Tuesday 25 April 2017

TROUT AND ABOUT IN SCOTLAND

TROUT AND ABOUT IN SCOTLAND

a rare day off work so i hooked up with my old mate duke who has very recently taken up fishing and decided to take him trout fishing on the fly , as he has no gear at the moment i lent him some of my stuff , hey thats what friends are for 


i already have a separate bag for trout on the fly so not really much to sort out was really a question of where to go , originally i was going to go pike fishing but the pike seen to be doing there thing just now so decided against that and thought trout would be a better option for the day so i had a hunt around and found a lovely looking place called lomond hills fishery 


now ive heard of this place before in fact id wanted to pike fish here for a while so this was the perfect chance to scout it out go and chuck some fluff for trout and teach duke the fine art


me and duke , duke has actually been a pal of mine since the early 80s when we used to have some outrageous rock n roll partys and fun times , duke has fished a little before mainly for perch with spinning rods in Switzerland so wasnt a total newbie but hadn't fly fished before   


the weather was actually starting to blow a bit and wasnt really the best for teaching somebody to fly fish but duke is resilient and a bit of wind wasn't going to stop him 


probably dosnt look it but it was far flying down the loch so stuck on some fritz flies and went for it anyway after making sure duke knew what he was doing 


after a couple of fruitless hours we decided to venture of around the loch and have a look at the far side banks , lovely view 


duke was getting better with his casting and seemed to be enjoying it 



although he was less impressed with my shameless selfie cast , i did this just to annoy him 


impressed with the clear water although didn't see much in the way of baitfish , at this point with the sun being out i decided to drift a team of buzzers around kinda scratching for a bite 


we walked all around the loch and and settled into a spot near the dam wall , at this point i saw a big shoal of bait rise up in front of me so i switched  over to a slow intermediate line and a special fly from my special box 


so nothing happened really i had a brief nip at a fly in this spot but didn't connect , so we ended up walking all the way round to the start point and decided to have another bash there , i ended up on a slow sink line and lures but to no avail , and as you can see by the wind in the video conditions wernt the best , but he ho thats fishing 


although not much happened today , Craig had a great day and wasn't put off and indeed his casting improved as the day went on so all in all a good day anyway .

no i have to say that normally trout fisheries are not normally my kinda thing and i tend to fish the when i want to eat fresh trout or fish for perch and pike , but i have to say alex the fishery manager was absolutely brilliant and really wanted us to catch and indeed pulled out all the stops and that was a very pleasant surprise  what a top bloke , hats off to you alex for your help .

so if your looking for a friendly fishery then take a trip up to lomond hills lovely place with some stunning views as well , there also on facebook at


till next time 



Friday 7 April 2017

flees

FLEES 

well finally i got some time of work and had a few things to catch up on , and i had planed to go fishing but actually the picture below is a bit misrepresenting as it was actually blowing a gale and probably not the best for chucking flies so i postponed my trip with duke until today and great i wake up feeling like ive been hit by a steam train(man flu) bloody fantastic so all fishing is put on hold till Monday 


my week hasn't really been completely wasted though as ive been at the vice playing with blends again and trying out the builder uv from the chaps at deercreek  and have to say im really impressed with the stuff , its actually quite thick so make a really nice head on smaller baitfish flies and for finishing of the whipping , actually makes it bombproof 


if you make a lot of smaller baitfish patterns for preds or saltwater flies for bass like sandeel patterns then id thoroughly recommend this , really think to work with and spreads easily , will do a full review later for the reviews section .

