I've found that being basically quarantined at home has really upped my productivity at the tying bench. Decided to try and finish filling up my Cliff Box with gamechangers. In the past two weeks I've tied about 20 in various sizes and using a variety of different materials. Next up is tying one of the Arctic Fox gamechangers using the recipe found on Chase Smith's YouTube channel.

First off is my first micro gamechanger, this one using marabou for the tail, hen saddle over palmer chenille for the body and a bit of finesse chenille at the head so the eyes have something to adhere to. This has a 6mm tail shank, four regular 6mm shanks, an 8mm shank and a size 6 Owner Mosquito hook.


Next is a couple of gamechangers tied with a marabou tail and frizzle chenille body. These have four 10mm shanks (one tail shank, three regular shanks), a 20mm shank and a 2/0 Mosquito hook. Most of the gamechangers I have tied have been done using frizzle chenille since the three different size chenilles allow you to build in a taper that requires no trimming. The red craw one worked very well last weekend when fished over grass.



The next one has a finesse chenille body that is then trimmed to shape and a marabou tail. This one has the same shank profile as the frizzle chenille ones.


Then I decided to mess around with the CCT Body Fur, which I have had for a while but never used since there is so much trimming. These six have the same shank profile as the frizzle gamechangers and feature marabou tails.



While playing around on YouTube I saw a Polar Fiber Gamechanger recipe from Fly Fishing the Ozarks and decided to give it a shot. He uses a rear hook in addition to a front hook but I tied mine with a single hook only, subbing a 20mm shank for the rear hook. But on future flies I think I may sub two 10mm shanks instead of one 20mm to get more wiggle. This one has a shank layout of 10mm tail shank, two 10mm shanks, 20mm shank (the hook substitute), 15mm shank, 20mm shank and a 2/0 hook. Uses polar fiber brushes over palmer chenille with a marabou tail. Took this one fishing two weekends ago and it swims the best of all the ones I have tied. Looks almost just like a real fish, with the polar fiber breaking very well. It is pictured here with a finesse gamechanger.


Last are a few different gamechangers, including some using gamechanger chenille, all with the same shank layout as the frizzle ones. From top: gamechanger chenille, frizzle chenille, gamechanger chenille, frizzle chenille.


And finally is an update on the box I am trying to fill. All gamechangers except for the top left ones, which are Sugar Shakers. The Sugar Shaker is basically a rabbit zonker gamechanger tied with dumbbell eyes created by Josh Smitherman from Living Waters Fly Shop in Round Rock. An excellent crawfish imitator that really moves and breathes in the water.

I started making this .I am going to make 2 of them.

That looks great. My brother sunk some in the retention pond his home backs up to and has had good luck catching fish off them. Bass live there pretty much yearround but a few times a year he catches crappie off them.

Yesterday, I put on replacement glass beads for the eyes on 4 well used shrimp flies. Fish eventually rip off the eyes, but I can melt in new ones to the monofilament posts. UV cure repaired a couple redfish crack that had damage and loose dumbbells and thread wraps around the hook eye. Redfish crack is a super durable pattern, but the fish can eventually loosen up the head area.

Haven’t tied in a while. Been working on my garden and some house projects like painting during this Covid-19 deal. I Need to tie some small balanced leeches in blue black with chartreuse tails. Those have been absolutely deadly on catfish and bluegills, but I’m all but out of the size 8, one beat up one remains. Caterpillars are falling by the thousands into the water and the fish are going crazy for them. These balanced leeches in that color and size work great, but nothing else, topwater or subsurface, I’ve tried seems to do much good other than blue black Simi seal, red tying thread with chartreuse marabou tails. Slightly bigger balanced leeches in the same color will get a catfish or two, but the smaller, tent caterpillar sized, very lightly weighted balanced leech works best.

