Divers

So it has been a while since my last post.  Even though I've been extremely busy I've fit in a surprising amount of flyfishing related activities lately which I'd like to get into at some point.  I just haven't felt like posting lately.  I do hope to get back into the groove of posting again.

I'd like to discuss divers.  Quite a while ago when I first thought about fishing for pike when pike were still fairly new to the state of Maine I did some research into pike flies.  I came up with a few must have flies like bunny bugs and mega divers.  So I sat down at the vise and whipped up some standard, book versions of these flies along with some odd variations that came to mind.  The bunny flies caught fish although not many due to lack of knowledge and probably skill at the time but I could not catch fish on the divers.

I waked them on the surface and also made them dive slightly then let them float back up to the top on a floating line.  I swam them deeper with sinking lines.  They just did not produce for me.

This winter I wanted to change that and tied up some divers in a couple different color combinations.  They looked good coming off the vise but the fish are the real critics.  Here is a sampling of my creations.

    
This past weekend I had a chance to get out and after a slow start with some of my usual go to patterns I decided to put on the chartreuse diver and give it a try.  After a few casts to get the fly wet and fishing I took a small pike after a nice, visual strike.

The strikes were frequent after that with some impressive missed ones.  About 3 or 4 more fish were brought to the boat.  I was on to something with this fly.

The boat was moved to allow casts to be made to an edge bordering deeper water.  During one of the first few casts to this spot, a pike of unknown size took the fly and cut right through my 50# flourocarbon tippet leaving me without the hot fly.  I barely felt the strike.  Guess I'll have to go to wire or put up with a few lost flies along the way.

The action was fun while it lasted but the other divers didn't produce like the first one and after a while I started switching to some other types of patterns.  I do have some new found confidence in the divers and plan on stocking up on them for future trips.  I have so many flies I tied up this past winter I couldn't resist putting them on and giving them a swim.  I took one small pike on a 12" articulated musky fly.that I didn't think any pike would take a shot at.  Those pike are sure vicious predators. 

I'm still learning about pike and found a lot of fish in a little bit different location this trip out.  The water temp was about 50 F with overcast skies and the pike seemed to be pretty tight to cover like old weed edges, brush and other woody bushes.  Normally early season the pike can be found very shallow spawning but by the time the water warms up this much they seem to move deeper.  Maybe they are in a transition period.

This fly is more typical of the stuff I usually fish and I happen to like the way this one looks and fishes.

I was fishing with John again today.  I hardly fish with anyone else since he is one of the few people that can put up with me for the day.  He was able to catch the best pike of the trip and a nice, chubby bass getting ready to spawn shortly.

As always I hope to get out on the water again soon.

Blackbirds

The blackbird continues to be my favorite and most consistent night fly.  The ones left in my box from last year had rusty hooks and were starting to look pretty beat up and scraggly.  I decided to tie a few fresh ones up for myself and for some friends hoping they will have some of the same success I've had.  I added a picture to the Striper Flies page.

They look a little creepy head on.

Thursday tying

Got together for another Thursday night tying session with some friends.  The highlight of the night was homemade regular and peanut butter whoopie pies baked by Mike's wife who also happens to tie flies.  Chad and Alan worked on some soft hackles again.  I was planning on joining in but got distracted and started spinning up a big tandem muskie fly and went on to tie a few more muskie and pike patterns afterwards.  Once I get going on the big stuff I have a hard time pulling myself away.  I'll show some of what I've been working on another time.  Here are some of soft hackles.  I'm not sure what they are called and if most of them even have names.  They trout don't seem to care.

Mike worked on some monstrous versions of a foam fly I showed him at Eldredge Bros. Flyshop last Sunday. 

I think they came out pretty well.  It will be interesting to see how they perform on the local largemouth bass.

Little epoxies

Here's a basic, little saltwater pattern that works well imitating small, thin bait.  I don't tend to fish them that often preferring to throw around bigger patterns but if the fish are focused on little bait sometimes this fly will do the trick.  I've tied a few that have caught bonito and false albacore also but I haven't been that lucky yet.  These are going out to some friends and I'm hoping they have better luck than I.

Favorite pike fly

These are a few variations of my favorite pike fly for different situations.  I've posted them elsewhere before but thought I'd add them to the blog.  The pictures make them look a little scraggly but once these flies get in the water they come alive and really swim.  The 3 variations I've tied are a basic standard one, one with eyes and one with a spun deer hair head.