you will notice from this point on when im putting in  fly recipes that i will now include wherever possible clickable links to the products i use , now i have to say im not paid in anyway for these links and place the links simply because people have asked me too as it saves them googling and stuff , yes i do get sent some products to try from time to time and im happy to recommended and add links if it does what its supposed to .....thanks 

 all in the mix


im very much into blending custom one off patterns just now and im really enjoying the fruits  


hook- 6/0 sakuma manta extra  
body- (core) pink gliss and glint plus
body - outside spectrum flash (spectrum flash )
flash- (core) lavender angel hair )
(back) -flash from future fly star flash
eye - 8mm hard eye 
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread 

finished with deercreeks builder uv 


hook- 6/0 sakuma manta extra  
body- (core) olive gliss and glint plus
body - outside spectrum flash (spectrum flash )
flash- (core) lavender angel hair 
eye - 8mm hard eye 
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread

finished with deercreeks builder uv 


hook- 6/0 sakuma manta extra  
body- (core) copper wing and flash 
(core head) green ripple ice ripple ice
body - outside spectrum flash (spectrum flash )
flash- (core) lavender angel hair 
eye - 8mm cutthroat eye cutthroat eye
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread

finished with deercreeks builder uv 



hook- 6/0 short pike fly hook 
body- olive gliss n glint plus gliss n glint plus
body blended with gold flash 
eye - 12mm gold holographic 12 mm gold eyes
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread


hook- 6/0 short pike fly hook 
body- olive gliss n glint plus gliss n glint plus 
body blended with gold flash 
back - blended gliss n glint green with black wing and flash and gold wing and flash 
eye - 12mm gold holographic 12 mm gold eyes
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread


hook- 6/0 short pike fly hook 
body- cream gliss n glint plus gliss n glint plus 
back blended with gold flash and olive gliss n glint plus  
back - blended gliss n glint green with black wing and flash and gold wing and flash 
eye - 8mm cutthroat eye cutthroat eye
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread


hook- 6/0 short pike fly hook 
body- orange gliss n glint plus gliss n glint plus 
back green gliss n glint plus blended with yellow ripple ice and green gliss n glint plus  
eye - 8mm cameleon eye cameleon eye
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread


hook- 6/0 short pike fly hook 
body- orange gliss n glint plus gliss n glint plus 
back olive gliss n glint plus blended with yellow ripple ice and  gliss n glint plus  
eye - 8mm jurrassica eye jurrasica eye
thread - phantom thread by mcfluffchucker phantom thread

ok so on a final note lots of folks will be thinking about heading out throwing some fluff around so if your in the market for a new rod check out the guys from piketrek who still have there bloody amazing pikesaber fly rod on sale at an amazing price check it out here 






Tuesday 4 April 2017

flies and ideas

so with a few days off from work im catching up on some stuff i need to do including catching up with my blog and tying and stuff and ive got a few days fishing planned so here we go .

well i get asked a lot to do flies for folks and i cant always fit them in as the flies i do are not African made bollocks that fall apart after a few fish , i actually hand blend the materials and blend flash to get the perfect patterns every time so that as you can imagine takes a while and i never rush flies end of , so newry boat builder chris mcaliden had been asking me for a while for some flies and as much as i wanted too i just couldn't fit him in so had to turn his requests down .

so when he contacted me again and gave me a gentle prod i had a tying space so was able to do him some and they arrived in Ireland in due course . so Chris got out with his pal Francis o hare and Francis hit this cracking fish on one of my custom rainbow trout patterns well done fella great looking fish , 


ON THE VISE

pretty much all my days off have been spent creating patterns the last few months  the weather hasn't been the greatest and ive been knackered with work so ive been getting plenty out 

below is a few patterns with recipes and these flies are all 8 inchs and over 


hook - 7/0 sakuma manta 
body - blended gliss n glint plus 
flash - blue flashabou
eye - 8mm hard eye 
thread - phantom thread 

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek


hook - 6/0 long shank predator hook(available from me)
body - blended gliss n glint plus 
flash - purple angel hair 
eye - 8mm deercreek gator eye 
thread - phantom thread (avalible from me)

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek



hook - 6/0 long shank predator hook(available from me)
body - blended gliss n glint plus 
flash - gold flashabou
eye - 8mm deercreek gator eye 
thread - phantom thread (avalible from me)

