THE SONIC CAMPFIRE
so i saw a thing on bearded rock n roll lure chucker ant glasgoes Facebook page where he had just done a podcast with some weird looking bearded rednecks from rut and river pursuits in the u s of a , and well knowing ant i thought it would be worth a listen and the dudes hosting the show looked a bit out there and a bit suspect so sparked my interest , and im so glad i did.
now of course with a live podcast to america obviously its going to be the early hours of the morning by the time they hook up and i did wonder if he would have had a glass of red before connecting and yup im guessing he did .
without giving too much away i was actually laughing out loud while listening to this as well ant is pretty much like me and tells it as it is , and the dudes asking the questions were also very funny and clearly didnt spot the odd naughty word slip ......classic pod cast well worth a listen , the link is below the picture of his hairy highness , and yes i know its lure chucking but a lot of what he says does relate to predator fishing so worth a listen . great show
also sent ant some casting flies and dropshot flies the other week and he done a wee video , i have to say totally unexpected a million thanks ant , check it out here
cheers to pike and slippers .com for sending me the picture below , id sent cez a few streamers to try in the saltwater and he made the most of it cheers pal great catch
august has been very busy for me theirs a ton of orders coming in for the big pike event coming up on a trout water down south in October so been putting in some serious vice time with special designs which really had me thinking hard and burning brain cells as these needed to be large profile but buoyant but id done similar before for myself and they worked well so just needed to scale it up a bit
one of the patterns i had to do was a jack pike pattern that has always done quite well particularly like doing this pattern as i get to mess around with blending colors and i really enjoy coming up with totally new designs by blending materials and flash , quite satisfying especially when you nail it
the final result always a great pattern
pink has always been such an underused color but its such a great combo to use and its saved me from a blank many a time, making it buoyant just adds a new slant to it .
to be honest black and red is a color ive only really used for pollock before but doing monster pike flies in this combo i can see the attraction.
the wall of death
finished order , i always lay em out and check em over before i send them because you know bespoke orders are a very special thing to me and id never send something out i wouldn't fish myself , quality is why folks keep coming back to me .
HOW MUCH
OK im going to have a moan now , recently i made some of my subbugs for a chaps trip to Ireland and as i do i posted some pictures before i sent them off and i had an email with the picture from a totally random guy asking how much i charge for this fly below (this was a pre trim shot) now i do bespoke subbug tyes and they come in at around £10:00 per fly wtf i hear your cry but let me tell you each fly has a ton of natural materials in it including top grade metz and bucktail and i have to hand trim each of the heads to my own exact recipe to make em do what i need them to do , each stage of the tye i reinforce the whipping to make each fly bomb proof against teeth now each fly takes on average around an hour to make .
so look at the minimum wage in the uk per hour and actually you'll find your getting a bargain here for a hand built fish catching machine in fact all your paying for is my time pretty much.
so i mails the guy back with the prices and he says he was looking to pay £4:00 each plus postage for each one , i mean really honestly are you kidding especially when i look at the guys profile and he has boxes of jerkbaits which cost on average £15 to £20 plus for each one yet he wants the fly equivalent of a jerkbait for £4:00 er i think not , i did however turn him down on his kind offer and informed him that if he wanted subbugs for £4:00 each to look elsewhere and good luck finding them out there in internet land . and should he wish to pay the very reasonable price i charge then i would happily help him out .
i just dont get some people
in the sweat shop
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fishing wise hasn't been the greatest for me to be honest this month besides the monster shad i had nor really been doing much , ive been out a couple of time chasing mackerel for the table but to be honest the fishing aint that great just now , no idea why to be honest maybe it will improve but even so ive been having a blast with my old pal duke who is doing quite well just now and casting is improving everyday .
i have discovered however that duke dosnt enjoy fishing at night in fact he has said if i take him again sea fishing while its dark he will force me to listen to kiss in the car all the way home, duke also lost a couple of his favorite lures so wasn't the greatest trip .so we are heading to the fresh water lochs next week in search of the elusive perch so stay tuned .
DROP SHOT FLIES
a while ago (2 plus years to be precise) i made some drop shot flies by request and have done a few since and by all accounts they do very well from the feedback i get these are not really designed for fly fishing so ive not really fished them but i understand the fundamentals on how they work ( i was a hard core lure and fly angler back in the early 90s so knew what was needed)
so when i got a message about the fishing company fox producing drop shot flies i was mildly interested and somewhat excited to see what they had produced , i have always been a fan of fox tackle but i have to say when i saw the video i was slightly underwhelmed at what i saw , i think although they will no doubt catch fish i think the design is all wrong and has not been well thought out and i think an opportunity to produce a great product has been missed .
