ditz2

Hey Black.....A couple of things. On the ML a couple of years ago I had a lot of success on tan craft fur shrimp on a 2 hook with just the medium bead chain and they seemed to get down fast enough once the fly was water soaked. I did not try the large beads at the time. The place that I was fishing had a lot of current at times depending I suppose on tide times. I thought it was odd since the locals said the ML was not affected by the tides. I did not find that to be true. On your muddlers do you locate the bead chain close to the eye or further back?

I am with Rocco.....great SM and I have always wanted to hook into a few Steelhead. I have never fished for any cold water fish but a steelhead would be my choice with a King second on the list closely followed by some Silver.

I believe the size chain that Blackwater is talking about is what I know as plumber's chain. I also found it in an old time hardware store when I was out of state a few months ago. It is not readily available. I have checked with at least 3 different plumbing supply houses and they just looked at me like I had 2 heads. My only mistake was only getting about 3 yards when I found it. When I get back up there I am going to try to buy the remainder of the spool that they had.

I sure hate to hear that Mike. I still have a couple of the old inline spinners somewhere. I am originally from Muncie myself so maybe the reason they were stocked in most of the local shops was because they were made in IN. Sounds a lot like the old Creek Chub company in Garret IN. The worlds record bass was caught on a Creek Chub bait. They were all wood bodied baits. The 1/4oz Plunker was a good small mouth bait. I still have two or three of them in the original box. I would not make our annual trip to the Boundry waters without at least 3 or 4 in my bait bag.

Two different animals.......a smaller minnow type fly that will sink to the depths you fish in white and silver and maybe even a little pink for crappie. A lightly weighted nymph fly, soft hackle for sunfish. Any thing buggy should work from unweighted to heavy weighted to really get down. I like Blind Squirrels and many other kinds of fish will also eat them. You never know what you will catch.

I'm no expert but the flies look good to me. You will need a version of a glass minnow and maybe a larger minnow as well. Some regular clousers too in various sizes, colors, and weights and you should be good to go.

I want to spend a day or two with Capt. Bob Lemay down in south FL. I would also like to take a fishing trip to Belize or some such place.

There used to be a company that sold inline spinners in gold and silver that had a clip affair that you could change flies on the same spinner. I think the company name was Hildebrandt. Not sure if they are still in business or of the spelling is correct. All well supplied tackle shops carried them in various sizes. They work better if the fly is tied on a straight ring eyed hook.

Yes, the line marking system was written in Lefty's book Fly Fishing Salt Water. It is still one of my goto books for info.....I have never had the privilege of meeting the man or seeing one of his demos but I have read much of his writings and feel like I know the man. One of the sports greatest ambassadors. I have 3 books that make up my reference for the salt and I use them all regularly. The book already mentioned, Lefty's Salt Water Fly Patterns, and Essential Salt Water Patterns by Jaworworski. There are other good books I am sure. I also have a book by Dave Whitlock that I cherish.

yellow belly fly......call it the Coward

If you need subsurface but still shallow tie up some seaducers. all saddle hackle and lots of movement.

Another great report. Just enough to keep us land lubbers wanting more.

The correct plop.......tie on a 5/8 oz Jitterbug and listen to the plop plop plop plop.....They just sing the right tune.

that is why we lie... to make up for the lack of time to catch the big ones

loop to loop

I try to stay away from the heavy lead eyes. I will sometimes use them and only if it is absolutely needed. They are no fun to cast anyway. Bead chain and the small lead is as heavy as I use for 99% of my fishing. I think the last time I tied on a heavy clouser was about 3 years ago. I hate them with a passion.

I personally like a rig that is slightly reel heavy. It seems to produce a balanced rig when I start swinging the rod with the wind resistance and the weight of the line in the air and of course the friction of the air on the line and on the fly especially if using larger wind resistant bugs. I have found though if the reel is too heavy that I end up with my hand as far back as it can go against the reel. had put a 5wt line on a 1495 Medalist reel and mounted it on a 6' graphite rod and it just was too heavy for me. I put the line on a 1494 and it worked just fine for me but still a little heavy. Even better when the line was mounted on an old South Bend 1122. The click was just too loud IMO. Both the weight of the rod and the length of the rod should dictate reel weight. The same 1495 mounted on a glass 6'6" rod was useable but the 1494 was almost perfect for me. I personally have yet to find a need for ultra light reels even on my short, light graphite rods. Now if I had one of those Sage 000wt rods I might talk a different tune.

I personally like a rig that is slightly reel heavy. It seems to produce a balanced rig when I start swinging the rod with the wind resistance and the weight of the line in the air and of course the friction of the air on the line and on the fly especially if using larger wind resistant bugs. I have found though if the reel is too heavy that I end up with my hand as far back as it can go against the reel. had put a 5wt line on a 1495 Medalist reel and mounted it on a 6' graphite rod and it just was too heavy for me. I put the line on a 1494 and it worked just fine for me but still a little heavy. Even better when the line was mounted on an old South Bend 1122. The click was just too loud IMO. Both the weight of the rod and the length of the rod should dictate reel weight. The same 1495 mounted on a glass 6'6" rod was useable but the 1494 was almost perfect for me. I personally have yet to find a need for ultra light reels even on my short, light graphite rods. Now if I had one of those Sage 000wt rods I might talk a different tune.

I also like bead chain and use a lot of it. Don't forget that there are at least 3 different sizes of it. On bigger flies or if I want to get a little deeper or a faster sink I use the ' plumber chain "........I only use lead when I ablsolutely must.

$20 ain't near enough for Mike........

The web site that I found did not have a pic of those scissors. I will see if I can find some of those locally. Thanks for the pic. I would like to try a pair. Never had a good pair of scissors. Yes,,,,Hans does some great looking flies and I don't fish trout. I always check out his submissions. .

Adam..I would like to see a pic of your scissors. I just went to the Fiskars site and did not see anything shorter than 5". I have always been happy with any Fiskars that I have purchased and would be willing to try another Fiskars products.

I ran onto a very very Purdy boo rod about a year ago. It was roughly 7' and it had a nice feel in the shop. The $2000 price tag quickly scared me off. Many years ago I spent many hours looking at the impregnated rods in the Orvis catalogue. I would still like to fish one of the smaller rods in my small warm water creeks. I know......sunfish and small mouth on a boo is sacreligous. I must say that I do like my short, light rods. They are very easy on my old joints and tendons. I do still fish some slow vintage glass. I must agree with Mike on this one though. I don't consider a $300 rod cheap or even reasonable. I am just old fashioned I guess. Some might even say cheap.

The close up view of the fly has bead chain eyes. Does anyone have a pic of one of the original flies tied by Charlie? Or know exactly how they were tied. That was a neat story. The horror was tied upside down also. Does anyone know which was tied first?

Looks a lot like a Muddler.....I would call it a variant of .........