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek


hook - 6/0 short predator hook(available from me)
body - blended gliss n glint plus
flash - silver lateral scale 
eye - 8mm deercreek gator eye 
thread - phantom thread (avalible from me)

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek


hook - 6/0 short predator hook(available from me)
body - blended gliss n glint plus
flash -silver flash blended into materials 
eye - 8mm deercreek gator eye 
thread - phantom thread (avalible from me)

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek


hook - 6/0 long shank predator hook (avalible from me)
body - blended gliss n glint plus
flash - green and gold flash blended into materials 
eye - 8mm deercreek gator eye 
thread - phantom thread (available from me)

finished with diamond hard uv from deercreek

SOME NEW IDEAS 

ok so well maybe not a new idea as ive used flies on a lure rod before by using weights and its taken me a while to get just right and i have a customer who buys these kits from me and its a fairly simple idea but actually quite deadly 

first up was to find a supplier for decent weights that i could clip flies onto and i came across the chaps called uk lures on ebay but they also have a cool website uk lures



i bought a mixed back of sizes so i can chop and change the fly sizes and the action i want 


quite a solid construction i was very impressed,the clip is very strong and not likely to open im quite happy to throw flies around on this 


these flies sit quite nicely on the links allowing for plenty of movement 

a few images of jig flies ive done for a customer , worth mentioning hes doing really well on a river just now with these for pike perch and zander , ive agreed not to divulge the location but hes happy for me to show pics of the flies and set up

the flies on jig heads 





if your interested in any jig flies please just send me a message to discuss your needs 

well finally you would wouldn't you , i was in my local pound world yesterday and saw this at the check out , 3 packs for 50 pence had to be done and off course i always need more flash dont i (shakes head) well ill have a look see what i can come up with


so with no more fly tying scheduled for today i head into the kitchen to fillet a salmon , i know quite random , especially when you girlfriend decides you have to wear her apron to do it 



right with that have to go and visit me old mate from the 80s duke , who has taken an interest in fishing so im coaching in the fine art so expect to see some more of him in the blogs.

if your out this week stay safe 



a winters tale and plenty of whisky

A WINTERS WHISKY TALE
how the wild loch boys roll 

well it had to happen the first trip of the year with the bunch of special needs fellas from the wild loch group well actually it was supposed to be myself , scottish man beast hugh , jimbo , brian (highland guided fishing) , and marc the sheep worrier from river don land up north , well as it turned out marc got pissed on moonshine the night before and couldn't find his legs the next morning and brian was cleaning horse shit from a stable that weekend so he choose the  less smellier option , actually that a lie he was going to come but a speck of dust landed on his boat so he had to clean the whole boat in case anybody saw it dirty so it ended up with just the 3 of us , although marc said if he could find his van in the woods from the night before he would come along .



so as usual with these things we made a plan for food and whisky and snacks etc and i was providing the snacks and cat litter for jim we wernt going to run out of chocolate on this trip 


as we were staying in a bothy halfway up a mountain we wouldn't be going to any local shops so we had to take everything we needed with us we pretty much had a fireplace and that was it , and we suspected it was going to be slightly cold so arrangements were made for logs and coal as well and jimbo would be providing a curry in the evening and shug was going to bring along some stuff as well (mainly girly Budweiser) and his newly downloaded corries albums apparently for communal singing of songs of Scottish independence while pissed at 3am in the middle of nowhere , i however had bought along various pirate metal albums to keep the chaps amused , funnily enough they didnt get played , mainly because i couldn't work the mps player  after a bottle of whisky .....anyway


for me the hardest part of a trip like this on an unknown loch is to try and get as much info as possible on the water, contours, depth maps , were studied months beforehand  and the day before i opened my mothership to choose enough flies to do me for an overnighter where i would be mainly wandering around the loch with a fly vest and no bag as light as possible to cover as much water as i could , i think on a new venue its always wise to go hunting and to be honest i still really get a kick out of taking nothing but rod , reel , a few flies and a pair of pliers and doing some leg work which is quite strange as when im on the boat i take literally thousands of flies a mountain of unhooking gear just in case hey ho .  


