Fly Candy

While I have the time I've been stockpiling a new set of flash flies for the Autumn. The tail is an off cut from an old fly and is blended blue & chartreuse big fly fiber. The main body comprises of three tightly palmered dubbing brushes of mixed copper, turquoise, green & dark blue fine tinsel which I make directly on my J-vice If your going to make these kind of flies I've found through trial & error that the finer the tinsel you use, and the tighter the palmering of the dubbing brush the longer the fly will last you. The thicker or wider tinsels tend to snap a lot quicker than the super fine brands. With all these kind of flies I use fine wire to produce the brushes with. the wire adds extra weight to the front of the tube or hook your palmering it around and secondly if your a novice at making dubbing brushes then the wire stays stiff,tightly packs the materials and never twists loose.

The Van peacock bonktail

Master fly tyer Raymond Noordermeer Sent me this the other day called the "Van peacock conktail" Yet another reason why I rate this guys tying abilities. Thanks for this Raymondo!

Fly Candy

As a baitfish pattern goes, this blue/white variation has been by far my most productive colour combination here over the last four months (over 472 fish), to the fact that I've had to tie some more up. These are a mix of blended sea blue deadly dazzle, sea blue slinky fiber, and sea blue mirror image. The underbellies are a combination of blended white slinkly fiber,steelhead silver mirror image, white bucktail SF flash blend and white funky fiber.


Probably my new favourite underbelly material at the mo is the SF Flash blend white bucktail for these kind of flies. It blends fantastically with other materials and is equally great on its own. A must have product that has the feel and look of real bucktail.

Match the hatch!

Saw this yesterday on "Le Mouching" and it reminded me of this fly my good friend Rowland tied for me at the beginning of the season to mimic a struggling bird on the surface

Fly Candy

Again, I'm not sure what it is about orange being such a good colour to fish with here on the island but pike seem to love eating these flies. They certainly aren't as productive in fresh water here as they are in the salt. Anyway as my last batch of synthetic flies got mullerd this spring so I've tied up some more for the autumn if & when I decide to fish with them.
I've combined & blended Hot orange mirror image with red funky fiber for the main body area and blended white bucktail SF Flash blend with white funky fiber and steelhead silver mirror image for the under bellies. These are a little longer than the baitfish I'm fishing with at the mo at around 140mm. Being the tight arse that I am, I also re-used the hooks from the last batch of orange baitfish patterns I'd tied. On a different note I'm stoked to have my flies featured in "Fishheads flies n lore" this week.....Thanks Terry for spreading the love on your site brotha!

"The Trident fly"

Heres a fly by kayaking pike fly addict Yarik Anderson called the Trident fly. drop by his Youtube page for more over the top bizaar tube flies from his bench. Click (see all) in the right column.

Fly Candy

With so many unopened packets of mixed zonker fur strips lying around my man cave I've decided to use them once and for all. These are Orange Opposum zonkers and I tied 3 three on to the back of a partridge ultimate predator 3/0 hook. Then wrapped a decent amount of purple UV Polar chenille directly in front. I then added two clumps of Orange deer hair which I butt up against the UV Polar chenille ball helping it to splay out more. Then added several strands of super fine orange fluro flash.

Then added two clumps of purple deer hair and finished off the fly with a chin of orange arctic fox tail fur. Total length 8" - 200mm.

Fly Candy

Having never fished with this colour combination before I thought it would be good to have a few ready for the autumn. I'll probably fish these raccoon bunnies either at dusk or dawn as I'm certain they appear as a rather dark silhouette under the surface anyway. For my own perspective It'll be interesting to see which colour combo is more effective than the other. Sure, as with all fishing,there are hundreds of variables one has to consider that will effect how well they fish, time of day, water temp, water depth, weather conditions, colour of fly, abundance of fish the list goes on but my money is on the bottom one for some reason!

Wiggle tails

Have any of you seen these before, I hadn't until a month ago. They're called wiggle tails and are designed by an Italian chap called Paolo Pacchiarini who I'd also never heard of before. Anyway he's some well known Italian fly fisherman with a number of world records behind his belt.

They're made from a new innovative material called "Scale skin" whereby material is skinned with a metallic film through lamination which allows it to have more mobility,resistance and vibration emissions than other softer less water proof materials on the market. They come in several colours in a packet and from what my Italian friends were saying cost around €6,00. I would have liked to have seen a Black,dark purple and dark blue variation for low light conditions being produced and maybe a conversation with Paolo might get me the answers I'm looking for.

You can tie them directly onto the back of the hook near the bend (See video tutorial) but they are best fished tied onto these handy clips making them interchangable. The clips on the right are tied onto the hook while the wiggle tails are attached to the smaller clips.



To be honest I didn't see them catch many pike with them while Giorgio was over but looking at the end of this video they seem to attract and catch all manner of fish from Pike,Peacock Bass,Tarpon etc etc


Heres a small video I made a few weeks back showing them underwater


And here's a great tying tutorial for a small wiggle tail baitfish as well. I've trawled the net to see who stocks these Wiggle tails and came up short. One can buy them direct from their "Fishon website" though. I was kindly given a packet of these and will be tying up some flies with them over the next week to be used in the Autumn. Have any of you used them and had success with them cause some feedback would be usefull.

Fly swaps!

