What are you tying while quarantined?

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.

I like those spider-hoppers. Those would work very well on the rivers and creeks I fish. Let me know how the dragonfly works for you. I have tied up some regular blue foam dragon flies with congo hair (EP Fiber-like synthetic) wings. Haven't had a chance to fish them yet so not sure if they will twist the line badly or not. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try them out sooner rather than later.

I took those flash-wing dragonflies out to test them. I'm very meh at this point. As far as twisting the line, the flash wings were superb. But they are not very durable, and I didn't get any sense of what fish think about them.

First off, it was not a day or time that I would normally have fished a topwater, much less a dragonfly. It was close to noon on a pretty cool and overcast day. No bugs flying in the air or landing on the water. But I was out and really wanted to see how this fly handled, so I tied on what I knew wasn't going to work.

Problem came when I was trying to throw a very tight loop under a tree with a sidearm cast. The leader smacked up against my fly line and twisted the entire leader. 100% casting error, and nothing to do with the wings. While I was un-fouling the lines, the flashing broke on one of the wings. When tied in all by itself, and perpendicular to the rest of the fly there is nothing supporting the flash. It is fairly brittle material and it just broke right off like when old deer hair dries out.

I cast it a few more times, and even unbalanced with one wing it still did not twist on me. But I can't see the flash wings holding up to fish for any length of time at all.

EDIT:
So here is a question for you seasoned fly tiers. I tied that flash wing in with a a single bundle of flash that made the wings on both sides. Tied it in a figure 8 pattern to keep it straight across. Would it be more durable to tie the left and right sides in separately?

Yes Sir as I stated before. Awesome thread! Some mighty fine flies!

"Blue Lady"

First attempt at a tapered, "cigar shaped" body. Need to smooth it out more, but overall, not too bad for a first attempt.

Tag: Oval silver tinsel
Tail: Yellow hackle
Rib: Oval silver tinsel
Body: Black silk
Throat: Kingfisher blue hackle
Wing: Blue dyed grey squirrel tail
Cheeks: Jungle-[censored] feather

I took this somewhat original number out for a spin at one of the recently opened state parks. As usual I spooked vastly more fish than I caught, but it was really fun to pitch this up on the bank and watch a big dark shadow dash out and crush it. Of course the bass then wrapped me in a tree and broke off, stealing the only one of these I had with me, but... still really exciting to watch. It was a good 4lb fish too.

I also got some smaller 8-12" fish on it before that as well.




It's more or less similar to the Belly Scratcher Minnow from Fly Fish Food and Bennet's lunch money, but the sort of conceit is that the unpainted lead eyes represent the "blue" of a bluegill behind the glued on eyes, plus I put in the yellow throat to represent the spawning bluegill coloration. It has a really nice tight wiggle action on a strip and the rabbit kind of flops around on a pause. I'm really happy with it, and I think it's by far the best "original" fly I've done (though obviously it hews pretty close to those others).

Hook: #6 B10S
Thread: 3/0 light yellow
Tail: "Grizzly"/natural zonker strip
Body: White crystal chenille
Throat: Pink fluoro fiber
Head: Dark tan, white, and yellow Senyo's laser dub.
Eyes: Small unpainted lead and 6mm stick on.

Tie in lead eyes, tie in chenille, bring the thread to the bend of the hook. Poke the hook through the rabbit, then slide it down to the "bottom" of the shank or the top of the fly. Tie in the rabbit at the back, then move the thread up to just behind the eyes. Touching turns of chenille up to the lead eyes, then tie off. Move thread just in front of lead eyes, then do a few strands of fluoro fiber and one stack of white dubbing. Tie off the rabbit in front of the lead eyes, and cut off close. Wrap to neaten the tie in, then do alternating stacks of tan (top) and white (bottom) dubbing going forward. The last stack is yellow on the bottom of the fly. Trim the head so the length of the top matches the length of the rabbit, and is rounded off in a bluegill-ish shape. The bottom can be a little longer to fill in the bottom of the profile. Then attach the stick on eyes using whatever glue you prefer. I did thick UV resin, because I find that easiest.

Glitchmo, I like that fly. As I was looking at the pictures I was getting a Lunch Money vibe with a different head. I imagine it will be a serious fish catcher.

