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.