im really sorry if somebody from fox reads this but thats my view on it but ill leave you to decide please take a look at the pics below my drop shot flies compered to foxes
again no disrespect to fox i love there tackle and there pike fly rods were fantastic but im afraid this dont float my boat
rainbow trout drop shot 5 inchs
just in case you want to try this method , as a lot of peole fish both fly and lure who read my blog im happy to make these for you for further details and prices please mail me at drop shot flies just click this link
below is a diagram from the internet on how to fish the dropshot , pretty much all you do hook the foam at the front of the fly and off you go
OTHER STUFF OFF THE VICE AND OTHER STORIES
as you may or may not know i do a fair bit of tying , mostly bespoke orders and usually what i do is make a couple of warm up flies before i do these i find it helps me get into the zen space so heres a few that came off the vice over the last couple of days
as you may or may not know i do a fair bit of tying , mostly bespoke orders and usually what i do is make a couple of warm up flies before i do these i find it helps me get into the zen space so heres a few that came off the vice over the last couple of days
custom blended 6/0 roach
custom blended 6/0 bream
PIKE SIZE MURDICH MINNOWS
if youve never seen the murdich minnow id advise go check it out , fantastic baitfish pattern and very popular with our american friends , i tie these up on 6/0 hooks for pike and they do catch a fair amount, great flies and fairly easy to make
murdich minnow 6/0 roach
murdich minnow 6/0 baitfish
and finally a basic flashy baitfish pattern using harelines ripple ice as a body from here ripple ice and a custom blended flashy olive and black back on a 6/0 sakuma manta with a generic green eye , im hoping that this may be good for perch (ha who am i kidding cant catch the bloody things ) but hey at least it will look nice in the water .
GREAT ONLINE SERVICE
you know im a great fan of supporting small online retailers so im just going to give a heads up to a few ive used in the last month , and i will say i dont get paid or get kickbacks for this if i use a store and its great ill write about it and if its crap ill write about that also .
so first up
PIKETREK
i have long been a fan of piketrek there pikesaber flyrod has been my longest ever go to pike fly rod and its still doing me proud and doing the business and ive had it must be going on 8 or 9 years easy .
so i had some massive pike flies to do so needed some extra large material and i needed my standard white belly fiber in big and a lot of it so i placed the order in the morning and it took about a day and a half to get to me , this obviously is great for me as sometimes i run out of stuff and need it fast this is where the time difference between ordering and goods arriving is essential for me so top marks and the piketrek boys have a great range of fantastic stuff for pike fly fishing so take some time out and visit there site i also must point out i bought one of there fly reels many years ago and its up there with the big names , a fantastic pike fly reel that also has never let me down heres the link to check em out , be warned though these reels regularly sell out , i think that speaks volumes
check em out for a full range of cool pike stuff
SILVERSCALES FLYTYING
silverscales is fairly new on the block and i had previously bought things from them on ebay and was always pleased with the service so when they launched the website off course i checked em out and bought a few items i needed . i was presently surprised at the fast and friendly service they provided
now i purchased some of there flash blend and as most know i do enjoy tying with synthetics so i always like to have my base colors in my box namely white , but i also purchased a few other colors i was quite impressed with the flash to material ratio and it had been blended quite well also in the other colors i purchased
as you will be also aware there are loads of suppliers of synthetic materials out there and you may also be aware i also use deercreeks gliss and glint plus as a stable for baitfish patterns now there is a subtle difference between the two , the silverscales materials seems to be a little stiffer than gliss and glint and almost sits in between that and H20 fiber so a happy medium and goes to show not all fibers are the same .
so silverscales website is very easy to navigate and has quite a neat fly tying video section also has full shopping basket facilities and is pretty smooth to check out at the end , i understand they are adding more products all the time so keep checking back , you can click the link below to go directly to there site oh also meant to say the prices are also very reasonable as well so best of luck for the future guys .
DEERCREEK
as always deercreek continue to provide the goods with outstanding quality products , deercreek continue to be world leaders in fly eye design with there in house designer if you havent seen there range of 3d eyes then take a look here
as always with deercreek my order came quickly and and without issue
nick also includes the odd chocolate bar for me which is very much appreciated thanks nick , anyway you can check out the fine fly tying products from deercreek here , oh also worth mentioning that deercreek also cater for the trout angler so theres lots on offer also for the spotty chasers
and finally
EDINBURGH ANGLING CENTER
so my best bud and fishing pal duke popped round for a cuppa yesterday and he decided he needed a few bits , well we ended up heading just up the road to the edinburgh angling center where he ended up with a new rod and reel also (stuff like that happens lol) , but while i was in there i spotted some very cool little plano boxes so at like £1:70 each i purchased a couple
you see the thing is i have an absolute ton of flies in various boxes and the pictures below is just a small fraction of my perch and saltwater flies so i needed a couple of smaller boxes to fit in my waist coat as a grab and go really as you can see from the pics below i have a few to sort out
and i have a pile of newly tied stuff as well to go in , just never ends lol
for a while i was using the morell boxes and to be honest they are a very good box but they seem to be just that fraction to big to go in the pocket , which is why i went for the smaller boxes
as you can see they fit a lot better and being double sided i can get a whole lot into them with space to spare in the pockets , so all in all a good use of £1:70 x 2 all i have to do now is go and sort them out .
so with that sept is upon us and im heading out next week in search of perch , pike and rainbow trout and you know its been about 10 years since i caught a perch i kid you not last one was 3 and a half pounds on pike fly , but this time i will be actually targeting them so we will see how that works out as i have some good info so im actually quite excited and i think also the last time duke had one was when he was a kid in the swiss alps so i can see this ending in a little competition to see who gets one first .
so anyway the full gory details will be in my next blog post
seee ya all soon
mcfluffchucker
(a cave in scotland)
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