Czeching it up

Simple tungsten nymphs. Short leaders. Stupid fish with crazy spotting. Success.

Pheasant Tail Jig Flies - Adding hot spots

I'm going to miss fishing dry flies. I've really fallen in love with it this summer and after the BWOs start to taper off, I can only hope to get lucky with some occasional surface action on midges.

That being said, I know it's time to start getting ready for a long winter of nymphing. I've had some major luck on pheasant tails with hot spots (mostly orange) and I've caught quite a few fish on jig patterns over the winter so making pheasant tail jigs is a no-brainer.

Incorporating some orange to your PTs can be done a few ways. Here are 3 different variations.

All flies are tied using:
Dohiku barbless jig hook, size 16
Ringneck Pheasant Tail
UTC Ultra Wire
Jan Siman Peacock Broze dubbing
Tungsten Bead

First up, the easiest way to do it. Add a colored tungsten bead and call it a day.


Next up, try adding a collar. Finish your fly with the natural colored thread, and have another bobbin waiting with some neon thread to add a color. For this, I used Glo-Brite hot orange floss. I like to size down the bead when adding collars, I just think it looks cleaner.


Finally, here's a variation where I swapped out the gold ribbing for some orange UTC.


It's also time to chase Salmon and Steelhead again. I'll be heading to SRNY in 14 days. Here's a sneak peak of an upcoming steelhead stonefly post.

Trying to get around the blowout

With everything looking like chocolate milk out here from 2-3 inches of rain yesterday, I headed an hour north to a tailwater that wasn't too blown out. We nymphed some deep pools, and threw CDC Caddis at sporadic risers until dark. Shane landed the only fish of the day, a small wild brown. I walked away with the skunk. No fish, but I love trout streams in early fall.




If you look down below the bridge in this shot, you'll see the where the creek leads into the Lehigh River which was absolute white water.


I lost this fly today to a bad tangle, a hot spot pheasant tail jig. It was my last one and I just whipped up a dozen more. Post shortly.


There was also one hell of a sunset.


Speaking of blowouts, this popped up on the iPhone shuffle rotation today. I miss the 90s.

3 things I want in a nymph right now

Anyone within a 50 mile radius of me right now can tell you that the water flows have not been cooperative for fly fishing. Just as it's clearing up today, I currently hear thunderstorms rolling through. It never ends. I'm just going to have to deal with it and make the best of the conditions.

That being said, I wanted to find a nymph pattern that will work in this messy water. I want it to:

1.Be a general representation of a natural food source, but nothing too specific. I dont think it needs to be detailed. The water is fast and murky. The fish aren't going to examine it in detail.

2.Be heavy as hell. It needs to slow down during the fast flows to have a chance of getting a strike.

3.Have some type of flashy attracting characteristics.


I think I found the one I'm looking for. I found a John Barr pattern called a Tung Teaser. He said he based it off a prince nymph, because the fish love the color scheme, but he still wanted it to look somewhat natural. I did a few tweaks to his original, but I can't wait to try it out. I love the flash under the thin skin. It gives it just enough sparkle, without making it look unnatural. I kept the biots a little longer to give it a tiny bit more movement. In hindsight, I might have overdid it with them, but I'll try them out anyway.

Size 16 Tiemco 2XL nymph hook (sorry, I forgot the exact #)
Tungsten bead - gold
.015 lead underbody
Uni-Thread 8/0 in brown
White goose biots
Jan Siman peacock bronze dubbing
Gold wire ribbing
Pearl Flashabou (bottom wingcase)
Mottled turkey thin skin (top wingcase)
Indian hen feathers (legs)
UV Epoxy (over wingcase and part of bead)

(click on the images for hi-res detail)

Jigga who?!

I'm definitely not talking about Jay Z (although Mr. Troutrageous has a great post about him apparently owning a trout stream). I'm talking about a pack of Dohiku jig hooks I bought two weeks ago and forgot about. In theory, jig hooks for nymphs make perfect sense, since the hook point will always ride up, reducing snags. The problem is that they are pricey!

I started just messing with them tonight and knocked out some attractor nymphs. I want to try these for Steelhead. The only common thing with these is they all have a .015 leaded underbody and a tungsten bead.



Well, I'm getting ready to hit the water. I haven't caught a trout in about a month and I need to break the skunk streak. Will post results later.

