The North American Fly Fishing Forum - Blogs - gatortransplant

Afternoon Steel

gatortransplant — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:42:45 GMT

While a lot of you may be familiar with how open my schedule was last semester for fishing, this semester is a bit more hectic. However, I still have Wednesdays off so I decided to take the opportunity to get out fishing for steelhead, as recently they've been calling to me.

My pursuit of steelhead had been put on hold as of late. Until this past Sunday I had not set out to catch steelhead since early December. This past Sunday, however, a few friends and I decided that steelhead could use our collective attention. Thus, we set out and caught a few steelhead. At some point the camera came out, some video happened, and the end result was a hastily cobbled-together video. I know a lot of you have seen it, but for those that haven't, here it is:

Beating the Skunk HD on Vimeo

So now I've become addicted to documenting our fishing trips via video. I picked up a polarizing filter for the camera and have been playing around with it, and next is a tripod so I can even get video while I'm out by myself (a photo later in this post shows one of the downsides of setting your camera on the ground). Maybe next time I'll actually produce a GOOD amount of tape so that I can edit it down to a reasonable end product, rather than plugging in a bunch of filler like my first video...

Fast forward to Wednesday, and I'm ready to get back out after some chrome. However, I decided to spend the morning playing with my faithful hound, Fianna:

So after she ran around and chased the tennis ball to her heart's content, I no longer felt guilty in abandoning her for a bit to fish.

My favorite part about fishing the local steelhead waters is how aesthetically pleasing they are:

The panorama above was actually a series of iPhone shots, merged using Photoshop. Technology continues to amaze me.
The water conditions were almost perfect, if a little bit low. Visibility was great, even though I did not see any fish. Blind-casting was the fare for the day, unfortunately. However, I was happy to do just that in the pockets around boulders punctuating the water's course. Not long into the excursion, my line felt the characteristic tug of an interested party. A hook-set and a short fight later, I brought a hen to hand. As this was my first time trying a self-timer fishing shot, and hurrying to return the fish to the water, I did not do so well clearing the field of vision or framing the shot well, but it achieved its basic purpose:

The rest of the time there was spent scouting the area for the next time I return (this was a new area for me) and taking photos of some natural wonders. Waterfalls are always eye-catching:

And especially when they freeze up:

Altogether, not a bad day for a scouting trip! In and out in about 3 hours, walked some good stretches of water, and even landed a fish. Now to figure out when I'm getting out there next...

Tying the Ellicott Special

gatortransplant — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:38:49 GMT

Ok, so as some of you may know, I caught my first steelhead with a fly rod yesterday:

I have to make this distinction because I have caught a steelhead before, on a fly no less, but the fly was attached to my cheater stick, a spinning rod. This was before I stepped into the light. Carrying on, I caught this steelhead on a fly of my own design (read: I tied whatever was in reach of my hands on in a slip-shod fashion...). Ok, so maybe there was a plan to it, but it ended up looking like this:

I ended up loosing the original to a snag, so I decided since one fish was loony enough to take it, maybe others would too. I started tying them in several colors:

It was requested that I post a step-by-step, and since I intended to tie the fly in black and blue for muddy waters, I figured I would track my progress. Unfortunately, I do not have blue saddle hackle to make the collar as I did previously, so I tried blue marabou. This looked neat but was a little overwhelming (it covered everything and upon trimming, well, I trimmed too much...). So the end result was I used some blue ostrich herl I had laying around. It worked well enough, but I figured I would include the disclaimer that this particular step-by-step has a slight deviation.

On to the important part:
THE ELLICOTT SPECIAL
Hook: Any streamer hook works, though I've been mainly using a tiemco 5263 in size 6.
I add to this a large cone head. I then add 20 wraps of lead or lead substitute wire. I've been using lead because that is what I have. Before I push the lead wrapping forward, I add a drop of head cement between the wrapping and cone head, then push the wrapping forward so it sits flush with the cone head. I've found that this keeps the wrapping from spinning, which is very helpful.

Next, I add a marabou tail. I use medium marabou rather than wooly bugger marabou because the thickness of the vane in wooly bugger marabou bulks up the fly too much. You'll see why in a bit...

After clipping off the butt end of the marabou feathers, I wrap it fully up to the wire wrappings, and then continue forward to lay down a thread base on the wire itself. At this point the entire shank should be of relatively uniform thickness. This photo is jumping the gun a bit, but it shows the uniform thickness of the body.

The next step is to tie in estaz to use for the body of the fly. Once you tie in the estaz, wrap your thread up to the cone so that you don't tie down your estaz. Everything forth wrap I wrap the estaz back over itself and pull tight to add to the durability of the fly, since it isn't held down by thread. I picked this up from a Kelly Galoup video on tying a Zoo Cougar, and it's pretty handy. Once you get to the front of the fly, tie down the estaz and clip off the rest.

Next, cut a clump of deer hair about as long as the hook, and tie this in like a wing. You're not spinning it, so hold it in place as you cinch it down. I then wrap the thread over the butt ends of the deer hair to make sure its not going anywhere, and trim the butt ends so they won't interfere with the next step.