I'm always game for a good fly swap every now and then and my mate over at the "Salty riffle" James asked for just that. Nymphing and streamer fishing for trout is his thang!! but when he gets the chance, Stripers seem to be on the menu. So the obvious thing to do was to tie up some Flatwings for him to use. I've used small clumps of Yellow,Olive, Pink & Off white bucktail along the hook shaft for the body of the fly and some Bucktail white SF Flash blend and 4 white microbarb saddles for the tail. Striper aficionados out there would probably knock them & they aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination as I'm sure I could have used slightly smaller clumps of bucktail but I'm happy with the end product and am sure they will catch fish.

Fly Candy

I'ts great being able to sit in front of my vise and tie just for myself again. My fly boxes have taken a real hammering this Spring and Summer and they're in dire need of replenishing with new stocks. My thoughts about pike here around the island during the summer only feeding on small baitfish seem to be correct and 90% of everything I've caught over the last 4 weeks have been with small 80cm - 100cm baitfish imitation patterns. Chuck anything that doesn't look remotely like a fish at them and it returns unharmed. This one is 80cm long and is a mix of Mullet brown, Steelhead silver and Misty black mirror image.

With this one I blended Mullet brown with Natural belly in slightly darker shades as I moved higher up the fly.I also added 4 long cream microbarb saddles then some misty black. The underbelly is Bucktail white SF flash Blend.Total length 100mm

Perch flies

Have turned my attention to some Perch on the fly the last couple of days and have been using several colour variations of this pattern. An awesome fish catcher and very simple to knock up!

Bloodknot "Throwback issu" out now!

A few days late but the new Bloodknot magazine is out "Throwback issue" read part of it this morning while having a dump with the laptop on my lap. click image or link to visit the mag.

Fly Candy

Mottled chartreuse teardrop tubes have been on the end of my line the last 4 days meant to imitate a stickleback which are dying out due to the shallows warming up here. Just love fishing with these flies. Super light to cast, yet have some weight to make them drop during the stop in retrieval. Had a couple of great looking jacks last night with them around 23h00. Also great to use a lighter leader with these knowing I'm not going to hook into anything over 90cm.

Blood pumping!

Have had a couple of friends over from France for the last couple of days staying with us and I took them out for a day on the water over the weekend. The weather wasn't ideal due to scorching temperatures and the fishing was extremely tough. Still we found an area that held several decent pike all around the 85 - 96cm mark. Davie here with his 1st pike on the fly ever. We lost 3 more that were slightly bigger but faught well while still attached to the line.

Water clarity at the moment is around 8m so watching the pike from 15m away dart out the weeds like excoset missiles got the blood pumping more than usual. Two of these Olive Mirror image highties did all the damage.

No Finer moments!

Regardless of wherever the film has been shot in the world. There are no finer moments in fly fishing than to watch a fish return from whence it came!

Bread n Butter fishing

With the shoals of baitfish increasing around the island I been using a couple of Silver assassins the last couple of evenings while out wading. Tied onto 3/0 partridge ultimate predator hooks.Total length 100mm. Pike just are'nt interested in anything unless they look fishy and have been feeding close to the surface.This has been evident by how many breech themselves as they shoot up from below to hit the shoals. I've tried poppers but they just leave them alone.So I've been fishing with a floating line and a 6ft 20lb mono leader with varying success. Several Fast strips with a lengthy pause seems to get them interested but I've lost count how many follow the fly as close up to my stripping basket then veer away at the last second

Have also been fishing with this 80mm fly the last week tied onto a Tiemco 811s 2/0 and have had numerous 70cm - 75cm jacks to hand. This was just one of 6 from last nights 1 hr session. I call it bread n butter fishing, Cause I'd rather be out fishing everyday catching bread n butter jacks in the summer....than not fishing at all!

Bread n butter fishing from Simon Graham on Vimeo.

Blue flash muddler

Blue has probably been my most productive colour this spring as well as all my clients & looking at my little black statistics book this has been my most productive fly. The tail is just clumps of blue Xmas tinsel flash tied over white plastic speckled Xmas flash. I have to admit that its looking a little dishevaled and missing most of the longer strands of blue flash but it's still doing its job. The head is just tightly packed spun deer hair trimmed down so the fly can be fished with a short 2ft leader just under the surface.Have some awesome footage of this fly under the water and several fish caught on film with this same fly while out wading.

Catch issue 18 out!

The older you get the quicker the weeks n months pass by.Fortunately this is a good thing if you sit around waiting for the next issue of "Catch magazine issue 18 " to come out. There's and awesome photo essay this month on Muskies to check out + all the usual fly porn photography to feast your eyes on.

Synthetic high ties

Have been playing around with Steve Silverio's High tie method ,but instead of using Bucktail and feathers I've used Mirror Image synthetics and added a counter balance of beads similar to my Rattle n Hums as well. Thes two flies swim amazingly in the water and as the hook is upturned and well guarded by the Mirror image I've had zero snag ups the last couple of weeks when fishing through weed beds and had several fish with them.

This one I blended Natural belly with steelhead silver and shrimp pink and used red grape beads for the counter balance.

This one I started with steelhead silver for the 1st three high ties then added three wild olive highties with four long black microbarb saddles between them so they extend a couple of inches out from the synthetics. The beads are silver crystal clear glass beads. These are around 160mm in length but am going to tie some more up around 80mm - 100mm in length without the beaded counterweight balance.