Fallser

If I'm not fly fishing, which is most of the time Mepps style in-line spinner 1/16 to a 1/4 oz jig with a 2 or 3 inch curly tail grub, depending on species and water depth. 3 inch Yozuri or Rapala minnow, floater or floating shallow diver(2 to 5 feet) Fly fishing Foam sliders that I can fish either as a top water or subsurface with an intermediate of sinking line.

No, I twisted/furled a piece of the material tied the furled piece in at the hook bend, laid one tag end and wrapped it down on the shank with thread, then wrapped the other tag end up the hook shank to the head. I think you can see in the picture that the body is a bit thicker than the tail. I've tried that with small Fin-S minnows, and they came off after a couple of casts. Figured I could tie flies with similar profiles. I've been tempted to pick up some of the more realistic hellgrammite soft plastics and give them a try. I've got to place and order with Barlow's and Jann's Netcraft. I may order a pack if they have them

Those flies look good, guido. Lots of spare time here, too bloody cold to go out so I've been tying a bit. I don't think I posted these before. If I did, I'll blame it on a senior moment. Some Ned flies. They're tied on 1/20 oz Ned jigs I dropped a couple of them in a jar of water. This is what they look like sitting on a relatively flat bottom. These are based on the "Booby Fly" popular in England and somewhat in the States for trout. These are made for bass. I made the eyes from worm floats I once used for fishing nightcrawlers for walleyes.

Nice job. Looks like a Muddler Minnow on a jig. I use to tie deer hair flies, but got a little too OCD when trimming them and often ended up with a deer hair cylinder on the hook, not to mention the bits of deer hair I tracked all over the house.

I've been going to a lodge in NE Ontario for about 30 years. When we first started going up, the lodge provided a box with pots, pans, utensils, grill top, potatoes, onions, coating mix and a can of bake beans to take with us if we wanted to do the a shore lunch, of course we had to catch the fish. The standard Canadian shore lunch is fried fish, home fries and onions and baked beans. Here's a couple pictures of me cleaning a fish, most likely a walleye and, I think, bringing the fillet over to bread it and put it on to cook. Because of a fire risks, some canoers camping on the backside of the island the lodge is on didn't make sure they're fire was out and almost burned the lodge and its cabins down was probably the main reason, they started supplying propane stoves, which took the fun out of doing a shore lunch. We haven't done a shore lunch since.

I'd go with this as the source. "A beautiful bunch of ripe banana (Daylight come and we want go home) Hide the deadly black tarantula (Daylight come and we want go home)" I either carry a banana or an apple with me, along with lunch when I'm fishing from a boat or carrying a lunch with me if we're hiking into a lake.. Don't think I have to worry about spiders hiding on one banana.

They just opened one within a reasonable drive for me, about a half hour. I went to it with a couple of fishing buddies on Tuesday. They had a good selection and the prices were similar, maybe a bit cheaper than Cabela's/Bass Pro. I know we're not going to be driving the two hours to the nearest Cabela's or the hour and a half to the nearest Bass Pro anymore. They even had a decent selection of fly tying materials.

I have a first aid kit in the car, similar to the one pictured. I just have to remember to change out the antibiotic and burn creams every year or two. I started carrying some Band-Aids with me after I got to close to the mouth of a snapper blue when I was unhooking it and had to fish the rest of the day with my finger wrapped in my handkerchief. I've only had hooks in me twice. Once when a smallmouth drove the treble stinger hook I was using with a slug-o into my finger. I live in a major metropolitan area, and if you walk into the ER you're going to be waiting a while. This was before the fancy trick with the mono was around. I went home, numbed the finger with ice, and pushed it through, cut off the point and eased it out. Went to my doctor the next day, he told me I did a good job and gave me a tetanus shot. The second time I ended up with fly stuck in my ear lobe, a friend was able to remove it without any problem, the hook was barbless. What he told me was a hook will make a "tunnel" as it goes in and pops out of it when it settles. The trick was getting the hook back into the "tunnel" and it will come right out. This only works with barbless hooks. I always have a couple of bottle of water and some snack/nutrition bars in the car. A fire striker in the glove compartment, a wool blanket and a space blanket, shovel and flares in the back.

I think you're right. Now that a name's been thrown out. I think they were called slider jigs when I brought them. I'll see how they work and then go looking for some more.

