nature is great

Isn’t nature great

Most mornings I walk my son to school and we take pretty much the same route every day, I live in a large suburb of Edinburgh although a lovely place to live and to be fair it has some stunning views like the picture below from last week (taken from my sons school looking towards my house)the hills in the background are called the pentlands and Edinburgh sits in between these and the sea so I’m fairly high up on the south side .

On my way to the boy’s school I have to walk along a path with a shallow clear water stream that runs from somewhere up in these hills, being an angler I just resist peering into the stream as I walk along the path to maybe see an occasional flash of a small trout or minnow dancing in the current, although I think I may have seen the odd shadow in the water that may well have been a small fish I haven’t as yet actually spotted anything in the 4 years I’ve lived here , I know there probably is fish in there somewhere obviously there better at seeing me than I am seeing them ……

Well I never

So imagine my surprise when this afternoon I spotted this beauty standing in the stream looking for its dinner, I can’t quite believe how close I got to this heron I would have stood there a lot longer watching this majestic bird had it not been for some toe rag on a bmx with headphones blaring out some dance garbage obviously the bird though as much of the garbage as I did and promptly flew off.

The thing is I think if id stayed there long enough I think I may have seen him catch something and verifying my hunch that there is indeed fish in there oh well maybe he will be there tomorrow ……… or maybe I should take the 3wgt with me on the walk to school

Relax time
Plan x tonight

Looks like a cracking watch, full report later
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Cool UK blog alert

http://www.pikeblog.com/
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Restock time

Also having a busy time doing a re stock for www.deercreek.co.uk who sell very limited editions of my flies they have sold out of a load of the patterns so ill have the restock done and posted out by the weekend hopefully , it’s so bloody cold in the cave just now so I have little bursts of time in there as heating is so bloody expensive in the uk it’s only the very well off who can afford to heat all the rooms in their homes these days in the uk because of rocketing fuel prices ……

So anyway doing a restock and tying a few for myself this week I’m hoping to get out next week but depends if the thin layer of ice melts or not but I have a five day window next week to get out so fingers crossed for a mild week .

Life at the bench
For the last year or so I’ve been using one of those new-fangled low energy light bulbs doing my bit for the environment and stuff, but I’m afraid I’ve had to revert back to a normal 60 watt penguin killer iceberg melting normal light bulb because I simply don’t get enough light out of the thing to work and it takes 5 hours to bloody get to a level you can actually see anything , listen I’m all for low energy and stuff but at least make a useful product give me a light build that is low energy and ill actually use the thing as long as its fits for purpose , in fact the whole fair trade good thing get me as well I mean I had some fair trade chocolate the other day and let me tell you it was twice as expensive as a normal bar and tasted gross I’m afraid I’d rather have the half price tasty unfair product , I still don’t get why its twice as expensive if most of the cash goes back to the farmer then by cutting out the middleman it should be a cheaper product ….i don’t get it

Sorry seem to have gone off track a bit there normal service now resumes with a picture of my bench and the new offending light bulb in place

A couple of experiments
Sometimes you see a bargain in a tackle shop and you buy it there and then pretty much without thinking about simply because it’s a really good deal well I had that in summer when I was on the trail of some hooks , I went off to my local tackle shop and they had on the floor a box a plain plastic box tucked away at the back of a box load of lead sinkers and I noticed they were packets of hooks so I picked a few packs up and realised they were like those hooks for Texas rigging rubber worms and they obviously couldn’t sell them so they had them at a knock down price so these hooks were originally £2.50 a pack(10) for the 4/0 and they had them at half price so that was £1.25 for a 10 pack now I thought that was dam good value so I actually opened a pack to have a closer look and the things were outstanding quality and bloody razor sharp , so I dug around in my pockets for as much cash as I could find this was a bargain that I needed to stock up on

Having bought a bucket load of the hooks in 4/0 5/0 and 6/0 I then headed off back to the cave quite pleased with myself although not quite knowing what I was going to use them for but I knew they would come in handy at some point for something .

So that was summer 2011 and I stuck them away in a box today I found while looking for other hooks I found them and as I laid my eyes on the packs straight away I had a flash of inspiration (or I may have seen something on the web at some point and it just clicked together) I could do some weedless bendback type flies with them so I set to work and came up with the offending baitfish below

The thing behind this is that the material (bucktail) sits on top of the hook and as there isn’t a great deal of material it doesn’t effect the hook up rate and this is what makes it weed free pretty much the same as tying on a bendback but without the hassle of bending the hook just right . I like it

So on the hook shaft I tied in a piece of bog standard mylar tubing just to give the effect of a sparkling belly to this I’ve added at the eye bend a pinch of white bucktail a couple of woolly bugger feathers, some peacock hearl for the back and all tied in so the eye sits on top of where all the material sites and if I say so myself looks like a fish catcher to me