And Rex, you continue to tie flies that are way too pretty to fish. Have you ever gotten a chance to throw them at Atlantic Salmon? If not, I know a pond with some giant bluegill that will eat anything. I am sure they have never seen a Blue Lady before.

Tying a shrimp right now. Final product to come

Quick but I think it'll work...

Unfortunately, the only time I have been near a Salmon, it was on a dinner plate.

I've just always been fascinated by these flies. I have definitely learned a lot by tying them and they are fun to do.

Bass will eat them, but it's not worth the effort. There are simpler patterns are way better bass flies.

I am not sure if I have ever tried one on Bluegill. It sounds like fun. .

Interesting question. There is a lot of varieties of flash materials available. For better durability, I would try a different material.

The challenge with figure 8 is keeping the wing from slipping out the side. A drop of super glue is good insurance.

Are those Briminators J-Moe?

I probably need to tie some up. I've got a couple I bought from BreamBugs, but now that I am tying my own flies that's a pattern I want to do.

Yes, they are variants of the Briminator pattern. Not true Briminators but they work for me.

Couple of Gargside Gurgler shrimp. I've been looking for a bigger shrimp pattern that will be loud and noisy in the water. Hopefully these will fit the bill. I left the head part of the foam pretty long and cut it into a shrimp tail shape. Thinking it will displace that much more water.




Even tied a couple in black so I can throw out in the surf after dark.


Now I just have to get down to the coast...

I usually give these away, but I tied this one for my own hat.

"Claret & Black" (sort of...)

Hook: Hat pin style
Tag: Oval gold tinsel and red floss, sub'ed for claret
Tail: Indian Crow sub
Butt: Black ostrich
Rib: Oval gold tinsel
Body: Red floss and red dubbing, sub'ed for claret
Body hackle: Black
Throat: Supposed to be widgeon, but the bag wasn't labeled, so, who knows...
Wing: Black goose
Cheek: Jungle C. nail feather

Nice job, looks really good.

I like those Briminators and those Gurglers, and as always, Rex made us a work of art.

I am keeping on the gamechanger kick and tied up some using zonker hair spun in dubbing loops over the top of finesse chenille with Chocklett's filler flash and Laser Dub on the hook. These swim very realistically. I will note that even though they are only about 3.5 inches long, with all of that rabbit hair they are definitely heavy (think of casting a wet sock). They can be cast on a 6wt but it is not a whole lot of fun, so I have been throwing them on my 8wt with no problems. Have caught some largemouth and striped bass on them so far.




I have also messed around with putting tails on my gamechangers, an idea I stole from Wes at Onion Creek Fly Company. These are the tails from Eastern Trophies Fly Fishing. The large tails look the best on the Frizzle Chenille Gamechangers (the olive one has a medium tail) and they swim very nicely. Only used them once but did catch a striped bass on the white one two weeks ago.




One problem I am still having is keeping the eyes on the fly. I am gluing them down and then covering with UV resin. To be thorough and try and get it figured out I am trying combinations of three different glues (Z-ment, Loctite and Liquid Fusion) and three different UV resins (Loon Flow, Gulff Classic and Solarez Thin). Currently I am working with putting a fairly large, almost unsightly amount of of the Gulff on the head of the fly to try and keep stuff locked down. Hope to field test it soon.

"March Brown" Salmon Fly - more or less

This Salmon pattern has been around since the 18th century.

OK, this fly has a lot of problems, but I tried several new techniques and materials. The Tag would look better at twice the length. The Tail is way too long and at a weird angle (had trouble with the tag kicking it up). The wing is too short. This is widest all turkey wing that I've done and it "shrunk" more than I expected when tied in. The rib spacing has issues, especially the 4th and 5th. First time to use partridge for a throat and it would look better with one less wrap, But, wow, it was easy to make throat with partridge. I need to work with it more.

Per Kelson's recipe:

Tag: Gold oval tinsel
Tail: GP topping
Body: Well... Kelson used a mixture of monkey and seal fur, but I don't have either of those. So, I just used some synthetic dubbing that I do have. 🙂
Rib: Gold oval tinsel
Throat: Partridge hackle
Wings: Mottled Turkey

Some good looking flies here guys. Rex really like them salmon flies. Have you ever messed around with flatwing streamer like the infamous "Grey Ghost"? Used to do a mess of them for the whitebass runs.