I call them "map" pins. I pick them up in the craft stores. They're a straight pin with a round plastic head. I think they run around $5 for a hundred. They're mixed colors white, black, red, orange, green, blue and yellow. They come in what I call a medium and large size. If you look the two in the back tied on the Ned jigs in the first picture. The "olive" ones are the large size and the black ones are medium. I was wondering what to do with the other colors, and realized I could use permanent markers to change colors. So the "olive" ones are white ones I colored with an olive permanent marker. What I do is figure out how far I want them to stick out and bend the pin, so that when I tie them in along the side of the shank they spread apart and sit above the claws.

I awhile ago someone posted a "woolly bugger" jig. Taking a cue from that I decided tie my best producing crayfish fly and tie it on some jigs for myself and the guys I fish to use with our spinning tackle. It's a mish-mash of jigs, two on Ned jigs, two on a flat jig, and one on a round jig. I plan to tie a dozen or so we each get a couple to try. A group shot One tied on a Ned jig One tied on a "flat" jig. If anyone knows what style jig it is I'd appreciate the information

Most of the jig I have collars. You have to adapt your tying methods. These are both tied on collared jigs. One has a crayfish profile and the other a bait fish profile. The difference is the length of the wraps. The shorter thread wraps on the crayfish pattern allows the hair to flair more and the wraps on the bait fish pattern is pretty much the length of the jig collar and is more compressed. You can do the same thing on a jig without a collar. newriver, another thing I would suggest is a hair stacker if your going to tie buck tails. Put them in butt first, tap it a couple of times and you even out the butt ends. Hold the longer hairs you want to use and weed out the shorter ones and fuzz you might have picked up when you cut them off the tail. What I also do, and it might be a fly tying habit, is put them in tip first. It evens the tips, and give you another shot at weeding out shorter hairs you don't want in the buck tail.

I've never had a fish straighten out a hook. I've had a couple come back straighten by snags if it was a jig I just tossed it, a lure I just replace the hook. I've had them come back opened up but most times I can bend them back, mainly jig hooks. Not sure how many times that can be done before it breaks. I'm mainly a fly fisherman, the hooks I use by your definition would be light wire. I do use straight shanked bass hooks and jig hooks for some of my flies, but they're either standard wire or light wire ones. I'm a member of what they call the twenty-twenty club meaning I've caught a 20 inch trout on a size 20 hook. That's mighty thin wire. I use Eagle Claw Aberdeen Crappie hooks for my crayfish patterns, but at 3/0 they're less flexible than the smaller sizes. As mentioned if a fish straightens hook, it's probably a cheap, badly made hook or from a bad batch of a good hooks.

That's one reason most of my flies are unweighted. My Clousers, that I use, and my crayfish patterns are tied with just enough weight(dumbbell eyes) to make sure they sit hook point up. I sometimes use lead wire and the bead heads I use will get the get the fly down to where I need it. Fortunately, I build my own rods so I can repair most problems. Over the years I've turned a couple of fly rods that I broke off a few inches of the top into spinning rods. I had an 8 1/2 foot 5 wgt, that I broke a couple of times and ended up with a 7 foot 8 wgt. I still have what's left of it as a parts source.

On both sides, fly fishing and spin fishing, I've caught most the already mentioned ones. Chain pickerel, crappie, rock bass, bluegills, green sunfish, trout, carp, large golden shiners, pike, small musky, bowfin, a couple of walleye. When I was in college in NW Tennessee, a lot fresh water drum. No catfish, yet.

I thought it might be an albino largemouth, but they literally are white. What else caught my attention was the eye color. It's a lot lighter than any bass I've caught. I went looking for largemouth bass eye color. It's amazing what you can find on the internet. This is from a western bass board, dated 2009. I think it might answer the question. "Have a question about bass eye color. Yesterday at Anderson, at the South end of the lake caught a few 12" bass all with orange eyes. In the North end of the lake caught a few same sized bass but these had golden eyes. The water temp in the South was 62 in the North 58. Otherwise their coloring was exactly the same, silver whitish sides very little green pattern."

I had a similar problem when I was trying to make a smaller version of an in-line spinner bait I had picked up at a fishing flea market. The guy was selling them as a striper lure. It measured about 8 inches long. I made up a couple of bass size ones but wasn't getting any blade action. Turned out I was using too small a blade for the size of the in-line spinner. I re-did them with a larger blade but still only got intermittent blade action. I redid them again using a clevis with a Colorado or French blade. This style uses a single hook. I'll have to look at a Siwash hook. I still use barbless treble hooks on my Mepps style in-line spinners. I got mine from Jann's Netcraft. They're listed as In-Line Blades. The blurb below tells you they're used without a clevis.