To put the eyes on one of them I used some loon UV cured resin.  I loved having the ability to get it all in place without worrying about it curing then hitting it with the light to set everything in place.  I'm not completely sold on it yet and would like to try out some of the other brands too before coming to many conclusions.  My flytying room is a little cool and the resin seemed to be a little thick to work with at that temperature.  The finished head was slightly tacky too but for fishing flies I'm not worried about it.  I look forward to using more of it.

The deer hair version can be fished as a popper with a floating line but I've had the best luck fishing it on an intermediate line.  I can get a couple good pops on the surface then work the fly back with fast, erratic strips just subsurface.  The action is a lot like a jerk bait fished with conventional tackle.  Last year I got one of the most amazing topwater strikes I've ever seen by a nice musky on an orange version of this fly.  That strike still plays over and over in my mind.

Thursday tying

The last few winters I've got together with a few of my friends to tie on Thursday nights.  I thought I'd start posting a few pics with some comments to keep to a little more consistent posting schedule until something more interesting comes up or the time comes where I can flyfish without feeling like I'm just trying to survive the conditions.  I also like to ice fish a lot which I don't post much about.  A big pile of crappies and white perch on the ice doesn't seem to fit that well on a flyfishing focused blog.

Last night we had our first get together for this winter.  We planned on tying last week but we got our first decent snow and I spent the evening shoveling instead.  This week we got some more snow but it held off until late in the night.

Lately I've been fooling around with making heads on pike flies using kinky fiber instead of deer hair.  The result is very similar to deer hair but without the buoyancy plus you get the consistency of material and color out of using a synthetic.  I'm not crazy about the way the flies have come out so far but I'm liking working with the material so far and I'm starting to get the hang of it.  John has been catching fish on similar patterns and I plan on using them more for pike and stripers especially this summer.

Last winter we tied up some steelhead patterns.  One of them was a pattern by Jeff Hubbard called the Trespasser.  Alan doesn't normally fish for steelhead but the fly ended up being his most consistent pattern for lake trout last year and he was out.  We ended up tying some more of them for this year and I hope to catch a few lake trout on them myself.

We all seem to have an interest in tying and fishing soft hackled wet flies and Chad had some exceptional results swinging and nymphing them for trout and salmon so we tied up some of them too.  I didn't fish much for trout and salmon last year and I found I missed tying trout flies.  I started filling up a brand new special flybox I got for Father's Day with some freshly tied soft hackles.

Overall I thought we had a great time catching up, telling fish stories and talking about future fishing plans.

Tying with the boys

I've been busy with the holidays and not doing a whole lot of flyfishing related stuff.  I've spent a little time organizing my gear and flytying stuff and tying a few pike and saltwater flies lately.  Mostly I've been spending my time teaching my boys how to tie flies and tying with them.  They have actually started to ask to do it more often and become much more interested in learning about it.  Of course they always want to try to tie the most complicated flies with rare or expensive materials that I don't have on hand so I try to convince them some of the more basic flies would be better to start with.  They really like the looks of some of my deerhair bass bugs so we compromised and tried tying one up.  We had fun and we all liked the results.  We also tied up a few steelhead type leeches that day.

Another time we got to tying a version of Jeff's road kill flies over at http://gotflyfishing.blogspot.com/ with a few material substitutions according to what I had on hand.  These should catch us some nice bass and panfish next summer.  Keegan also wanted to tie up a woolley bugger since his brother tied one up another day he wasn't feeling well.

I have some time off over the holidays and hope to get to some more tying and posting.  Merry Christmas!

A little late

Tied these guys a little late to fish for stripers this year considering we got about 8" of snow last night.  I'll be prepared for next year.  Can't have enough.  I'd hate to run out when there are big stripers around.

Guitar Minnows

Guitar minnows are my go to fly for stripers in lots of different conditions. I turn to this fly when I'm done fooling around and feel like I need to get a fish in the boat. It is a clouser variation developed by Jim Bernstein at Eldredge Bros. Flyshop in Cape Neddick, Maine. One might think it is nothing more than a clouser minnow at first glance but there has been a lot of thought that has gone into this fly. There are subtle differences that come to mind such as the weight and placement of the eyes, the gills, and angle of the bottom bucktail to give balance to the fly and probably more that Jim could point out. He even has fine tuned the presentation of the fly. Put all these things together and this fly is deadly.