Here's where a bit of variation came in (I figure it's only fitting, since this fly essentially came as a variation of a wooly bugger...). I tied the top of an ostrich herl, then ran my thread back to the point where I tied in the deer hair, slightly less than a hook gap back. I wrapped the ostrich herl back like I was palmering hackle, then tied it down. I then held down the feathers and rather than counter-wrapping the thread back over the feathers, I just held back the feathers and took the wrap straight to the front of the fly behind the cone and whip-finished. I then made the herl a bit more manageable by pinching off extra-long portions between my fingers. Finally, I trimmed the marabou tail. I learned in another video that with trimming marabou, rather than cutting it with a scissors, it looks great if you place something with a straight edge against the marabou at the length you want and then tear off the feathers. It makes for a fluffier tail.
And there's the end result in a new color pattern. Hopefully fish like it :D

As an aside, some of you may notice part of my vise that doesn't look like the rest. That's because the cam arm broke, the vital part which locks the jaws closed. So I drilled a whole where the piece used to be and I replaced it with the shank from a broadhead, which was conveniently threaded.

Diving headfirst into fly tying

gatortransplant — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:39:04 GMT

So I picked up a vise and a bucketload of materials and have been tying like crazy. I tried that "tie 100 wooly buggers approach" but made it through five before wanting to try all sorts of crazy patterns. Now buggers are tied in all colors in between other patterns as technique practice and box filler, because I still love buggers and know that I will never have enough. Tie number 6 was a crayfish pattern that I basically BSed after looking at photos of real crayfish and some patterns people tied. It came out alright:

(Photocred to MBPhotos/Mike)
I just hope it starts catching fish :D It might need some tweaking.
This month's Fly Fisherman magazine included a pattern by Charlie Craven called the Gonga, and it interested me so I tried it:

Then I wanted to try an articulated version, as if I wasn't already in too deep:

I also am part of the bass popper swap coming up so I wanted to see if I could spin deer hair. My first attempt was a cropped mess because I was cutting the deerhair with a broadhead blade since I couldn't find any razors. It became a dahlberg diver instead since I left the collar on it. This is attempt number 2, using a scissors instead:

Then I decided to try something simple since the salmon are on the run and the trout are busy gobbling up salmon eggs. I had purchased estaz already to stand in for cactus chenille so on came the egg patterns. These were the first patterns I tied to get tried with any concerted effort on the water. The result was four browns hooked, not a single one landed. However, two of the four gave me nice long fights before either spitting the hook or wrapping around a rock, and the other two fights were not sniff-and-spits either but lasted long enough for me to see the fish before they flashed away back to their respective lies. It was a great day, even if I did not land my first brown (YET!). Nine eggs, tied, eight eggs lost and one unraveled in quite a few hours fished. Not so bad, and nothing like the hit to the wallet that eight lost lures would represent in my past life :D
Here is an egg-sucking bugger I tied to try and entice the big 'uns (it also shows the style of eggs I've been tying):

Finally, my buddy was running a zonker for a bit yesterday and I loved the way it looked in the water. So first thing this morning I decided to tie one up, but took some hints from the muddlers I've seen and added some flash and some legs for extra attention-getting-ness!

Next stop, more fly boxes! And about forty more eggs... and 8 more poppers for the swap, if that is the pattern I settle on... I'm addicted and I love it.

Welcoming the monkey to my back...

gatortransplant — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:13:42 GMT

Well, I figure it is about time to write my first blog entry. I have been taking up fly fishing in earnest, attempting to get out and cast at any species I can at least once a day. I have been lucky enough to get out on Cattauragus Creek twice now, but as yet have been unable to land any trout on the new rod. I can't complain though, because the Allen outfit that I am fishing is one heck of a set-up. Granted, I don't have much experience casting and using many different set-ups, but I can get the fly basically wherever I want it (not necessarily in style, but it gets there).

I've had the most fun so far shooting line at cruising carp. It has given me practice on my hauling, which makes me excited to see the saltwater flats of Florida in December, but until then I'll be content with freshwater fisheries. At first, I thought I was going to be stuck catching fish like this forever:

I caught four of them of this size. The next day I caught a walleye which made these look like monsters. I was somewhere between the fry piper and the fry whisperer. Luckily, a few days later I hooked into my first carp. This helped the confidence a little, but I wasn't willing to admit it was anything more than a fluke. Then the bass decided that it was time for some slightly bigger ones to start biting:

So at this point I'm starting to believe that maybe it's not all just one big coincidence, where fish happen to find a fly on their lip and I find them at my feet a bit later. I then hooked into a pike, more than likely because a botched cast which slapped the water a little harder than usual, but it ended up a long-distance release and an unraveling bugger.

Today I decided it was time to pull a carp out of the waters near my house, where I had been targeting carp on the flats since the day I first got the rod. Unfortunately, the carp were not being cooperative and were instead resting in the shade under the bridge rather than cruising the flats. I found out this did not mean they weren't hungry:

I was happy with this fish. While it was only about a foot and a half long, it meant that I had a least TWO fluke catches of carp rather than one. However, I still am not sure I can catch fish on anything besides wooly buggers, but not for lack of trying! So, not wanting to change flies while getting bites, I stuck with my favored #6 olive beadhead wooly bugger and a veeeeerrrrrrrry slow twitching retrieve. And I stuck a bigger carp:

This fish decided it was time my 8wt Allen Xa needed a real nice bend, which it duly received.

We'll see what kind of fish get to watch my flies tomorrow! Maybe I'll even land one. Until then, I'll work on getting to know the monkey that I have happily invited on to my back. I'm addicted, and I love it. My spinning rod, not so much.