New goodies in the mail = new bugs

On Monday, I ordered over $50 worth of stuff from Performance Flies and I could not believe it was already here when I got home today. I picked up some dohiku nymph and jig hooks, some more UV quill body for Nick and myself, some glo-brite floss, and some Jan Siman dubbing in peacock bronze and UV bronze.


The stuff can get a little pricey because it's all imported from Europe, but it's fun to try some new material and I love using all of it. The dubbing really lives up to all the great stuff I've heard about it. I didn't get home until rather late tonight, but I had some time to knock out 3 bugs.

Dohiku barbless 1X nymph hook, size 14
Montana lucent tungsten bead, blue 7/64"
Glo Brite bright green floss (body)
Coq De Leon feathers (tail)
UV body quill- pearl (rib #1)
UTC ultra wire xsmall, gold (rib #2)
Jan Siman UV bronze dubbing

Father and son tying session

So, my wife went to the gym this morning and I had some quality time with the little guy. I wanted to have his first fly tied before his 2nd birthday, which is in two weeks so we decided to give it a go. The only things I did with this fly were putting on the bead that he chose, and whip finishing. He picked out the materials, held the saddle feather in one handle and with my help, actually wrapped it on the hook with the bobbin. The cotton chenille was all him. I was extremely proud of him. He started clapping after he finished it. I asked him what it was called and he said "green cow games mommy".

So, here it is..the Green Cow Games Mommy streamer.


But daddy also got some time in on the vise this weekend. I'm too lazy right now to post up any detailed shots/recipes, but I knocked out some orange and blue copper johns, more euro-style tungsten nymphs, a new baetis nymph to replace a pheasant tail (which I'm really digging so far), and the early stone pattern I read about on "This River is Wild". I did switch that stone up a bit though. After reading Charlie Craven's article in this month's Fly Fisherman on CDC for nymphs, I swapped out the starling for black palmered CDC (which is a pain in the butt to wrap properly!) If anyone wants detailed shots of these, or recipes, let me know and I'll post them.





Oh, and by the way, I tried to fish today. I hit the Little Lehigh and didn't even last an hour. The water was dark green, about 3 feet higher than usual, and had some RIPPING current. I had a few chases on a slumpbuster, but that's about it. Unfortunately, it was a skunked weekend.

But...will it catch fish?

I sat down at the vise tonight and realized that it's been nagging me that I can't find a good use for this Shaggy Dub that I bought a few months back. I've been tying a lot of caddis pupa and a lot of euro nymphs, so I decided to combine them along with the shaggy stuff.

Here's the outcome. This will have a TON of movement in the water, and still somewhat resemble a natural food source. I kept the rubber legs longer so I can trim if needed.

I think I might wind up tweaking it to make the body a little thicker, but the question remains...will it catch fish? Good news is that I just got permission from the wife to hit the Salmon River in NY the second weekend of April. While all the meat chuckers will be chasing stockies in my backyard, I'll be battling chrome. I can't wait.

To get the rubber legs to hold like that, I applied the same technique I used in my first tutorial video on tying rubber legs. It's pretty much the same thing, just smaller material.

Size 10 scud hook
Tungsten Nymph Head bead
body - chartreuse floss
ribbing 1 - UV quill body (graphite)
ribbing 2 - UTC ultrawire XS, chartreuse
thorax - Senyo Shaggy Dub, Orvis brown squirrel dubbing with a touch of rust colored ice dub

In other news, I got an email from Feather Craft last week advertising some full ringneck pheasant skins for $20 so I decided to pick one up. I was pretty floored when I got it in the mail today. This thing is so beautiful that I almost don't want to pluck a feather off it. This is gonna make some amazing stonefly wingcases, mayfly wings, and nymph gills. It's about two times larger than I thought it would be too!

More Euro-style...

I'm digging these Nymph head beads




I also knocked out another czech nymph, this time in caddis green.

Some bugs to wrap up the week, and a great deal on tying material

Before I get into all the bugs I just made, I thought I'd let everyone know that CABELAS HAS 30% OFF ALL TYING MATERIAL RIGHT NOW! It's a great time to stock up on basics and maybe some pricey stuff you've been avoiding for a while. They aren't really announcing it on the site, but if you go to the fly tying section, everything is discounted. Just trying to save my readers a few bucks :)


I finally got some time to sit down at the vise tonight and play with some of the new materials I bought yesterday.

