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

Hooks

I love hooks. Such a variety out there to work with. I will go so far as to say that they are a critical element in the success of a day on the water. From that initial take, to the fight then on to landing the fish, the hook is an invaluable tool to any angler. This makes hook choice vital to a fly tyer or even to an angler choosing what flies to purchase. 

I used to use almost any ol' hook. It didn't matter to me what it was as long as I could wrap thread and materials onto it I used it. I remember well my first lesson on the importance of a good sharp hook. It was fall of 1995 and I was fishing for landlocked salmon on the Saranac River in Plattsburgh, NY. This was the ol' salad days of salmon fishing on Lake Champlain. Lots of fish in the river and lots of big fish too (the initial sea lamprey control program had really been working well). I was getting takes on my fly patterns- which were really simple rabbit patterns- but not many fish on for long, and even fewer landed. It made me wonder what the deal was. Then I figured it out. The ol' Mustad 36890 salmon iron was my hook of choice. They were not sharp hooks. I started sharpening them before I tied on them and voila! my hook up to landed ratio went through the roof.

I still sharpen some hooks when I tie on them (I will save my pointers on properly sharpening hooks for another entry) but now I much prefer to tie with chemically sharpened hooks. All major brands of fly tying hooks now offer super sharp hooks. I have tied with Mustad Signature, Daiichi, Gamacatsu, Tiemco, and Dai-Riki many times and I love twisting my creations on all of them. I am also experiementing with some other brands like Matzuo, VMC and others. There are so many options available.

I will admit that these hooks tend to be more expensive than those that are not chemically sharpened. Personally, I am willing to spend the money on better hooks if that means that my clients, friends or I will have a greater chance of hooking and landing that bruiser we are after. And if you shop around you can usually get a good deal on the hooks you are after.

The end result of using a good sharp hook!