I'm don't think it's craft fur. Definitely artificial though. I also can't figure out how the bulk of the material slows a 1/2 oz or 3/4 oz jig down. It looks like it does have some bucktail in it. The shorter hairs behind the jig head. An interesting looking Crystal Flash. I like to find that. Some streamer hackle, though I can't tell how many. Maybe two, possibly four. I've got a bunch of artificial hairs. Some I've never used, mainly because they bulk up like that. It's not what I look for when I'm tying a bait fish pattern. I'll take a look and maybe I can give you a name for it. I can't believe they want $15 for it. Maybe it's the fancy jig head.

On line, Feathercraft and the Fly Fishers shop are the ones I use most often, decent selection of materials and good service. I often buy hooks from Barlow's and Jann's Netcraft, particularly for my bass flies and some items that are no longer popular in Fly Fishing catalogs. Locally, there's a TCO fly shop. My sister gave two gift cards, a belated one for my birthday and one for Christmas. I've got $175 to spend, maybe part of it on a new intermediate line for my 8 wgt and the rest on hooks and materials. If you're planning on tying dries for trout, then I would suggest you get a decent neck, a grizzly neck would be a good choice, other wise the necks you mentioned would work for bass and other warm water patterns.

I got hit with a large Clouser in the back of the head when I was learning to fly fish in salt water. I still don't tie heavily weighted flies. A 9' 6 wgt. It's my primary bass rod. 1/20th and 1/32 oz aren't really that heavy for a 6 wgt. A large tungsten bead can weight that much. What pound test or X tippet are you using? What weight rod? That may be the problem. I use heavy furled leaders with a 6 to 8 foot tippet. My tippet is usually 20# or 25# fluorocarbon. A lot of the lakes I fish are weedy, and I'm not feeling very sporting these. If I hook a good bass, I want to land it. You did mention a 5 wgt. I haven't tried them with my 5 wgt. I don't think the 1/32 oz ones would be a problem, not sure about the 1/20th oz ones. I would use the heavy leader with it though.

I do the same thing. Though I've been pretty good the last month or so. Got all the Clousers done for my SW Club's table as the Edison, NJ Fly Fishing Show. Finished up the bucktails I was tying on 1/20 oz jigs to use with my fly rod. I'll post a picture of the batch when I get one taken. I still have to finish up the 1/32 oz hair jigs. I picked up a bunch of jigs and TRD's for the Ned rig last year to use on my Ontario trip, but never used them. The 1/20 oz ones I'm going to tie my standard crayfish fly on and try with the fly rod. The heavier ones I'm going to split between the crayfish pattern and the TRD's. Plus finish up the bucktail and hair jigs I tying for the guys I fish with. But there's always something new to think up.

When I'm not fly fishing which is most of the time, I use spinning tackle. That's what I learned to fish with many, many years ago. I've gotten use to casting and fighting fish with my right hand, my dominant hand, and reeling with my left. I know the availability of left hand retrieve baitcasters has improved. I catch plenty of bass with the fly rod and the spinning tackle. No need to change at this point.

I was going to say I had never tried Float n Fly but before I took up fly fishing I used the standard red and white bobber with a jig and a Mr. Twister tail grub. We would cast the rig out and slowly retrieve it, adjusting the depth till we found the crappie. It worked fairly well. We caught bluegills/sunfish and the occasional bass with the rig. I plan on trying it with my fly rod in the spring. I've been tying up some 1/32 oz hair jigs and 1/20 oz bucktails, and I guess I'm going to be adding some marabou jigs to the mix. I'm planning on using small slip bobbers and like the idea of using two bobber stoppers which will allow me to keep the fly at depth when I'm retrieving it. Definitely getting some good ideas here.

Nice, good body shape. Peacock Herl? I certainly would fish it, except I would fish it with a fly rod. I've been tying some 1/32 oz and 1/20 oz jigs for the spring, myself. You might try tying it with a marabou tail if some came with the kit. It would give it a bit more action. Some other colors for trout, olive and a light brown or tan. Crappie/panfish, Chartreuse, yellow, white are good colors.

That's a good idea, dopey. There's a DD right down the street for me, but I make a pot a coffee every day. I'm sure not sure they use plastic straws in this area anymore. I have seen some large straws in the $1 store. I'll have to check them out. I did find a large fly box that will hold 20 jigs if I skip a row and probably 40 if I use the skipped rows. That may not sound like a lot of jigs to ya'll, but I fly fish about 90% of the time. Plus I can replace them if I lose them.