Finding More Than Fish

The last couple of days I was busy planning and researching for a trip this past weekend. To me this is one of the most enjoyable and exciting parts of any trip. Ones imagination tends to go a little wild at this point of the trip, you convince yourself that you are some how going to stumble upon some secret ” fish mecca”. This imaginary place holds every single kind of fish one could wish for and every fish is a “trophy”, also these fish have never seen an angler.

This place unfortunately is not real, well I do believe there are some true “fish meccas” left in the world. These places are unfortunately out of most of our price ranges, one must wonder what the cost of a trip to fish Mongolia’s famous taimen rivers.

The trip I recently went on wasn’t an extravagant trip by any means, it was only a day trip to a river north of Sault Ste. Marie that I have not fished before. what I have realized is that it’s not the amount and size of the fish you catch that make a trip memorable, it’s the company in which you share your trip with.

I was able to share this trip with my father, the one that first put a fishing rod in my hands. Ever since I moved away from home (8 hours away) I don’t get to fish with my dad that often and every time I get the chance I make sure to enjoy it.

Before this trip started I had visions of holding a 50 plus inch muskie with a giant buck tail fly hanging proudly out of its massive jaws, this of course never happened. I did manage to boat a hog of a smallie (ignore the obvious oxymoron I couldn’t avoid it..).

No it’s not a Muskie but a day on the water with the man who started you on the path of fishing is equally as memorable.

New Tubing from C.T.F.C

A few days back I was in touch with Stuart Anderson from The Canadian Tube Fly Company, they have been busy at work designing and developing tube fly products for years. This year they have come out with a large diameter tube specifically for larger pike, muskie, and saltwater flies. Along with this tubing, they designed a special mandrel to hold these tubes in any vise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the tubing has been designed so that it fits the existing tubing that they sell. When I tie my pike and muskie flies I don’t bother with stepping the tubing down at the head of the fly. The reason for this is because I have found that the step in the tubing creates a weak point in the fly, and these fish will put your flies through some serious torture, so I find it best to rid them of any potential weak points.

After tying a few flies, and fishing with this tubing I thought I would share some of my observations on this tubing.

• The larger diameter tubing helps give the fly a larger body, not very important with pike and muskie flies because we rely on the material for this, but still feature that could be utilized with certain patterns
• No junction tubing required! I use 6/0 hooks on my tube fly rigs and am able to slide the eye of the hook directly into the tube.
• It comes in Speckled colors too! When sliding the speckled tubing on the mandrel it helps to heat the tubing up a bit first, otherwise it will crack when you slide it on the mandrel.
• You can easily slide a tube fly rig through the fly.

Hope these tips help, try this tubing out if your into big flies! I will post soon about the new Egret Shanks from the Canadian Tube Fly Company so stay tuned.

 

 

 

Pike Buster – Baitfish Pattern

Often when we think about pike, and especially muskie flies we conjure up images of enormous foot long flies that have enough material in them to open a small fly shop. Now I’m not telling you that I don’t like these flies, quite the opposite in fact. These flies are an absolute blast to fish, and they will always have a place in my fly box.

You will, at some point probably fall victim to these massive flies, and for good reason….. there awesome!  That being said, I do have some issues with these flies. Firstly the time required to tie these flies is pretty demanding. Your looking at a good hour to tie one of these flies. Now there is nothing wrong with that if you have the time, but a lot of us don’t, and that’s life. The second issue I have with these flies is the amount of materials you burn through.

I would like to walk you through one of my favorite pike flies. It’s a quick and cheap fly to tie. It’s not a massive fly, it’s not even a fancy looking fly, it’s just a fly that catches fish. I never head out onto the water without several of these flies in various colors.

Lets begin,

Firstly attach your thread, I used a 5/0 Matzuo Sickle Octopus

For the wing and body I use Angel Hair. Tie it in reverse, so that when you fold the material back the fly will have more bulk and shape.

 

After you fold the angel hair back, tie in 4 or 5 pieces of Lateral Scale.

 

 

 

 

Next you will tie in clumps of Craft Fur, I tie the fly off at this point before I fold the craft fur back, I also add a drop of super glue for strength.

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To finish it off just slip on a Fish Skull and add some Living Eyes. Before I slip the skull on I add a couple drops of super glue and your done. This fly is incredibly easy to tie, to prove how easy it is, earlier this week I cut about 1/2 inch off my left middle finger and still managed to wipe this fly up in less than 5 minutes.

Hope you enjoyed this post! I am currently working on a better method for taking pictures so bare with me!

 

Take care and tight lines

Simple Smelt

I was asked to do a couple of tutorials on some flies i have had success with in the St Marys Rapids, and one of the flies requested was a smelt pattern. So I thought I would sit down and take you through a step by step of this fly.

Materials:

Tail: white/beige fox (I used wolf tail for this fly)

Overwing: blue fox, rainbow flashabou and peacock herl

Accents: clear lateral scale

Head: grey dun craft fur

Start by tying in the white fox tail, make sure you stagger the tips of the hair so that the wing has a nice taper to it.

Next is the blue fox fur, taper it just like you did with the white fox. I tie it in a little longer than the white fox to continue the tapered look.

After the blue fox is tied in the rainbow flashabou gets tied on top and the lateral scale on the sides. Remember that less is more when it comes to flash…… for the most part…… some of my pike flies consist of 90 percent flash….. the other ten percent is the hook.

Lastly is a couple of strands of peacock herl and then I tie the craft fur in with a dubbing loop.

I apologize for the quality and lighting of the pictures, in time I will update my pictures and plan on building a “photo booth” for step by step pictures.

Stay tuned for the next post, and feel free to email me if you have any ideas or want to see any specific topics or flies!

Thanks!

Im Back!

Hello Everyone,

After quite a long break I have decided to get the blog back up and running…… hopefully this time with a little more consistency. If all goes well I should be able to post once or twice a week.

For my first post back I am going to go through an order that was just sent up to the Misty Mountain Fly Shop.

This order was mainly to stock the shelves for bass anglers, that being said, you would still find these flies in my pike box and some of them in my brook trout box…….. those brookies can be vicious!

Of course when talking about bass, pike, and hungry trout we can’t help but picture those big beautiful surface strikes……. These fish can produce some memorable surface takes that will leave you speechless. These mouse and frog patterns are intended for that very purpose!

These rabbit strip streamers are another fly that drive bass and pike nuts! Something about that long rabbit strip makes fish go crazy! A little trick I discovered while tying these flies for pike is that if you use crosscut rabbit strips for the tail instead of the zonker style strips the tails tend to act a little more erratic. This is because the fur on the strip naturally lays to the side and the water is constantly “fighting” with the natural shape of the rabbit fur. I have had great success with these streamers for pike, in some cases I will substitute the craft fur head for a spun deer hair head if I want a streamer that stays higher in the water column.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I am looking forward to posting regularly.

Stay tuned for some of my favorite pike flies!

Chris

North Shore Tying Company