Headin' South

Marty with his personal best musky!

A very good friend of mine is heading south this April. Marty and I have been fishing together for about 10 years now and I probably have to take credit (or blame) for the fly fishing addiction that I started in him. We met through a work situation and quickly became good friends thanks to our mutual passion for death with fins, the freshwater cuda, the water werewolf (it is a bit more than just a water wolf..), yes folks, I am talking about the muskellunge! I was even fortunate enough to have been paddling the canoe when Marty got his personal best musky. We have fished together a lot, but not as much as either of us would like. Marty and I have had some of the best days on the water together (our two best days of musky together were a total of 7 fish landed each day and each of those days had some rapid fire action) and some pretty sketchy days (we got trapped on an island on the rapidly rising Salmon River in March) but we have always had a really great time on the water.

Cordell in his natural habitat

This April Marty is heading down to the Bonefish Bootcamp with Cordell Baum Jr aka the Bonefish Whisperer. If you don't know about Cordell yet, you really need to look him up. This guy is a master of the flats in the Miami area. He fishes out of a canoe for bones, tarpon, reds, permit and even sharks! I guide out of a canoe on Lake Champlain so I have mad admiration for someone willing to take on saltwater bruisers like that. And he has figured out how to catch the exotics and native fishes found in the canal systems around Miami too.  I fully intend on spending some time with him myself as soon as I can. If you are heading to South Florida and want some challenging and exciting fishing you need to hit up the Whisperer! 

I already tied up a bunch of flies for peacock bass to send down to South Florida with the Pikin' Redneck Ken Capsey so I definitely can't send Marty down empty handed. Over the next couple of months I will put up some photos of the flies I am putting together for Marty to nail some fish with. I want to make sure he has the right ammo to take down everything from peacocks to bones to sharks and tarpon..... A lot of fun for him and just as much fun for me to tie that kind of variety! I do have to admit that I feel a bit bad for sending Marty down there with a bunch of my flies since Cordell has some sweet patterns he has developed for the fishing he does but I can't resist the variety of flies it lets me wrap up! So check these out:

 I am loving these epoxy minnows I have come up with. The epoxy minnow is not a new fly by any means but I think my materials and construction method are a bit different than anything else I have seen. I can't wait to see them in action!

Yea, Clouser minnows. I know, big surprise right? There are few places in the world where these flies don't work so I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't send a variety with Marty to go down there. And chartreuse and white is the classic color. Plenty more of these coming in a wide variety of colors and materials too!

Some nice rabbit strip tarpon flies. I saw this pattern in a magazine a couple of years ago. It was rabbit strip in the back and wool in the front. I love the Hareline Sculpin Wool- great stuff to work with and it looks great in the water. It catches fish too! So I tied up these tarpon bunnies on some 3/0 Gamakatsu  Live Bait hooks. It is a stout hook and wickedly sharp. Hopefully that will penetrate the mouth of those brutes fairly easily! The weight of the hook combined with the materials should make for a cool neutrally boyant fly.... Let's see what the field tester says about that!

5/0 Crease flies

I have been having a lot of fun with Crease Flies too. I did them in a couple of different sizes thinking that they could be used for peacocks, snook, reds, small tarpon... lots of things. When I tie them I get to play with epoxy too! I think before too long I will post up how I do epoxy and maybe some instructions for making your own epoxy wheel pretty inexpensively. If anyone is interested that is....

More stuff coming soon!

2/0 Creasers

Epoxy Madness

I have been tying a bunch of flies for catching some nice big schooling white perch on Lake Champlain this coming weekend. I started out with the usual fare- woolly buggers, Clouser Minnows, bunny strip flies- and as usual on many of them a put on a nice epoxy head. A quick Google search entitled "flies for white perch" got me thinking about epoxy minnows.  A couple of hours later I had a bunch of flies that looked like this:

How the epoxy madness started.....

That was the beginning... I started thinking about what else I could do with it... Thinking about how cool it would have been to have a floating fly with a wiggling marabou tail to fish on a full sink line for those lakers I have been chasing.....

Not perfected yet- I played with it a bit during dry time...

Then I thought about what else I could do with this new madness that had struck me... how about a fly with a rattle, ala crankbait style....

Makes a lot of noise

And what about a floating frog style fly to entice post spawn pike?  

A weedguard and some rubber legs will improve this puppy, but not bad for a first draft

The natural progression led me to think about muskies... big brutes that like to eat frogs.... big jointed frogs....

Both sections float, wiggle wiggle little froggy....

My newfound dementia had taken over and I liked it! Look at the size of this last one!

Musky meal? You bet your ass...

I am looking forward to further exploring this new phase of fly tying insanity! Me thinks it will bring about many good things.... and some bloody big fish!