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.

Winter brookies

I did a little snowshoeing with Mayu on my back close to home recently.  We came across a tiny little stream where I've seen some little brookies in the past.  After carefully looking around for a while we saw 4 small brookies in one little pool.  They were a little spooky and difficult to see so I wasn't able to get any decent pics of them.  I don't know how they are able to survive the winter or even the summer for that matter in such a tiny trickle of a stream but they do.  I wonder if a few little changes to the stream to create more pools or adding some structure would help them out.  They seem to be making it on their own and I wouldn't want to do anything that would adversely affect them.

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.