Big fly fiber tip

[Diver Dan]

For those of us who tie gigantic Pike flies, big fly fiber is a must have item. However, there are occasions I'd like to have a color they don't make. I went to the dollar store in another town and found Halloween hair extensions, that had some great colors and even had a wide variety of mylar flash in it. These were worth the dollar apiece just for the flash. The problem with these is though, big fly fiber for the first few inches is very curly, giving the fly the appearance of bulk without making the fly heavy. These hair things I got at the dollar store were very straight top to bottom. To fix this I wrapped the first few inches around a small paintbrush handle and hit it with a hair dryer on high till it was good and hot. I let it cool on the handle. What I ended up with was a fiber with the same curly ends for the same distance as big fly fiber. Now I have fiber in more natural colors than I could get with big fly fiber and it cost me less to do it. I was inspired by Ard's wood series flies when I choose the colors.

[Rip Tide]

I've used Halloween wigs for my salt water flies for years.
With a clown style wig like this, I'll cut out very small clumps and tie in a tail, wing, belly and sides, high/low style. Then point a hair drier at it from the front and pull and straighten out the clumps to shape.
You can make a full profiled bait fish with very little material. Easy to cast, even a 4/0

[Diver Dan]

Great tip. Great colors too. What do those wigs cost?

[Rip Tide]

I have 4 of those curly wigs. Black, white, blond, and the "clown". I think that I paid around 2 bucks each with an after Halloween markdown.
I also have a bunch of other Halloween wigs. A "witch" wig of black and florescent white, a Lady Godiva blond, and a few others. The most recent was long multi-color found in the mark-down department at W*lmart. 50 cents.

[Jimmie]

Good looking fly Dan.
Timing is everything. Today I was looking at Crappie patterns. One had a red crinkle tail. I was thinking where would a guy get that material..............clown wig is the answer I would have never dreamed.

[MrEsox]

Very good idea...but what I often do is take some of those same stuffs but use markers on them. You can get such colors as red, yellow, black, blue, orange, etc in permanent markers. This helps give diff colors to flies or adds those must have touches. Also great for making spots or marks. I dont recomend using them on feathers or maraboo though

[Diver Dan]

Originally Posted by MrEsox

Very good idea...but what I often do is take some of those same stuffs but use markers on them. You can get such colors as red, yellow, black, blue, orange, etc in permanent markers. This helps give diff colors to flies or adds those must have touches. Also great for making spots or marks. I dont recomend using them on feathers or maraboo though

I do that too. I use permanent markers like sharpies and make the black bars for Fire Tiger patterns, Perch and such. They have a lot of colors and I like them a lot. It works good on synthetics, deer hair (bucktail).

[MrEsox]

OOO Dan...i'm lov'n that middle fly. A Clouser if Im seeing things right. I feel that when doing patterns for pike, bass, and musky things suck as that fly shows are a MUST. I've been work'n on a very large minnow pattern using EP Fibers. I've made 2 so far. The first one is very minnowie. A little black marker added to the back and sides to finish it off. The other one is a very nice sunfish type patter. Both are a bit too big for my 9wt to toss so an 11 or 12wt maybe in my future. I'd post picture of them but I cannot figure out how to do that yet. OH well. Back to your original posting, I agree with the wig and hair extention idea. If you look at some of the stuff such as super hair (i think its called super hair) this stuff is mostly used for topwater patterns. Such things as wigs and markers are easy and cheaper ways to get the mats for these things.