Same idea but in black I’m still on my black fly trip , but with this one I’ve added the hearl on the back I think this adds just that little something to the fly , I’m sure this fly will do really well on my local weeded up bottom canal in the summer time will tell but I’m sure this will be a winner…………………………
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Matchman’s revenge
For the benefit of our overseas fellow fishers I’ll explain what a match man is first in case you not familiar with the term if you do know what a matchman is then please skip the explanation. in the uk (more in England than anywhere else) they have regular fishing match’s where the aim of the game is to catch as many fish as possible in the allowed time , the fish are kept in a keep net until the net can be weighed at the end of the allowed time and the winner gets the prize , matches can be at a club level for a small trophy or at international level for your country earning thousands of pounds for the winner kind of like a bass tournament but without all the boat bling
A uk fishing match

Now the above picture isn’t really my idea of fun although I did actually try it once and came second and won £30.00 uk for a sack full of carp didn’t really do anything for me though so just got the fly rods back out, but the thing is that with a lot of these matches, especially on waters with pike in, the pike will actually sit close to the angler on the bottom and attack the small silver fish as it comes in on the end of a matchmans line hey who can blame them easy meal , they have learned that when lots of bait keeps hitting the water then an easy meal is to be had very clever but then I suppose it’s the same as crocs knowing when animals have to migrate across a river they turn up at the same time clever predators are

So with that in mind I thought I tie up a fly especially for those areas that the matchmen fish those areas usually have high concentrations of small silver fish

The idea is that it looks like a small roach that’s hanging of a hook, the fly being tied sort of tarpon style (thanks to nikki “slay the steel” page) for reminding me about this style. The fly has the hook as you can see well in front of any material now you may say that fish will miss the hook when hitting it but actually the fly isn’t that big (around five inches) so even the smallest fish will engulf it and nine times out of ten you will get a fish hooked in lip area so that’s not a massive problem building the flies like this for pike ……….

Doing a natural roach pattern I’ve wanted to get something as near as I could to the colour of the fish in the water so I’ve used a black deercreek gliss and glint plus with a green flash through it this is as close as I’ve seen to a roach colour in the water, it’s really nice stuff and quite a subtle colour of course what the fish see maybe completely different but I’ve looked over enough bridges on places like the fens and seen enough roach to know that’s the colour I see …….nice blend

The eyes are glued onto the point where the material has been tied onto the back of the hook this will be the heaviest point of the fly and buy using a uv tack free epoxy you can build up the layers in between the eyes by doing this you’re not only making the eyes bomb proof but your adding the correct weight to give the fly a little action on the strip again with this fly and with all synthetics there is really hardly any material in this fly which means its ultra-light to use and you could easily play with this all day on a 9 wgt .
And don’t forget you could of course tie this in smaller sizes for pretty much anything that swims
So with that im going to go and play some more at the vice and do some stockin up on these patterns and fingers crossed I’ll get out next week as long as the temps stay high and the ice buggers off I just have to go and get these wet

next week i plan to sort out my subbug boxes into one easy grab box and tie up a few fresh patterns for it so expect some hairy deerhair action next week .

Mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

the truth is out there

and a kit starts at 19.99 uk

life in foam
Finally I manage to get some of my favourite foam, for the past couple of years ken over at pike adventures has been periodically sending me care packs of foam that he uses, the reason for this is I couldn’t get any of this fine stuff here and it makes the most amazing foam heads, I found it quite by chance to be honest id, headed up to my local hobbycraft store here in the uk to buy another couple of those big plastic boxes I was talking about the other day and as the store was very quiet being early in the morning I spotted a bod stacking some shelves so I just on the off chance and in case I had just overlooked them asked if they had any and yes they did so I was duly shown to the shelf where it was and it was perfect and fairly cheap as well £3.99 uk although the sheets aren’t as big as the ones I get from ken it’s not really that much of a problem so I’ll be doing some flies tomorrow with it in fact as I’m writing this blog in advance of posting I’ll probably have some pictures below, I find it better writing at the weekend and over the week then posting at the end of the week keeps me fresh and hopefully you’ll have more interesting reads anyway that’s my way of thinking
THE FOAM

It comes in pretty much all the colours you as a pred head fly tier could want as you can see from the picture below oh and there’s plenty enough to make a shed load of flies pretty good value if you ask me and if you’re someone who makes lots of crease flies this is perfect I have to give a massive thanks to ken who’s kept me supplied with it over the year, owe you one brother

As promised sneaked a quick slim line foam head. Although there is a small story behind this and nothing tom do with a miracle fly that bags up fish all day no the story is I actually had someone interested in seeing how I did the head so I said to the fella in question that id do a video for it as it would be a lot easier to explain than in an email.
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So with the kids away to school and the wife at university settled myself in and did the video and it went very well, I got everything across I thought really well and in 12mins good job , well it was good job until I reviewed the footage and found that I had a great big clump of tissue stuck under my nose throughout the whole thing , mental note to self don’t do videos when your choked up with the cold ………..bin that footage

More boxes
Had to be done I did need a couple more of course the reason I’m buying all the boxes is to create the Shangri-La of boat boxes everything neat and tidy everything in its place of course the true test is being out on the water which let me tell you can’t come soon enough