It’s been a fish about every cast with the right size and color leech. Been using my 2 weight CGR and 2-3 pound channel cats are a hoot on that rod. Caught the biggest redear sunfish I’ve ever seen, thing was massive, well over a pound. The 2 weight makes even ordinary sized bluegills seem like they are something. Forrest tent caterpillars are the worst I’ve ever experienced. Can’t fish without them crawling and falling on me. Their poop blackens any smooth surface under a tree. I stand on the boat tied to the dock and cast to the same water over and over and there’s almost an endless supply of fish churning the water for these caterpillars. Water and live oaks hang over the boat and drop the worms in the wind.

Bead head and unweighted Woolly bugger didn’t work either. When doesn’t a woolly bugger not catch fish? A small sneaky Pete will get a strike or two. Other things I’ve tried don’t seem to work. Other colors in balanced leeches haven’t worked either. Odd, fish are.

Might tie today. Have some more garden work, but pretty open after that. I like to fish late in the afternoon as the wind gets up, that stimulates the feeding frenzy. Hope to have a few fresh balanced leeches to combat these fish. Worm hatch is bound to wind down soon, got to get in on it while it lasts.

Awesome thread!

Dusted off the vise today for a "Rusty Rat":

That looks great Rex!

Another thing that has come out of the quarantine is a lot of great tiers are tying live on Instagram each night. Last night Matt Bennett was tying on the Umpqua Instagram account and Brandon Bailes was tying on his Panther Branch Bugs account. If anyone here is an Instagram user then check it out. I know Umpqua has different people on each night.

Following Brandon's video last night I took a whack at tying his Hatchling Craw, a micro craw pattern I have heard a lot of good things about but never fished or tied. This one is on a size 10 B10S, but Brandon says he regularly ties them down to size 14 and has on occasion gone as small as size 16.

Prep for summer striper season

Some clousers because I lose them at an alarming rate and they catch fish at an alarming rate. A marabou muddler because I saw the Kelly Galloup video, and crease flies because they’re fun and I had some hooks and precut foams sitting around. Aside from the tail it’s more of a painting project than a tying one, and as you can see I am very bad at painting. But, by trial and a lot of errorI’ve learned a lot about what glues are compatible with which paints?

Man ya'll are tying up some impressive bugs.

Glitchmo I really like them Crease Flies.

Thanks!

The construction is solid, I'm just a terrible artist. They worked really well last summer for striper. But so did every other fly on those days, so...

My most recent project is for my dad, who lives out west. On his local river the hot bug right now is a March brown. And since I don’t really have anything better to do I’m tying him up a batch of dries.



This is my effort at Morrish’s May Day in a March brown color scheme. 12s and 14s. It’s basically a hackle stacker, except you use a post or in my case a loop of EP as the support, then build it into a wing up front. These are based on the Charlie’s fly box tutorial. Dubbing is blend of about 4 colors of sow scud, which is the main “nymph” dubbing I have, tail and post and wing are all sand colored EP. Hackle is standard brown. The tail color is a little lighter than I'd want, but I don't have anything darker that would work for this application, and I killed my brown sharpie.

Progress!



Added some parachutes and some “standard” dries. Cripples tomorrow then I have to figure out how to mail things anymore....

Those March Browns look great.

It's been about 5 years or so since I've tied a fly. These look a little rough, but they should do for the pond bass and panfish. Handful of spider-hoppers and a dragonfly I made just because I had a skinny piece of foam left over. I absolutely love a foam dragonfly on a pond, but almost anything you make the wings from causes twisting like crazy. I thought a sparse bit of flash may be just enough to catch some light like a wing without causing the twist.




I am really excited to try this one out. Just a clouser minnow using barbs of a turkey feather. No idea how it will look or run in the water, but it looks really good and buggy to me.

Yeh man, them March Browns look real good. I used to tie up the Mr. Rapidan for that hatch in the Shenandoah National Park. I liked the Mr. Rapidan better than the conventional ties because I could see it better and on the rough pocket water and plunge pools it rode a little higher in the water but brookies did slime it up pretty bad even when substituting Antron for the usual yella calf tail wings.