Three of the tiers have already put their flies in the mail! Damn. That was fast.
I am just getting started. This whole “new baby” thing can really occupy large swaths of free time like a massive high pressure system preventing the skies from production, or vices from production.
I finally sat down and got a few flies tied up tonight. That needed to happen. Now I have some forward momentum. Inertia should do the rest.
This is where it all goes down.
Where bonefish catching plots are hatched.
OK, have 12 guys signed up for the fly swap. Each tyer will need to tie two flies for each person and another couple for an auction box. That means 26 flies! That’s a lot, but I think we can do it.
The auction box will be a Cliff Outdoors Bugger Barn and we’ll auction that off for the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust.
So, let’s get tying. Given the number of flies we all have to tie, I’d suggest we give ourselves a bit of time to do it all by. I’m going to ask for five weeks, Feb. 18th in the mail. You can send updates and photos on the flies you are tying to bjorn@bonefishonthebrain.com and I’ll share those on the blog.
I think they are sexy.
My flies will almost certainly be a variation on the reverse, glass back gotcha I’ve come to love tying so much.
This is who I have in the swap:
UPDATED – I think we are full at this point. We’ll also have an extra box donated by Cliff Outdoors that we’ll fill and auction off for BTT.
I’ll get the deets up soon.
There are people that buy flies and people that tie them. I, myself am a hybrid of those two things.
I used to love tying trout nymphs and had a few patterns I could count on for my home waters. I never really got into tying dry flies and bought at my local (usually the Ted Fay Fly Shop).
Then I started bonefishing and I fell in love with tying #4’s and #2’s and I found I had a hard time putting a #16 in the vice. I don’t tie my trout bugs anymore, but I very much enjoy tying bonefish patterns.
I know we have more than a couple fly tiers readers here, so I’m wondering if folks might be up for a fly swap.
This would be bonefish specific flies and I’d think we’d look to do up to 10 people tying enough for each person to have two of each pattern (you can’t have just one of a fly… what if it works?).
Let me know if you are interested.
Prep central.
I like tying with mono eyes, but my attempts to actually burn mono have not really looked right. Because of this failure on my part, I’ve bought them (at $5.50 a pack) instead of making them.
This weekend I suddenly figured out how to make mono eyes using UV cure stuff (I use the loon UV Clear Fly Finish).
All you have to do is just dip a single piece of mono into the UV gel, set it and then dip it again and then set that. Repeat the process about 4-5 times and you’ll have a really nice round eye on a stalk. Get some black nail polish and paint the eyes, wait for them to dry and then coat them one more time with the UV cure gel.
The final product is a pretty good looking mono eye.
Not bad.
There are other ways to make the eyes, as I found out on the Facebook page, but I think this one is going to be how I do these myself.
I’ve been spending some time at the vice lately and looking at putting some new patterns in my box. I was looking at Dick Brown’s Bonefish Fly Patterns and I was struck by just how simple some of the patterns were, and by complex others were.
Here are a couple of examples from my desk from last night.
A crab pattern I tied up last night. Inspired by, but not very similar to Peterson’s Peeking Crab (from Dicks book). Lots of steps involved.
A lot of steps in that there lil crab.
Jim’s Rubber Band Worm (from Dick Brown’s book). Just about as simple as it gets. Anyone ever caught a fish on this fly?
It’s a frigging rubber band…
What’s the simplest patter you tie or have caught fish on?
Someone asked for some more views of that Glassback Reverse Gotcha, so I tied one and put some pics together. Here they are (click on this link to the images).
In the vice, not yet finished.
The box needs love.
I was thinking recently about my fly boxes. I was contemplating what I needed to fill them with and what, maybe, I might need to remove.
Over the last couple years I’ve started to put fewer experimental patterns in my boxes. I’m more into patterns I know have worked, patterns I have confidence in, that I feel good about through experience, not just because they are pretty. The total number of patterns is probably dropping off too. I’m concentrating on having more of the patterns I depend on.
Your fly boxes need attention. You can’t just grab for it when you need it without any maintenance. The flies will rust, the fur will deteriorate, the choose patterns might be gone. You have to reassess from time to time and make sure what you have with you is what you need. If not… well… time to put in the work and get your box where you need it to be.
This might not be a Peterson’s Spawning Shrimp, but I think it is close enough.
I like this fly. A lot.
There are a few things I like in this fly. I prefer bunny to craft fur, I like orange the orange. I like this kind of leg. I like the eyes. Figure most fish are going to see this mostly from behind and it starts to look really yummy.
I also put a keel on these flies using a clear UV strip on the bottom. I just like doing that. I don’t know that I get more or fewer fish because of it, but I like the thought of it.
So much of what we put into our flies ranges somewhere on the scale from Fancy to Theory, but not so much at Fact. We tie what we think looks good and if we catch a fish on it we confirm our own assumptions and then we tie more things like that in the future.
It is fun to think about all this and we can be pretty sure we put a lot more thought into it than the fish does.
Scott Heywood has been doing a series on his top bonefish patterns. He release #1 and it is the Ververka’s Mantis Shrimp.
Scott’s top fly.
I will admit to having none of these in any of my fly boxes. There are so many patterns I have never fished. You have confidence in a few patterns and the only time you switch up is when that isn’t working (which isn’t the best time to see if something different will work) or when it is just so easy that anything will work (those are magical days).
It is amazing how confident I feel when I am fishing a fly I have confidence in, while at the same time I know that confidence is a totally abstract and subjective thing.
I recall a post similar to this before I went to Andros. That post went straight to my head and it got stuck there and it seems most of my bonefish flies since that time have been influenced by that one post.
Here is a recent post from Deneki about what your Andros flies should take into account.
Big but light. South Andros bonefish are big, and big fish tend to like bigger meals. At the same time, though, we fish a lot of really shallow water since our fish tend not to be spooky.
I see the imprint of Deneki’s advice in my fly box… like this one.
Yeah… that should work.