I love the boxes where you can change the size of the compartments saves a whole lot of messing about the flies above are on the large size these are probably as big as they get sometimes I just get crazy and use big flies so there they are lined up ready to go, I know there’s folks out there that maybe have 3 flies that they ever fish with and they do well on them good luck to em and to be honest wish I could get away with that, but I’m a tying head I just love to see how stuff works in the water how they move how they pulse how they move how I can improve on the design that’s just how I roll , I just change flies loads when I’m fishing so if you ever see me out there and I’m constantly digging in boxes its fascination not desperation
Sink the pink

pink like blue is such an underrated fly colour especially here in the uk, the chewed to death specimen above has caught me a ton of fish the belly is plain old white ep fibre and the back is pink sf fibre in fact this fly I made way before any other blended synthetics were around and may I just say that this fly is still going strong and is still good for a bucket load of fish, just goes to show if ya tye em right they will last a long time this fly has always been and will always be in my box . tye one up in these colours using whatever you like you won’t be disappointed , oh and they rock in the saltwater as well folks
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PIMP MY PIKE ADVENTURE RIDE

Was talking about brother and fellow fly fishing ninja ken capsey earlier well ken has splashed on a brand new motor so he can cruise and pull bitches but ken we think you should have stuck to your truck pal for towing you boat
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STRANGE BREW

I have a fair bit of tying to do this week and usually when that’s the case ill warm myself up with a few ties for my own boxes and 9 times out of 10 I’ll sit and just grab a few materials out of the box and see what I can up with , the fly above was one of those , it started of being a basic buck tail type baitfish with a few bugger feathers thrown in but then as I got to the end I thought mmmmm how about I chuck some peacock hurl along the back so I did and it looked cool , so I was going to finish off with a saddle hackle head , then I thought mmmm lets add a couple of spun bits of deer hair roughly chopped to a head shape not tightly packed as I wanted it to sink and hey presto that looks bloody good in my eye.
Strange thing with the picture colour I had my cam on just a normal setting and the fly being basically olive and yellow it seemed to suck up the board colour into the picture weird but cool effect of course I’ll never be able to reproduce it again
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HOTCORE HEARTBEAT

The hotcore fly continues to take scalps and there’s actually people doing copies of this killer pattern and doing their own tutorials for it on YouTube that’s very cool , but I’m forever pushing the boundaries with flies so I decided to do a new version of the hot core and above is the new version the hotcore heartbeat tied completely with deercreek gliss and glint plus and a core of red angel hair and let me tell you it’s looks bloody tasty in real life I will get it in the water as soon as possible sure it’s going to be a hit and I’ll be tying a few up in different colours and sizes over the next few weeks , ive also gone back to my roots and used googly eyes on this one for a bit of rattle .
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Hit me with you laser beam

I didn’t ask for one but nick over at deercreek sent me one of the new laser torches there doing for curing there tack free uv , he sent me one not because he wanted me to push the product but simply because I have the torch and it would be good for me to compare the 2 when it comes to curing of course first thing to notice is that the torch beam is a lot more concentrated into one spot and a lot more powerful which means it will get right into the head getting you a good solid head I’ve only used it on one head so far as I’m busy building other patterns for clients just now but first impressions are very good , one thing I really do like is there new bottle with brush applicator that gets a big thumbs up from me if you wish to learn more about this product here is the link
http://www.deercreek.co.uk/Diamond-Hard-UV-resin-kit.html
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BUG BOND VERSES DEERCREEK
(AND THE WINNER IS)

There’s been a lot of bitching from bitches lately saying that deercreeks diamond hard is shit and others saying that bug bond is the best thing since sliced bread etc. etc. etc. well to be honest I could have done a review of both but then I would have been accused of favouritism on the side of deercreek so it was nice when an in depth review appeared on another blog and as we all knew anyway deercreeks is superior to bug bond and a massive amount cheaper as well rather than dwell on it the review and test is just a click away go have a look for yourself
http://pikeflies.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html#5406443020928977487
I will however say this, last time I looked was a free country and you can of course use whatever the hell you like and if you want to spend an extra £30.00 pounds on a kit that doesn’t performer as well as deercreeks tack free then that’s up to you , I have to say there a few people in the states who have this product and love it there is an outlet in Canada but as far as I’m aware not one in the use so maybe if you’re a outfitters in the usa and you’re interested in stocking these kits please go over to www.deercreek.co.uk and mail nick
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VERMONT FLY GUYS