I've never been much of a czech nymph person, but this pearl braidback was just begging to be used. It looks great as shell back.

Size 8 scud hook
.020 round lead wire
Sybai pearl braidback (pink)
Dubbing:
- rear - Harelin Hare's ear plus mixed with Orvis ice caddis green
- hot spot - Orvis Spectrablend scud in pink
- front - Spiky squirrel mixed with black hare dubbing
UTC French tinsel in gold (under rib)
4X Tippet (over rib)


I also started to test out these Dohiku barbless hooks. I love the shape of them. I also really dig the way the UV quill gives it a tiny bit of glow.

Dohiku barbless wet hook size 16
black matte tungsten bead
stripped peacock (rib 1)
pearl UV Quill Body (rib 2)
UTC ultra wire, small, orange (rib 3)
Harelin Hare's ear plus mixed with Orvis ice caddis green


I also tried one with a floss body. Keeping the stripped peacock out of the equation allowed me to make a much thinner body.

Dohiku barbless wet hook size 16
black matte tungsten bead
pearl UV Quill Body (rib 1)
UTC French Tinsel, gold (rib 2)
Spiky Squirrel dubbing, olive
olive green floss (generic)

Taste the rainbow (nope, not eating trout)

I stopped by the Orvis shop on my way home tonight and picked up some orange zonker strips, some wire, some flash, some lead, and some really nice dubbing. I also realized I hit Angler's Pro Shop over the weekend and never even pulled out the stuff I bought there to use. I didn't have much time tonight but I decided to work on a few attractor nymphs. I got some really cool rainbow flashabou that I thought would look neat as ribbing. Between that and a mix between olive squirrel dubbing and some olive brown ice dubbing, I came up with some interesting patterns that I can't wait to try out. I love the multi-color effect on the ribbing.

I tied all on scud hooks, using tungsten beads in size 16 and 18. I ribbed with the flashabou and small gold UTC ultrawire. I tried one with a dubbed body. I really dig this squirrel dubbing and I want some more in different colors. It's really buggy.
All have a single strip of pearl flashabou for the wing case.

Preparing for the thaw

We got about an inch of snow last night. That's the 2nd time in two days. This really needs to end. It's getting old. The good news is that spring is right around the corner, and the big thaw will be starting shortly. That means high fast water and big patterns.

I took some time to knock out some zonker slumpbusters in a variety of colors to be prepared for it.

All were tied on size 6 Mustad streamer hooks, regular zonker strips, tungsten cone head beads, UTC medium copper wire, Lagurtun French Mini-Flat braid for the body, and have a .015 leaded underbody. They are paperweights for sure.





In other news, I had an interesting weekend. I found myself rather drunk, and getting a tour of the Yards Brewery at 10pm on Saturday night. Being a huge fan of the brew, I was in heaven. I even got to try different types of malt. But when we got to the bottling section, I felt like I was in an episode of Laverne and Shirley.

A little announcement

Hey everyone. Sorry for the lack of posts so far this week. Been working a lot and haven't had much time in front of the vise, or on the stream. I promise to get some new patterns posted tomorrow (lots of them!)

For tonight, I'd like to take a few minutes to let you all know about our newest (and first) site sponsor. They are called Rip Lips Fishing and their website is riplipsfishing.com. They are based out of Connecticut. I found these guys originally through Ebay, because they have great deals on Tungsten beads for tying. I've tied quite a few patterns with their beads (and caught quite a few fish with them!) so it's only fitting that I support them. If you go to most fly shops, you'll be able to pick up 20 tungsten beads for around $8-10. These guys have them at $11.99 for 100 packs! It's a great deal. They also have flies, fly boxes, and other fishing gear. Feel free to check out their site and stock up.

Here's a sneak peak at one of the new patterns I tied with their beads. I call it the Citrus CJ.

Size 16 2XL Nymph hook
UTC ultra wire - brassie (Chartreuse)
Peacock Herl (thorax)
Goose biots - tan (tail)
Hungarian Partridge (legs)
Sili skin - pearl (wing case)
Rip Lips Tungsten Bead (hot orange)
UV Epoxy