The Toad Puppy

Olive Toad Puppy

Last year I was toying around with a new streamer pattern. I wanted something big and juicy that larger browns would hammer. I had some specific goals in mind when I started designing this thing: it had to be big, have a big profile that would move some water, and it had to have a trailing hook. Ultimately I wanted something that was going to get those big browns really mad. They have a tendency to bite at things that invade their territory.

I took some inspiration from some of Kelly Galloup’s patterns I put together a 5” long streamer out of rabbit strip with a head from Hareline Dubbin’s Sculpin Wool. I used a nice big hook for the front- my favorite streamer hook the TMC 9394 in size 2 and I used some beading wire with a size 4 TMC 105 as the trailing hook (turned up). This combination with some copper flash and and rubber legs to help fill out the space under the wire worked out really well. I put in bead chain eyes and lead wire to weight it. 

Toad Puppy variety pack

Kevin and I put it to the test in late April of last year. It was a week after the trout opener and it had just rained. The rivers which had been fairly low and clear because of an early snow melt were on the rise and discolored from some rain. Perfect streamer weather. We put on our rain gear and headed out. We armed ourselves with 6 wt rods and put on Rio’s sinking Versi-leaders on the end of our lines. Those leaders are the bomb for getting flies down. I have a trick I use with them to make it a bit easier to work with huge streamers. I tie off about a foot or so of heavy tippet (15-20 lb) to the Versi-leader, tie a small swivel onto that, and then finish out with a couple of feet of 12 lb Mirage tippet. I use a non-slip mono loop knot to put the fly on the end of this rig.

Spot with Toad Puppy hanging from his jaws

We hit the river fairly early in the morning. The water was cold- about 40 degrees F- and stained grey with about a two foot visibility. Basically, it was great conditions for what we were trying to do. We headed to a place I knew a big brown was hanging out. I had caught him there the year before. Sure enough as I swung that fly through the hole he had been hanging out in I had a hard take. A few minutes later Spot was in my net and after a couple of pictures he swam away once again. Kevin had a hard take at the tail out of a pool a couple of hours later but a dulled hook spoiled his hookset.

The following day I headed back out to work the river again. I ended up landing two more fish- both browns- in a matter of 45 minutes of one another. I thought the second was a rainbow at first because of how it jumped. I would not have hooked that fish if it weren’t for that trailing hook too. Shortly after that I had another fish on.

Pike like the Puppy too!

Big trout like that are often called toads by anglers and I had told Kevin that we were going toadin’.  With that in mind my fiancée Beth came up with a name for the fly- the Toad Puppy. This fly has proven its worth on big browns (nothing under 20” so far!) and on pike. I haven’t tried it on bass yet, but I suspect it will be a killer.  If you are interested, I have them for sale on my website.  Time to get out toadin’ is just around the corner!

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! 

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!