The fly tying duo known as Brian price and ken capsey have now launched there store as you’ll be aware the boys are fantastic fly tiers and Brian does some outstanding steelhead patterns there bespoke flies are getting quite a reputation check this out from Brian
“VFG got word from Costa Rica and I quote "The good news is I lost all three of the VFG flies....the bad news is, I lost all three of those flies". Apparently, these three blue water "Maelstroms" went home to a couple Blue Marlin and a Sailfish that played for keeps. These flies were a custom order exclusively for the billfish tournament in Costa Rica. Not all is lost, the second leg of the tourney is approaching and VFG received a request for a dozen more blue water "Maelstroms" for the end of Feb. Big thanks to Mike Kontos from Green Mountain Trout fitters and his Costa Rican team. Bring it!!BP”
I’ve done blue water pelagic flies myself so I know how tough and well made these flies have to be good job fellas…….
Here’s the link if you want to visit
http://www.etsy.com/shop/VermontFlyGuys
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Take care till next time a heap of tying work to do so better get my backside off the couch and do it
Mcfluffchucker
A cave in Scotland
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a video protest

i hope one particular german blog reader is pleased with these results

THANK YOU MY FRIENDS I AM HUMBLED BY YOUR KIND SUPPORTIVE WORDS
(Here is just a few I’ve received since yesterday)
I have left names off
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HI Just read your blog, you don’t need to worry about arseholes that can.t match your work or commitment to tying.
A lot of anglers look forward to reading your reports on new materials and also your video’s
I would love to have a day’s fishing with you sometime
Keep up the excellent work
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I think we should send Mr Ferret a wild angry mountain cat. Will see his key board anger turn to utter fear when that cat rip’s his face off bro. WELL PUT and to all those other web warriors kiss my pike.......... I mean ass. Much love brother............
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Dave, Your blog, tying sites and YouTube videos are the best source of pike fly fishing ideas and instruction I've come across. I caught my first fly caught pike last year on one of your Green Tool flies bought from Deercreek on my new Pikesaber recommended by you. Don't let the idiots get you down and keep on doing what you do. I'm sure there's a lot of us out here improving our fishing directly from following your sites. All the best, John
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Well...couldn't have put it better myself! Well said bro. Got the same problem here...an egomaniacal control freak website host wouldn't let me post on HIS most acclaimed STRIPERS forums because my blog had ads in it... "Keyboard Warriors", as you so politely named them, and "Web Nazis" are the worst...little people that can fight their insecurities and personal problems from behind a pomputer screen. Great flies, by the way. Been fishing for pikes back home(Northern Italy )in the 80's and it was only me and a couple other guys then and everybody thought we were crazy or stupid; Imagine having the resources we have today! Keep up the great job. Thank you.
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Dave, you're the man!! Absolutely right!!! Totally agree with you!! Best regards from Portugal!
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Nicely said.
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the end

for one last time

-LAST TIME I DO THIS –

You know there always some idiot out there who likes to shoot his mouth off without getting the facts straight or even having the decency to mail me and ask me about something before they start there verbal vomit so I’m going to set this to paper once again for the last time .

deercreek
Nick over at the company sends me new materials to try out and write about (pretty much like any review you would read in a fishing magazine) so I use the product whatever it is and I’ll write about it , now in my book that’s trying something and writing about it weather you like it or not , in fact I was sent some material a couple of weeks ago “breamer streamer” gliss and glint plus I loved it I wrote about it I used all the material and I sent all the flies back to nick art the site , now he puts these limited edition flies on his site for people to purchase and I can just inform you now I do not accept one penny for those flies that includes my time making them , the hooks I use, the post and package cost no not one penny neither do I want anything for them , nick will send me every now and again some eyes or some glue or some tack free uv which is great for me as I don’t have a lot of spare cash with a family to feed so these things keep me doing what I love to do and that’s tying flies .

If I feel I want to put a link on my blog or website then I will (no I don’t get paid for it) because I believe it is a great product and I believe it’s a product that will help you make a better fly and it’s up to me what I write when I write about it and the reason smartarse that I always include links to stuff I’m writing about is quite simple , I was getting bogged down with emails and messages from people asking where I was getting the item from so it’s far easier for everyone to include a link .

If I was to write about some amazing fly that I had made but not tell anybody what the material was then I would be accused of being secretive and not want people to know what I was using and being better than everybody else these same arseholes would then be on my back about that as well see my point.

I really don’t care what product you use I use what I think is a good product if I think something has a problem I will mail the supplier to find out about the problem , in fact some time ago I received a sample of a new croc glue from nick at deercreek and I had a problem with getting the stuff out so I actually phoned nick and asked him about this and he said they were waiting for the proper bottles to come in for the glue so he stuck some in another bottle so I could try it he followed up by sending me the finished product in the proper bottle which by the way was great if I’d had a problem with the product I would have said in the review .

As I said I really don’t care what you use if it works for you fine if you want to pay £50 pounds for a kit fine or a better kit at £20.00 that’s your choice if you don’t like the product then don’t click the link simple

Heres a completely independent review of the stuff are you telling me this guy is using blatant advertising as well

http://cpsflyfishingandflytying.blogspot.com/2011/06/product-review-deercreek-flies-diamond.html

I can’t comment on the laser stuff deercreek do I haven’t been sent one I haven’t asked for one if he wants to send me one then fine I’ll try it if not well that’s not a problem either if I find a review elsewhere ill post it on the site

Here’s something to think about 2 weeks or so ago I received a bottle of croc glue and a pack of gliss and glint plus, at the end of November I received some eyes and some small sample packs of new gliss and glint plus colours (enough for a couple of flies in each pack)…….does that count as selling out and major sponsorship you decide
I applaud nick for coming up with new products for the fly tier at reasonable prices and not ripping of the tier with high prices
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Piketrek
I have known the guys at piketrek for a couple of years now when they first contacted me about their pikesaber rod and they wanted me to test one out which I duly did and I loved It best rod id ever used (and trust me I have used a few) so if somebody asks me what rod I’d recommend for pike fly fishing then off course I’m going to recommend a rod that I’ve actually used and caught fish on. What a dickhead if you think I’m going to recommend a rod to somebody just starting out that I’ve not used and as I’ve said before the best thing to do is try some out a rod is a very personal thing and what is good for one person may not be good for another .

