The magic mystery egg, and some carp flies

Let me set the stage for you. We are at the Fly Fishing show in Somerset last month, and my brother-in-law and I are having a discussion with one of the featured fly tiers there on epoxy use. All of a sudden, a very short, very old guy walks up and slams a jar full of water on the table. Inside it, there are about half a dozen of the craziest looking egg patterns I have ever seen. They look like they are covered in yolk, and almost glowing.

He said he was selling them for $12 a dozen and would not say what they were made out of. The tier we were talking to, and the one immediately next to him instantly grabbed their wallets and bought a dozen of them without question. They were that awesome looking. One of them said to us "We do this for a living, and this is some crazy sh*t. You don't come across stuff like this too often." I was already maxed out on my spending limit, but Nick decided to pick up a dozen.

I had all but forgot about them, but then Nick lets me know that he hit two trout on them yesterday and everyone else got the skunk. He went out today, and landed another 4 bows without changing flies all day. I asked for one so I could try to figure out WTF it was made out of.

The good news is, I think I figured it out. The bad news is, I need some of the material to see if I'm right. They really don't look like much when dry.



But, once you get them wet, they absorb the water like a sponge, almost doubling in size, and have this crazy glow to them.


I'm going to pick up some of the material this weekend and try to recreate them. More on that later.

In other news, there's a very small creek that is a few minutes away from my work. It's in a township park, and it runs alongside this small lake (ok..more like a large pond) that holds a good amount of largemouth, crappie, bullhead cats, and some pretty damn big carp. The thing with the lake and the park is that it's basically on a flood plain, and more than an inch of rain means the lake overflows into this small creek. Over the years, some of the monster carp have made their way into the creek and have pretty much just stuck around there, along with bass, cats, and even a few odd goldfish over a foot long that people have released over the years.

I've never taken a carp on a fly rod and I'm ready to go after them. I stopped by this creek tonight on my way home. It was almost dark but I saw exactly what I was hoping to see, a few carp, between 6-10 lbs, surfacing and pretty active. That made me get pretty excited to knock out some carp flies. I started doing some quick research on them, since I barely know anything about them. I remembered seeing the "armored car" san juan pattern and I found it on Rough Fisher's site. I dig this pattern, and I think it might even work on trout. It would be nice to fish a SJ without needing shot. They were fun and easy to tie as well.

Lightening Strike Scud hook, size 8
Uni-Thread 6/0 (color to match chenille)
Ultra Chenille
Brass bead
UTC ultra wire - medium (color to match)