This fly is more commonly tied with white neck hackle for the tail.  The fly can have a little different wobbling or twitching action when tied with the feathers.  I prefer the bucktail version since most of the fly is bucktail already, the fly body swims and flows in the same motion.  Olive/seafoam/white is the original basic color scheme I was shown and fished although a bronze top is quite popular.  I tied up a few more variations to match other basic baitfish color schemes and also to test out additional flash.

Here is a very good, detailed step by step video and recipe from youtube done by Jim.

I added a link to striper flies in the navigation bar at the top of the blog with some more guitar minnow pics.  I hope to keep adding more striper flies to this page as I get around to tying and photographing them.

Striper taken on a guitar minnow Sunday.

Tying with the boys

My twin 7 year old boys have become more interested in flytying this winter.  They have actually started to ask to tie flies occasionally.  Usually it's some pattern they see in a picture or magazine that is so complicated and requires dozens of rare and expensive materials.  By the time we sit down to tie I can usually convince them to try something a little more simple.  Over the winter we've tied up various streamers, nymphs and foam bugs.  This weekend they saw some crease flies and gurglers I have stuck in some foam on the wall and they wanted to give them a try.  First Keegan had to tie up a foam ant since his brother tied one up a couple weeks ago and he didn't have one in his collection yet.  After we got through that I helped Kai tie up a crease fly and Keegan a gurgler.  The best part to them was tying the flies with white foam so they could color them up with permanent markers after.  We caught a few little native brook trout in a local stream on worms this weekend.  We'll have to start trying a few flies soon.

Couple of favorite pike flies

Ken at Pike Adventures asked me what's been working for me for pike flies so I threw up a few pics.  These flies might seem a little fancy and fragile compared to most pike flies but I really enjoy tying them.  I love tying with natural materials like bucktail, marabou and feathers and mixing all the different colors together...oh and they usually need to have lots of mixed flash although I noticed I cut back on flash on one of these.  These guys really swim fished fast or slow.  I try to balance them so they don't immediately dive nose down on the pause and instead sit there horizontal or slowly glide downward.  For this reason I don't normally add eyes or epoxy towards the front and try to use lighter wire hooks.  Yellow perch and other combos with orange and chartreuse have worked best for me.  I can't wait to get out there and fish them.

Square head poppers

These square headed poppers have intrigued me so I tied a few up in different sizes for largemouth to pike to musky.  I'm looking forward to see what kind of pop and disturbance they make.  I used similar flies last year with deerhair heads that caught fish but didn't stay above the surface for long especially with an intermediate line.  I'm thinking these will float high even with an intermediate.  Shouldn't be long until I can give them a try if we ever get some warm weather.  Need to tie a few up for stripers too although the green one has a mackerel feel to it and should do the trick.

Last year John http://coop-fly.blogspot.com/ caught a few pike with me on a twin tailed yellow deer hair popper so I tied one with the yellow foam head as well.

 Directions and more info on tying these flies can be found on the Zero 2 Hero blog.

Crease flies

Had a few friends over for our Tuesday night tying event.  Alan has been tying crease flies lately because I think he figured he should have at least one fly for stripers that he doesn't need to drag on the bottom.  I thought I'd join him and make an attempt at tying them also.  I've fished crease flies here and there with decent success for stripers and freshwater bass but have never tied them myself.  Yes I actually bought a few flies to fish with as hard as it is to admit it.

Alan is much more skilled painting with the nail polish than I.  I'm reasonably happy with the way they turned out though and they should catch a few fish.

Deep water flies

I sat down to tie some flies to be used for pike and bass in deeper water. Last spring when there was strong wind the shallow water got very murky from the wave action. The bite for pike really turned off under those conditions so we felt like we were forced to fish deeper water. Maybe there was some other presentation we could have tried under those conditions in the shallow water but we couldn't come up with anything that worked for us.

I tied these flies up to fish deeper in these conditions, around submerged weed edges later in the summer and rocky points and shoals for bass. They will also hopefully fish a little deeper where there is current in some of our larger rivers.

Initially I wanted to tie a whistler but started layering saddles, marabou, bucktail and flash up the hook shank similar to a lot of the other flies I've been tying lately.  I finished off the fly with a grizzly hackle over a few extra wraps of lead behind some lead eyes.  Unweighted this style of fly really swims so it should be interesting to see what kind of action they have with the weight up front and the jig hook.

Bunker flies

I've been told that the flies I have been tying for muskies aren't big enough. So I dug through my striper fly boxes and pulled out some of my old bunker and grocery flies. I don't have as many opportunities to fish these flies anymore for stripers so maybe they will be better put to another use.