The guys at pike trek and not businessmen they don’t want to rule the world all they want to do is bring products into the market for the pike fly fisher at a reasonable price and off course they ruffled a few feathers along the way I mean a company with a product out there at 8 pounds is not going to be impressed when the same product comes out at half that price of course there going to be pissed but for a long time fly tiers have been constantly overcharged for stuff (uv products) all the guys here are doing is funding there fishing they are anglers just like us not suits

I do tie a lot with their products pretty much the same as deercreek and yes I have links to their site because A- this is a mainly pike fly fishing blog B- there the only people out there with a site just for the pike fly tier it’s not rocket science is it really.

Another interesting thing when I went down to the fenland flyer charity event (with a few hundreds quid’s worth of flies as prizes must have missed you contribution to the charity Michael ) I met up with the guys from piketrek and had a chat with them as they were sponsoring the event as the big company’s couldn’t afford to give stuff away under the economic climate so piketrek stepped in to provide prizes and they gave also a hell of a lot of stuff away on the day in the way of materials I also had a few packs of materials from them , the last time I had anything from them was back in august when I had 2 sheets of eyes and a couple of packs of body material……….blimey that’s really pushy the boundaries of free stuff isn’t it I should eBay it and retire to the Bahamas on all this stuff I get .

Piketrek are also like deercreek committed to bringing you the best product at the best prices which I write about and give people the option of buying if they so wish I just point them in the direction of where I get the stuff I tie with again if you don’t like it don’t click the link ……..
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Here is a link to the great site for the fly fisher that is global fly fisher
http://globalflyfisher.com/reviews/
have a look at all those reviews all that stuff they get sent have you been over there and had a moan at them for writing about stuff actually I remember once I had a fly tying problem and couldn’t find a product i happened to go onto this site and there was a review for the very thing I needed so I followed the link and bought one , that was my choice they didn’t force me to buy it they wrote a review of a product that I needed and thanks to that review my problem was sorted .
One of the great American fly tying forums
http://www.flytyingforum.com/
oh look Michael and steffen sponsored by j stockyards quick you better get over there and have a moan about that as well imagine that how outrageous is that a fly-tying forum sponsored by a fly tying company , I just can’t see how they get away with that
Getting the point now numnuts
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So get your facts straight pike and ferrets blog before you start shouting you mouth off i really don’t care if you like me or not I really don’t care if you visit my blog or not (obviously you do from your moaning about it) I do what I do because I love what I do and let me tell you I’ve been doing it a hellava long time even before the pffa existed in fact I still remember so called famous people coming to me for advice which I freely gave and still give. do you know last year I gave out not including the fenland flyer over 200 flies for people that were interested in pike fly fishing I do this for the promotion of the sport not for personal gain I received not one penny for this if there’s a product that’s out there that can make life easier then ill happily share it.

Writing reviews
When somebody contacts me and wants me to try a product out I’m more than happy to do this and I do not expect payment for doing it I tell people straight off that I will review the product and put a link to it either in my blog or website (I feel this is only fair to the person company sending it) and ill either write a review or do a video on the product after this if I use the product at some time in the future ill mention it and put a link in to the text which people can click on if they like up to them I don’t force them

I am not tied to any company’s at all so don’t have to hold back on reviews
Its also interesting to note that I have a lot of links to products websites and blogs and these I put up there because I use them and I pay hard cash for the stuff I use I’ve never approached these companies for free stuff yet i have the links on the pages

So there it is if you have a problem with anything I’m doing just mail me it isn’t hard my email address is in the top left-hand side of the blog and on the front pages of my websites
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I thank all those people who do visit my blog and all the nice emails comments and friends I have made through it, unfortunately you’ll always get lemmings that listen and follow all the crap that gets thrown around and jump on the bandwagon without knowing the facts

This really is my last word on this and the last time I will write about it as I really do have better things to do if you don’t like what I write the solution is simple don’t visit the blog I isn’t holding a gun to your head fella

Mcfluffchucker

"thanks for the comment man appriciated"

"Well...couldn't have put it better myself! Well said bro. Got the same problem here...an egomaniacal control freak website host wouldn't let me post on HIS most acclaimed STRIPERS forums because my blog had ads in it... "Keyboard Warriors", as you so politely named them,and "Web Nazis" are the worst...little people that can fight their insicurities and personal problems from behind a pomputer screen. Great flies, by the way..been fishing for pikes back home(Northern Italy )in the 80's and it was only me and a couple other guys then and everybody thought we were crazy or stupid; Imagine having the resources we have today! Keep up the great job..thank you"

and i really appriciate all the supportive emails , you know who you are

Tying big predator flies and other stories

Tying big predator flies (and other stories)