Thanks Bones, I am having fun learning to tie them. Yes, I have tied some flatwing style flies. That was the "gateway drug" that lead me down the dark path of trying to learn married wing Salmon flies.

I have not tried flatwings on Whites. That's a great idea, it would work. I need to try it.

Great looking ties, everyone!


I figured at some point I should probably learn an actual crayfish pattern, instead of just using brown or orange zonkers (though that works just fine.)

These are from one of Kelly Galloup’s recent videos. They’re just pine squirrel strips and sow scud dubbing, plus some rubber legs. I tied on a #6 daiichi 1710 bent 15-30 degrees about halfway down so it rides point up. Effectively it’s a jig hook, I guess.

Bass & Sunfish "test a fly"

My first attempt at tying a bluegill.



SB

Awesome thread!

"March Brown" Salmon Fly - Round two

Second attempt at this pattern. I completely misjudged the body color produced by silver monkey and "rusty orange" seal fur dubbing. Fortunately, someone showed me an example of the real thing. I still don't have any either of these materials, but it is shedding season...

I still need to work on my feather wings, but I'm much happier with this one than the first attempt.

Per Kelson's recipe:
Tag: Gold oval tinsel
Tail: GP topping
Body: Weimaraner (Yep, Chuck stood still too long... 🙂)
Rib: Gold oval tinsel
Throat: Partridge hackle
Wings: Mottled Turkey

Using your dogs hair is great.
If I tied a fly that pretty I would never fish with it.
Nice job.

For Memorial day

Just some "Tied Right" Clousers. Always for sale!

Time for some shad flies on Texoma!!!!!!

Well I've officially started down the gamechanger bunny hole. If I catch a fish on one of these I may never get out.

The top one is the Chocklett's game changer ribbon. It is all white and I added the black with a sharpie. Attempted to make a gill with a red sharpie, but it looks like a messed up smiley face.

The rainbow pattern used some generic white and olive synthetic fiber bundles I've had for years. They came in zip tied bundles like flash material. It is much more difficult to work with, but I like the result better. I need some practice on the technique though. I let the olive fiber roll over the top on me a little, so the other side of the fly is almost all white. Also, if you look close right under the eye is some red flash that was supposed to be a gill. I thought it was in the right spot while before I trimmed it, but now it just looks like a bleeding eyeball.

Those gamechangers look great. Typically the unweighted gamechangers float initially and then get waterlogged and end up a few inches under the surface on the retrieve. I find that bass tend to hit them very hard so once you start catching fish you are definitely going to want to tie some more.

Appreciate the tip. I'm experimenting with a belly scratcher weight now to make one that runs deeper.

I'd also like to note that I made the splines using paper clips. After just a little experimentation with my pliers, it is super easy to do and I knocked out about a dozen splines in a half hour sitting with the wife watching TV.

Never used paper clips for spines but I imagine they should work well. Since you don't have a second hook on the fly they shouldn't be under any real pressure so you don't have to worry about them breaking.

My favorite type of flies to fish are crawfish imitations. Been tying up several different patterns lately. The one I am most proud of is a pattern I came up with a few years ago that has proven very successful on a variety of species including bass, sunfish, carp and gar. It is I guess what you could classify as a guide fly since it is very quick and easy to tie. Tie in a zonker tail and some rubber legs at the rear then dub a body using Fly Tyer's Dungeon Sand Crab dubbing in a dubbing loop. These are size 4, but I have tied them as big as size 2 and as small as size 8. I tend to give my flies names so this one is the Linebreaker Craw, named so because the first fish I hooked on it was a nice bass that broke me off. Shortly after that I hooked a carp that also broke me off and voila, the fly earned a name.

I ended up with two versions of the spline that I tested for strength. For the first, I had one end that was just an eye and the other had an arm that got tied down to the spline (right one in pic). The second version had arms on both sides which got tied down with thread (left in pic).

To test, I tied up two splines of each design together as it would when you tied a fly. I then tied a piece of 30# mono to the ends and pulled with a scale. On the first, the eyes opened up at about 15# on the scale. One the second, I broke the mono at around 35# on the scale and the splines did not open.

Love this thread. Great baits.