epoxy on the desk

I had a problem though despite my best efforts and packing of minimal tying kit I’d forgotten to pack my pegs, yes pegs I use them to hold eyes on flies while they dry this was a bit of a problem as I was using gorilla glue(run out of croc glue) to stick them down and this type of glue expands to 3 times its size so by holding them down you stop the eye being pushed away from the body and the glue then expands back towards the hook shaft give a real solid bond 

Being ever resourceful and dumbstruck by my own stupidity at not bringing the bloody pegs my eyes fell upon some of the bosses paperclips now an idea sprung to mind, how about I clip the paper clip to each side of the fly so I did, and as you can see it worked very well though nothing will replace my trusty peg.

A LETTER FROM AMERICA

A monster thanks to brother Vermont fly guy and brother from another mother ken capsey who sent me a very cool care package over which included a copy of the latest north eastern fly fishing magazine a rather cool portable fish finder that runs off AA batteries but the best thing about the whole package was 2 packs of rosies Vermont beef jerky the best dam jerky on the planet and a couple of very cool Vermont fly guys stickers one of which adorns my tying desk only the best on there. Thanks again brother

Ok so I mentioned at the start of the blog about taking my son down to that favourite of fast food emporiums which just happens to be very close to orvis so and I had a special mission to go pick up some raccoon zonker strips, you see ive never actually bothered to tie with them before instead sticking to rabbit for those bunny bug patterns that I tie loads of but am unable to catch bloody fish on, but after seeing will shaws pattern in the water I was hooked and knew I just had to tie some so orvis bound to pick up supplies it was 

I picked up a couple of packs of a light green almost olive colour and one of red for the collar a great colour combo and fine way to start playing with the stuff , these are the first ones I did and im more than happy with them , I suspect I may need to submerge them in water and give them a good soaking to get them to sink though but hell they look good

The third one I tied was a bit of a big boy in fact the size of a beer bottle as you can see in the picture below that just happened to be lying around the house well in the fridge actually but that’s another story, so overall im well pleased with the result and look forward to chucking them around next week

I don’t know about you but im forever visiting websites and more often than not ill sign up for the email list when they get new products or there’s fishy news monster catches etc. etc. and I enjoy getting these mail outs and sometimes signing up to can have its rewards like earlier this week when I got a mail shot from orvis in Edinburgh saying they had some top grade barred dark olive capes in for the daft price of £20.00 uk now these had obviously been miss priced so I headed down there straight away and bought one although I didn’t need it right now I wasn’t going to hang around till I did at that price

I also  walked out with a brand new mclean net as well , the thing is im not really one for using nets I prefer to hand the fish out but I do realise my limitations when it comes to fishing from a boat and I decided that I would by one and if I was going to buy one then it would have to be the best I could buy .

I first saw this net in action while I was sharing a boat with a fellow pffa member gratham water and was impressed with it back then as the fact of the matter is you handle the fish very little using these nets and you have a very good built in scale so really besides the trophy shot you don’t need to even touch the fish , ok so they are bloody  a expensive but they are bloody good nets and they weigh hardly anything and with a very neat strap attachment its light enough to sling over your shoulder if your wading and wandering so that is that bit the bullet and bought it , im now just wondering if will at orvis is on a commision sell bloody sand to the arabs that boy .

So the final thing I’d like to shout out about is our brand new site for those who tie flies or are just starting but don’t know where to buy or what to buy hook wise for predators well our aim for this site is to link all the hooks to specific patterns or ways of tying with them for example if you wanted to try a circle hook but weren’t sure what to do with it well there a link right there on the page to a video of me tying a fly on one easy as that and no extra charge or membership fees the only thing you pay for is the hook , even the post and packing is free and that’s worldwide so check us out by clicking the link below I will be adding a lot of new stuff to it as time goes on so as I do it I’ll put a little shameless plug on here . Please bear in mind this will only be a hook and eye site I won’t be selling materials there plenty of great guys out there doing that already like www.piketrek.com and www.deercreek.co.uk  I am also able to supply trade as well so if you’re a commercial non-African tying house get in touch at hookeyeandfly@gmail.com 



Take care folks and keep chucking at em and remember if you want to tie great pike flies become one with your material

Mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)