The art of doing it

Making large flies isn’t as daunting as it looks sure there’s some real fancy arsed looking flies out there but don’t be put off from giving it a go, the only way you’ll learn to make flies is to keep practicing and your home made flies will catch the same if not more than that fancy made fly your saw on the internet and will probably out do it in terms of fly longevity as well the guy sitting in a tying house in Africa really doesn’t care if your fly falls apart after a couple of fish ,
Synthetics these days enable us as fly tiers to make supremely large pike fly’s and to be honest the only thing stopping you making monster flies well actually with today’s rods there’s nothing whatsoever from making and fishing the biggest of flies hell no.

but here’s the interesting thing all of the biggest fish I have caught over the magical 20 mark have come on small flies I’m talking 4 inches and under here , the my biggest fly caught pike to date is a stonking 25lb river Trent beast that took a small marabou baitfish fly in fact back then that was pretty much it for pike fly design a simple marabou pattern with a couple of googly eyes on a bronze bait holder hook with the holder shank barbs pressed down we were innovators back then having to make the best of it because nobody made stuff for us and actually with most companies back the catering in this country for the trout and salmon tier making pike flies was a bloody expensive exercise if you wanted to make anything over four or five inch’s
A bait holder hook this was all I had access to

Sunday blues


I work on weekends and I have to get up at stooped o’clock in the morning to get there on time and this weekend it was bloody freezing hence the hood and my back to the wind I wouldn’t have even fancied being out fishing today , I do have the distinct advantage though of being able to tie fly’s at work as regular readers of my mutterings will no doubt be aware I have burst of furious technical activity then 3 or four hours of nothing then another burst of activity so I tie flies in between , perfect

Travel kit

When I’m tying at work I have to think in advance what I’m going to be tying as there’s no way I can take everything (my bosses would have a fit) so I have a little hobby box that I can get the essential’s in hooks flash bobbins threads glues etc. and more importantly it fits into my work bag.

Bag o tails

so as I had decided what I was trying in advance (thunder creeks) so in addition to my hobby box I have a random supermarket bag to carry them in, couple of weird looks on the bus to work right there, I’ve included a few different colours in the bag, I’m doing some saltwater kits at the moment so I picked colours that were salty in nature and colours that I’ve used successfully in the past built into thunder creeks which are a fantastic little fly and will catch you fish no matter where your fishing , I’ll be using minnow patterns for trophy trout in the summer of course in this country fly fishing for trout with anything other than a size 28 dry fly on a silk leader is considered not sporting and is frowned upon from a great height , jezus h Christ if a fish eats another fish it’s a predator right so what the feck is the problem , well none in my book trout got teeth I’m fishing for em end off .

My office desk

This was me set up for my 9 hour shift great work if you can get it eh, I realise I’m quite lucky with this so I tend not to rock the boat too often, the vice im using is one I’ve had sitting on my desk at home for ages, can’t even think where I got it from to be honest but it’s got a really solid heavy base and it holds hooks up to size 9/0. To be honest it looks like one of those really cheap vices you get with starter kits but does the job and means I don’t have to disassemble my proper vice

first out the block is 10 of these 4/0 thunder creeks cracking little flies (ok at 4/0 not so little) I really enjoy tying them and haven’t done any for a while , I decided to give the heads a coat of deercreeks tack free uv and I was bloody delighted with the outcome a nice sealed shinny head that the flash peaks through how is a fish goanna resist this I’m also thinking perch in my local may well have a Nash at this as well as the saltwater species simple to make but bloody deadly , sometimes it really is just too easy.

Home grown UV 3D eyes

So I’d made up a load of the flies above and I needed to do a load of small pink flies so after I did the first one I went to put the eyes on and discovered I hadn’t bought the tiny 3d eyes with me now this was a bit of a bummer but then I had an idea, what if I just did it the old fashioned way and draw them on with black pen yup that would work and hang on what if I added some of deercreeks tack free uv to build up the eyes that may work problem solved and looking good as you can see below whoop whoop and so easy to do

I suspect I may be playing with this a bit more in the future on my tiny fry patterns
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BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

Brother and fellow fluff nutcase ken capsey over at pike adventures has been doing some really good stuff with the tallywacker so I decided I needed to get back to doing some big and beautiful natural flies after getting the inspiration I hit the vice and kicked a few out

Although this looks like a massive bulky fly it’s actually very light tied on a 6/0 hook the material is just placed on in small clumps so it’s actually plenty of hook gape the picture really doesn’t do the fly justice plenty of movement with the long Metz feathers some long lengths of flashabou and a single marabou feather tied into the front gives it ultimate movement, really enjoyable fly to tie