so with all my shit spread out in the lounge it was time to thin things down a bit as i was just walking around with the fly vest and a couple of smaller boxes i would be still taking a couple of bigger boxes with some extras in case (theirs that word again) of losses as although i could see what i was fishing into i was still unsure of what was on the bottom so had to account for fly loss and stuff .

when it came to flies i would be taking some what i call generic flies that i use quite a lot and have great faith in as hunter patterns , these generally i make in slow sink and bottom muggers depending on what depth im fishing and these remote lochs can see very steep drop offs very close in one area i fished went from a few feet down to forty feet literally a few rod lengths out so it pays to do your research 


so here we have my overnight trip gear and consists of the following 

chest waders
rod tube with 2 made up rods 
loop 8/9 wgt with a fast sink line for smaller flies (was thinking perch)
pikesaber with a slow intermediate line ( great for layer searching) 
one bag of food 
one fly / gear bag (camo) 
evening boots (rude to be sitting eating curry in your chest waders) 
star wars neck pillow  
one sleeping bag 


rods made up and im ready for an early start in the morning

5am for whom the bell tolls

wed arranged for Scottish shug to pick me up at 5am quite late i know but it didn't get light till 8 am which was plenty of time to get up there for first light and we had to meet jimbo along the road so we could have a cool drive up and shug had dug out his one metal cd that he owns (black Sabbath greatest hits) which i was very grateful for as it could have gone badly as this sits in between his black lace and bucks fizz collection , close call there 


so we turned of the main road and onto the b roads as dawn was starting to appear keeping an eye out for jimbo who usually stalks about the laybys (im sure there a website for that behavior)


we got to our rendezvous point and no sign of jim we did ask the sheep but she said  not seen him for a week or so which is quite unusual as hes never usually that far away from sheep . although while we waited we did note the snow on the hills and didn't look that bad and the forecast was that no more was to be expected so the main worry really was if we got up there and it was frozen over   but we would soon find out 


jim eventually showed up despite us seeing him drive past on the high road ten times missing the entrance each time , i sometimes wonder how on earth he gets home from work 


anyway it was great to see the little spiky haired hobbit again as id not fished with him for a fair few months and besides he had the curry and whisky and the proper 4x4 in case we got stuck up the mountain ( hugh was in a poncy Chelsea tractor) im actually surprised the cops didnt pull us over thinking we had stolen it to be honest but then if i was a cop i would want to be pulling over Scottish shug 1st thing in the morning . 


so with out little convoy on the move with jimbo in the lead position we started off across a dirt track to where we thought the gate up the hill was or so we had been told .


so with the gate closed i jumped back in and we headed off down the track , we had a rough idea that we were in the vicinity as we had checked some maps earlier in the week so it was just a case of finding the padlocked gate 


so as we trundled across the fields we started to see the famous salmon river the tay but the fact you need to sell your wife your kids and a couple of kidneys to fish this beat we just resisted the urge to get the rods out as no doubt the second the touched the water we would have the whole of the local police force down on us for poaching , i mean you fellas in the states and Canada dont know how lucky you are to be able to fish for salmon fairly cheaply without fear of having your bollocks chopped off and thrown in the tower of London for such a heinous crime against the english owners , although when Scotland becomes an pendant country again we can claim our rivers and seas back from the tyrannical grip of the queen  and the Westminster parasites.

