nice!

Whew, nice fish Dave! Fatty.

What is that fly in it's mouth? Even at 1600x1200 it looks like a bunch of sparkly chenille.

That is great. I would love to hook one that big. (fish envy now)

nice man

Sick. Nice work Dave.

Hey Dave. That's awesome!! Good to hear from you!! Going to Athens this weekend?? See ya there.
Troutbum

10 pounds even...

fly was a variation on a flatwing pattern i've been messing around with lately, but yeah what you see is lots of crystal chenille derivatives.

Dave,
If you have a chance, could you post a pic of the fly?
Les

Great job Dave! That's a nice fish.

You in Scott's boat?

Rex

Thats a hog Dave, did yall catch quite a few?

We caught about 20 fish, most of em 5 pounds, Scott got a pair of 8's and I got the kicker... we launched his Whaler on the Okie side, yeah...

SWEET! Awesome fish Dave, congrats.

It's always fun to see someone catch there personal best. Especially before they have to return to the working world.

My best fish of the day? I made a cast and watched the tip of my Axiom rod go sailing through the air and make a splash. A Striper nailed the fly while I was trying to strip the tip back in. Maybe Dave can post the pic. I'm not smart enough to figure out how on this website.

In fly fishing poker Catfish are wild.

Super fish there Dave. Looks like there was a little smoke on tha water that day! So what were you fishing with? Rod, reel, line leader and fly?

congrats on the PB dave

TFO TiCr 6wt (irrelevant); STH MR-Pop (irrelevant); SA Streamer Express, 200gr, 6" per second sink rate (extremely RELEVANT); flat wing streamer (irrelevant but SEXY).

Cool. We require fly pr0n. These flat wing streamers sound interesting and there is surprisingly little info on them on the Google machine. Got any pr0nO photos of said fly?

Flatwings?

Old style of fly, here are three links Google turns up on the first results page if you put in "flatwing"

http://www.flyfishsaltwaters.com/rhody_flat_wing.htm

http://flyfisherman.com/ftb/kaflatwings/index.html

http://www.danica.com/flytier/dduran/flatwing.htm

Now a flatwing is nothing more than a fly with a support off the bend (bucktail, but, I'm using a loop of monofilament as below in the pictures) and a hackle feather tail, but the important part is that the tails are tied in long (and usually saddles) and tied in 90 degrees off the way feathers are usually tied in. Usually we put the flat side parallel with the hook if viewed by the side. On a flatwing, if you look at the side it basically disappears. The theory is that the feather has more motion side-to-side. Hold a feather in your hand by the butt. Try to wiggle the tip towards the butt. Not much motion there. Now wiggle the tip side to side, there ya go.

That being said, here is three pics of the fly that caught the above striper, and another color rendition of the same pattern. I dub thee.... FLOAD:







alt.fload:





and now back to fishing....

Scott's "loose tips sink ships":

Cool. Thanks for that mini tutorial - that clears it up. I had found some of those but they somehow didn't look like what I saw in the fishes mouth. Getting a fly wet does change the profile!

Kinda interesting and makes sense. The feather's broad view facing the vertical plane. All the old stuff is coming back round again cuz it works! I started tying up some Blondes lately, now to try them out.

That big head on the front, that's not in the web photos. I expect that it pushes a lot of water?

As I already said on 3/3:



It's not a flatwing, it's a variation. In fact I will go so far as to say it's a "new" or "newish" fly and that is the only reason I would consider naming it. The fly now has a name: fload. Fload = Flashy, Flatwing Toad.

Anybody who knows me knows I'm not a fan of naming a "new pattern" simply because of all the noobs that are constantly naming Woolly Buggers, Clousers, and Half-n-Halfs.

But there are new patterns, occasionally, and they always borrow from old ideas. I tied a flatwing on a hook and decided to use the method that you see on Dan Blanton's flies where you create the two-tone effect with a strip of chenille on top. In the end, the chenille on top flattened my head, and it gives an interesting appearance, and action. Since the flat head kind of resembles the toad (tarpon fly) by accident at first, then, by design because I encouraged the flattening of the head and the shape, I give a little tribute to the toad in the name.

I must admit the toad really needs to give tribute to the Merkin, but, let's leave that for a different discussion.

So.

What you see in the mouth of that 10 pound striper is a fload, a new fly pattern that I have invented if you still believe patterns can be invented. You don't see the tail of the fly in the picture, because we netted the fish and I weighed it and then lipped it for a photo. During all that, the fly rotated in the hook wound hole so that the tail was poking out of the mouth, and it is being hidden by the fish.

I have long since lost my desire to sit down at the vise in order to "create new patterns" since everything ends up reflecting the past. However, this is one of a handful of patterns that I did create mostly through accident, and trial and error. I like the fly, obviously, kind of proud of it, but the important thing to remember is that the fly pattern is one of the LEAST IMPORTANT keys to success in that fishery.

I just thought I'd go ahead and answer the queries on tackle, fly, etc. to kind of stay in the sharing mindset.

thats cool Dave - it looks great and thanks for sharing it.

Speaking of PBs,
I caught my PB freshwater drum, at 5.5 lbs this morning at LLELA, which gave me an awesome fight on my 4wt. I caught him on a chartruese and black clouser

nice fish thread hijacker

Indeed a nice hijack! But the fly tutorial is primo.
Thanks dave

Hijack!??! Not that bad of a hijack!
the original topic thread was "personal best" so at least it fits the topic! LOL!