Slightly different version just with buck tail instead of the marabou feather and I’ve made the tail with gliss and glint plus to bulk out the length and add some flash and also give the tail feathers something to sit on , giving the impression of a bulky bait but actually being again very light despite its size . something else as well is the colour of the feathers, blue is a very underrated colour for the freshwater pred head no idea why more people don’t use it to be honest great in deep-water give blue a try for a few casts try it out I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised may even give you the edge over you mates

sexy maribou

As I said at the start of this post marabou was pretty much it when it came to fly tying materials was back in the dark ages (I couldn’t even get hold of full buck tails back then) so if I wanted a bit of length on a fly id add a couple of cape feathers as in the fly above, strangely enough despite all the fish I caught in the early days on marabou flies with the advent of new materials and new methods of tying big flies I’ve kind of left these patterns by the wayside a bit so I’m going to go and tie a load up and revisit my early successful days in fact by the time you have read this I will have already gone and done a video for one all being well it should be below , it’s also a great fly to make if your new to fly tying as it doesn’t involve any complicated methods to make and it will catch you just as many fish give it a go

And finally
Guess the fly pattern

Really that’s got to sting

Have a great week folks

Mcfluffchucker
(A cave in Scotland)

breamer streamer and fly storage

THE ART OF STORAGE

For me it’s always been a problem finding the right storage for flies and for many and may I say I’ve been quite happy with the finsport wallet above especially when I’m traveling light but it does have its limitations when it comes to the likes of deer hair or bulky patterns , you see this wallet I think was always designed with the saltwater angler in mind and smaller patterns so when you get to using big flies for pike , once you get a few in the wallet it tends to start bulking up a little too much for my liking although that’s just a personal thing , but when you start chucking deer hair patterns like sub bugs into then it causes a slight problem as it starts to squeeze the deer hair out of shape which doesn’t look too hot to be honest so I started to look around for a suitable replacement that I could but in my boat box (I will still use the finsports though especially when I saltwater fishing as they are perfect for that , no metal parts to rust

One two 3 lock box

I was out with the wife shopping last week and I came across a very cool storage box that looked almost identical to my plano box that I have in my boat box so I picked a couple up as they were fairly cheap and quite sturdy as well and I was pretty sure they were the same size as the planos, I stood and held one staring at it for what must have been quite some time as an assistant came over and asked if I was ok and could she get me chair , she soon buggered off when I said no thanks dear I’m just looking to see how many flies I could get into it , god knows what she must have thought as she walked off probably I was breeding blue bottles or something ………oh well

So the insides of the box have lots of little compartments, these spacers just lift out giving you multiple compartments of whatever size you like

Ok so below is 7 of my original foam filled video boxes from my boat box and believe it or not the entire contents of those boxes fits into one box (above) I was pleasantly surprised because it means that I can now take even more flies fishing with me whoop whoop …. Anybody who knows me will know exactly how much I enjoy testing flies in the water watching them do their thing and when I catch fish on them well even better , but I got to say I was quite surprised at the amount I got into one box

Whats in the box -Regular readers will know this is how my boat box usually looks I have lots of flies stuck on foam on the inside the reason for this is that these are flies I use regular and this was the flies I was using deeper at the end of last season when I get back out I will probably use the same stuff as here but with a few new patterns (the breamer streamer. later in this post) and as the temps warm up ill have a load of sub bugs on there as well I usually then have two set ups on the boat one being a floating outfit especially for subbuggin in shallower water. Well it would be a crime not too

so back to the boxes as you can see I’ve cleared all the video boxes out and replaced them with the bigger storage option and actually it does and will make things a lot more tidy and organized on the boat for a change and I will actually be buying another couple to use .
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I will still be using the other boxes and wallets and to be honest I can’t bear the thought of an empty box lying there without flies in so by the time you read this ill have already started to fill them with spares , not that my flies fall apart or anything its just that I do tend to give a lot away to people on the bank and to boat partners in fact one boat partner never buys flies as he says its bloody pointless when he’s fishing with me ……ha

BREAMER STREAMER
( a new colour added to the gliss and glint plus range)

I got sent this new colour to have a look at and give an opinion on and as soon as I took it out the packet I thought mmmmmmm that would make a nice skimmer bream pattern or I may even stretch to a smelt pattern for bass in the surf, of course soon as I start thinking that I just have to go and start tying stuff up hey sorry it’s in my blood got to be done , I can really see me doing a lot of combos with colour and flash I really like it a lot

It has a lovely almost pearlescent flash running through it along with some thicker strands of what looks like gold crystal flash I don’t know but I do know it looks bloody good and will really look great in the water

EAT ME

The first one off the line and although not quite a bream in shape it really does look like a very appetizing baitfish and believe it or not took me around 3 mins to make this 7 inch snack, the belly is just a plain white gliss and glint plus and the top is breamer streamer I’ve also added for extra real effect some deercreek gator eyes, the hook is a bog standard 6/0 octopus hook available from pretty much anywhere , the other thing I like about this colour combo is that it looks like a dying fish you must have all seen at some point a dead or dying small shoal fish floating past you I think this colour is being added to the range around about now so if you want to order some head on over to www.deercreek.co.uk and give nick a mail if you want to purchase these very fly’s ready-made they will be with nick as limited editions hopefully by the end of this week.