who gave you permission to fish here "William fecking Wallace thats who , would you like to discuss this further , no i thought not "

sorry was getting all patriotic there 

actually no im not sorry "FREEDOM FOR THE SCOTTISH PEOPLE"


anyway we had to face the fact we were lost and jimbo decided to call our lord and Savior and glorious leader 8ball Lawrence who at the precise moment was shoveling shit into a wheelbarrow and was as useful as a chocolate fireguard  although he did take the opportunity to call us a bunch of useless twats , cheers brian your helpfulness is only over shadowed by your stunning wind battered ginger beach face . i think he was somewhat jealous that he had to stay home . 


myself and jim where somewhat shocked to find out we had indeed taken the wrong turning and had actually ended up on some posh bit of the tay so we had to about turn and head back to where we had started and find the old estate house and the track we needed was right across from that so off we headed much to the delight of the local sheep seeing the back of jimbo .


so we found the padlocked gate and finally we where heading the right way (up) 


jimbo following behind , as it turns out this was a mistake as jims motor was far better equipped to be the pathfinder on this trip as we were to find out 


at this elevation the views were starting to get quite stunning as they are in Scotland 


halfway up shug decided to stop for a game of trees quite cool his outfit matched the tree took us ages to find him 


getting higher 


ok not the best picture in the world but above is a wild Scottish eagle , we watched it for a while before it dived after its prey on the deck , nature is great and to be able to see something like this is truly awesome 

WELCOME TO THE SNOW LINE WE GOT FUN AND GAMES


so we got up above the snow line and it was all going so well until we went just after this stream and then we started to wheelspin and spin and spin so it was out the motor and a a bit of a push and a rock put to no avail we were stuck.


obviously we needed to get some grip under the wheels so jim following had our supply of logs so we got some out and stuck em under the wheels but just wasn't good enough as the logs were split into wedges and we couldn't get enough traction to move.   


i came up with the idea of digging around in the snow and finding some flat rocks which i knew there would be around here , i found some smallish but would do the job rocks and stuck them under the wheels with a bit of shoving on the back from me and jimbo we got enough traction to get up the rise 


jim followed and had no issues getting over the hump , although he weighs 2 stones extra in his motor , whereas me and shug weighed as much as a beached whale in his but hey thats what these trips are about fun and adventures and laughs 

we fired round the last few miles without stopping , shug put the pedal to the metal and fired through the bends and hills like a man possessed better hold on he said , screamed like a girl i did , nearly got knocked out a few times but hey we made it , we got to the bothy and laughed like children , jimbo was nowhere in sight but hey look the loch was not frozen threes a bonus .  


the bothy 


when jimbo arrived he was also laughing as he knew we had just gone for it and probably at some point saw me being tossed around in the front from his motor 


is it me or is there something very gay looking about this picture of jimbo arriving with his ladybag and although the whisky supplies are quite manly 


so this is how we roll in wild loch for one evenings drinking although its got to be said who bought along the budweiser that actually is quite shocking somebody bought along lady beer


cheers a wee salute to our pals who couldn't make it this trip 


so to business i needed to load the fly vest up with searcher flies , flies that i could fish very slowly but with maximum movement of course rabbit strip features highly in these flies as these along with marabou can be fished very slowly and bring results in hard conditions and these were hard conditions    


the light was starting to go and the chill factor was going up so i needed to get my chest waders on sharply as i was about to do this , hugh who was throwing dead fish around got one of those bleepy bleepy things they call a run 



i was delighted to offer my service as netsman 


boom 


so as it turns out this was the only fish of trip tell you what beautiful place but feckin touch conditions 

hugh lets it go 


and to a nice bow wave to see it off 


so that was pretty much it for day one not a massive amount of action but better to give it a try 

so ive been trying to finish this blog for bloody ages and its taking a lot of time so im going to just going to leave the images of the trip here .instead 

great mates great times im guessing no words needed 

thanks and good night 


                                                                

                                                            below ,breakfast scottish style


below 

bumbling nighttime drunks in a hut 



morning has broken (wind)




breafast jimbo style 




































bad weather incoming 










                                                        beautiful scotland
















peace