What are you working on?

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Mostly making lures for my customers - just finished two dozen for one customer (1//2 white, 1/2 brown) all sleeved and ready to go...

Here's a pic of the style (a basic bucktail jig for the backcountry of the Everglades - I do them in 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 oz. sizes in whatever color combinations desired...)

 

I still have about 250 leadheads to do for a couple of local guides... Once again to the customer's specs - they're powder coated, then baked for durability.... These are meant for folks using plastic or Gulp tails - If my anglers choose spinning gear over the fly - they're the first lures I rig for them each day...

this is just one of a half dozen or so different colors my anglers ask for...

 

All of this will be set aside today since I'm prepping for a night trip locally tomorrow night - finally back to the long rod... We'll be looking at baby tarpon (average size 20-40lbs) up in the shadows under one bridge or other and tossing small bushy white flies at them on 8 or 9wt rods... All the bridges between Miami and Miami Beach hold them in winter - all that's needed is a falling tide and one or two shrimp coming by... Here's the only fly we use (in either size 1/0 or 2/0 on an Owner Aki hook - very strong, very sharp...). The fly is called the Night Fly and it's been my go to for some years now...

this sample was done up on one of the old Mustad #7766 hooks...

I like to have at least a dozen on hand for an evenings excitement... My angler has done this trip with me two or three times now - and every time instead of the small tarpon we could see - he hooked up with something much bigger - around 80lbs so this time he's bringing a bigger stick with him... I'm looking forward to it....

[Mark Knapp 0]

Bob, what are we fishing for with those jigs? Good luck on the night fish.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Everything in the backcountry of the Everglades eats them.... from a little tiny snapper to a hundred pound tarpon... Both the bucktails (tipped with a tiny bit of shrimp - no bigger than the tip of your little finger) and the leadheads (usually sporting a Gulp tail of some kind) are simply worked slowly where you can either see a fish or where you believe one or more is holding - just above the bottom. In waters with currents (like rivers, creeks, or just tidal currents sweeping by obstacles or the corner of an island or point...) we always fish them cross-current slightly upstream of where fish should be holding.. Each one has a short leader with 30 or 40lb fluorocarbon (24" or less) spliced to a doubled line at the terminal end. At the lure end the connection is a small sized loop knot to allow the jig to move properly. Something not generally known is that giant tarpon at times will lay on the bottom of small rivers - just like salmon do (or at least that's what I've read...). Find the fish, work a bucktail very slowly right in front of one down in ten to thirteen feet of water and things get interesting... Those same fish at times will lay up in less than three feet of water and will eat one if it's properly presented there as well...

 

Like I said they're the first lures I reach for - even with beginners aboard. The fish do the rest - snook, redfish, speckled trout, tripletail, snapper, grouper, cobia - everything will eat a bucktail, properly presented... and that's worldwide...

 

The hard part for anyone that fishes this kind of gear is finding jigheads with decent hooks (something rarely found in most tackle shops, unfortunately... that's why I long ago began making my own....). Tomorrow night though all the spinning and other rods will stay home and I'll have only an 8, 9, and 10wt aboard...

[Mark Knapp 0]

Thanks Capt. very nice.

[Poopdeck 0]

I've been tying my own bucktails for decades. Typically 1/2 oz to 2 oz jigs for stripers in the surf and in the river. Colors are simple, an all white jig with red threads is the dominate jig. I'll put a 6" standard white twister tail on the hook and call it a fishing catching machine. I don't get wrapped around the axle with hooks and simply use whatever the mold calls for and They've never given me a reason not to. I make them myself simply because it's cheap and quick to do so and I could care less how many I lose since it's costing me not much more then the price of the hook. Out my way saltwater size bucks average about 4 bucks each with the 3 oz and up going for up to 8 bucks a piece.

[Mark Knapp 0]

It's interesting that simple jigs like that will catch fish everywhere. Here we use them for lakers in the winter. But they have to be all white and 4 inches long or they won't work at all in one particular lake I fish a lot. They imitate a least cisco in this lake and the lakers are very bait specific.

[Mark Knapp 0]

My latest. I tied a few Quill Gordon's on 16's

 

and on 14's

 

and some Dark Cahill's on 14's

[DFoster 0]

Nice work Mark, I tied a few of these Scud variations on a #14 1x last night. I'm still breaking in my TRV, for curved short hooks I really like being able to pivot the jaws upward.

 

 

[Mark Knapp 0]

Nice scuds, D

[flytire 0]

learning to dye feathers

 

 

for my salmon fly project, they came out okay

[Mark Knapp 0]

Ah, the elusive orange badger. You caught one. Was that Koolaid or Rit?

[Guest]

.

[flytire 0]

rit

[Mark Knapp 0]

Very nice.

[Mark Knapp 0]

Been practicing mosquitoes, there's already a swarm of them in "From The Vice" so I won't post more here.

 

Continuing to work through the Orvis Index.

 

Here's a Ginger Quill