with very little actual fishing happening for me just now due to family and weather im most certainly looking forward to a few weeks’ time when I can actually get out and throw some fluff it does get very frustrating when you make up some killer fly’s and you can’t get out to fish them but will be soon enough when I get some more rod bending action like below in the meantime I’ll just keep churning them out at the vice

if you fancy a bargain head over to www.fishtec.com they have their Jan sale on just now and there is some bargains to be had , although one thing you won’t find on pretty much any fly tying site is human hair well let me explain , sometimes my wife goes a bit mental and decides to cut her own hair (don’t ask she’s a redhead) so while she wasn’t looking I collected up all the bits and stored them away . well I finally got them out the other day and made this little baitfish on a 6/0 hook ok maybe not so little

THE HAIR OF THE DOG

Its named after a night on the beer not anything to do with my wife honest (if she’s reading this) , you see it’s supposed to be true that women catch bigger fish something to do with pheromones apparently and there is indeed reports of ladies indeed catching massive fish so who knows maybe there’s something in it , and I’ll be putting it to the test with this fly in the future , and if it turns out to be true then many wife’s across the country may go suddenly bald overnight viva the revolution

Mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

the art of crossover flies and memory loss

Crossover flies
(The art of flies for everything)

So what is a crossover fly well it’s pretty much any fly that can be used for pretty much any species salt or fresh water, in the uk we don’t have nearly the same amount of species that our fluff chucking long lost relatives across the pond have and to be honest if your fly fishing for anything other than trout or salmon in this country your still regarded as a bit of a freak by both game and trout anglers, luckily opinions are changing although I still get a few odd looks

Colours can be really whatever you like and this colour above does work very well in the salt water especially for Pollock I’m not sure if the combo of yellow and black is something the fish associate with a food source in the sea, I’m not sure but this has always been good for me around rock marks , but then really we don’t really for sure know what colours a fish sees in the water so for all I know it could be the perfect imitation of a baby fish I really don’t know but it works so that’s the main thing . I’m also guessing from experience that this would do well for smallies as well.

Crossing over

So from small 1/0 saltwater flies I know ramp it up to a 4/0 pike pattern basically the same pattern but all ive done is tied it with more bucktail to give it bulk and uv creeked a set of eyes on to make it more baitfish like, but you really don’t need to it will still catch fish without the additions , so with this plucky alrounder there a million colour combos you could use so you can match the hatch pretty much with any localized colours , of course the other thing is you can churn out loads of them as well in a very short space of time check the video below to see how to make em …….

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Back to monsters

I’m a member of a great American fly tying forum and the hot core fly I do raised a few eyebrows and I had a few questions coming forward about one particular fly so rather than spend hours typing away , which to be honest cuts into my tying time I decided just to do a video (below) seemed to be the easiest way although why on earth it takes nearly 2 hours to upload a video that just under 10 mins long is beyond me maybe I’m doing something wrong bloody technology …….anyway here it is


"And remember folks every time you click on the video I get money for it so that will be only another 100 million plays and I can buy the family a snickers bar to share"

My day starts slowly

You know it’s so bloody cold just now I sometimes have to work myself up into the Zen state for tying so normally what I do is tie something completely different up to my normal monster baitfish , so I sat at the vice today and remembered that I had had a drunken skype video call with brother ken from pike adventures and we had decided to tie something up now the problem was I can’t actually remember what id talked to him about so ken apologies brother we will need to re schedule whatever it was …lol
So I decided to to tie up something else in the absence of memory and headed down the route of getting my perch box for summer up and running so I decided to warm myself up with a cruncher pattern with rubber legs I know for a fact that this will catch fish , its one of those patterns that when you make it and look at it in the vice you think mmmm yup that’s gonna work , its pretty much just a long shanked streamer hook cone head , rabbit fur dubbing and some green and orange sparkly dubbing throw in a couple of rubber legs and hey ho cool pattern …
im off just now to watch what looks like its going to be a very cool dvd called the dead drift from stealth films ill report back with a review in the next few days I flick it on when I got it and the film looks stunning crystal clear water and big browns .

Of course none of this helps when you can’t get out to fish but hey soon

mcfluffchucker
(a cave in Scotland)

wow deer creek push it again

I'm excited again , deer creek have been raising the bar again i for one am really looking forward to trying this stuff on big pike heads and i can just imagine the poss

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you gotta ask the question why pay up to £50 pounds for inferior kits that are not even tack free

The main advantages of the laser cured resin is cure time and the depth of resin the laser can penetrate. This means you can really pile this resin on which is great when making flies like surf candies etc. and still have the piece of mind it will cure quickly and tack free!!

Unlike other top resins (which shall remain nameless) this new product dries hard and totally tack free in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds (depending on depth of resin).

The laser itself has been designed with a specific wavelength for curing resins of this type and is very economical to run as it takes standard aaa batteries.

The kits will retail at £29.99 making them the best value for money pro kit around

www.deercreek.co.uk