Nomad77

Awesome, Mike!

Good Point...I had one do that just the other day on a 3/0 hook similar to this one...Thanks Mike!

This is my first go at a big catfish fly, or actually a fly for any big freshwater predator. It's a musky fly called a 'Swim Jimmy' by Brad Bohen and I tied this on an 8/0 Owner 5130-181"Beast Twistlock"..It's not a fly hook, but it was quite right for creating a 'hook point up' fly that might better surrvive being pulled in and around heavy cover:

That'll hunt!

JZ- Please post pics, regardless of the outcome!

I was told nothing less than an 8/0 hook would be appropriate...that is only if you are preparing for an encounter with a 50+ lb fish (or bigger). I am going off of data from a guy who gets after big cats with live bait and he said you have to put a lot of pressure on them right away so they cannot get into brush piles and break you off...The hookset and fight would need to be a very direct effort and a short of a fight as possible...Thoeretically, anyway.

You could do the "Build your own" route. Anyone know anything about http://www.eclecticangler.com/ ?

This is true!

I've seen some saltwater crab patterns that use spun deer hair to create the shell...could be done the same for a turtle.

Nice Fishypieter! Those gave a bit of a tug, I'll wager...

Outstanding, Kirk! THank you...That's what I'm after. I'm inspired

cool and Thank you. I will look him up...I'm doing a lot of what if'n at the moment and I found out that there is a huge may fly hatch on the Santee-Cooper Lakes in April and anything that swims in the lake including shows up usually at night to feed on the large numbers of mayflies (bream, bass, shad) and the big cats that act like predators show to eat the bream, or sunfish, as they are known. I found that interesting and thought I'd share.

I've never been a bait fisherman, except when I was a little tyke so that can't be helped. I did a day trip with a friend who chases cats with a trolling setup using live bait, stink bait, chickens soaked in a secret mixture...you name it. I thought if I could a Swim Jimmy on a sinking line and get down to hover and pulse it would mimic a large sunfish or shad and be a possible contender...probably will use an 8/0 hook on a 12 weight rig but I did tie a Swim Jimmy on a 3/0 that didn't turn out well, but the hook point is up: Very crude and unfinished head, but you get the idea.

SO then one would want to know, do their American cousins behave in a similar fashion? I live in South Carolina and big cats live in the various impoundments and the Santee-Cooper Lakes (Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie) produce very large specimens. 40 lb + is not uncommon. SInce no one in their right mind is trying to catch big cats in the US on purpose, I thought I would at least try to craft a rod/reel/fly solution that would in theory be able to land a large cat. If, for nothing else, to say "that's how you would do it". Most bait fisherman will troll in 25' of water with live perch attached to a Santee Rig about 2 feet from the bottom with some type of float that keeps the bait hovering and you won't get hung up. I'll open the floor to any suggestions as to how you might do this on with fly tackle.

I thought I'd start a separate thread on this to get some ideas for targeting big channels and blues...Apparently this guy has some experience:

Good point..I have not put a rig together, Ditz, but I was thinking an 11-12 weight rod and line would be the place to start. Thanks!

Yep! That's why a big fly on a big hook could quite possibly be eaten by a large blue or channel cat...I haven't worked out all of the details, but as someone else said on here, it's only wierd if it doesn't work.

A friend of mine uses live bait to go after cats in the Santee. He runs an 8/0 circle hook through the tail of a larger forage fish and cuts it loose to swim about 4 feet from the bottom until it gets eaten. I was thinking that a Brad Bohen-style Hang Time Optical Minnow or one one of his Swim Jimmys (basically a hangtime on a jig hook) on an 8/0 hook with 80-100 shock leader with a 40lb tippet section would work on a fast sinking line....I've never targeted catfish so thats why I'm trying to get ideas. Santee produces some big ones.

Actually, I slated for Lake Murray, which is up the road an hour or so. By all means though, the Santee-Cooper Lakes are some of the best bass fishing lakes on earth. Catfish too! I am trying to create a fly rod solution for big cats if anyone has any experience.

Nice! Sorry about the geography mixup, PortlyJoe.I used to read about Montauk Point and just think what a damn fun time that must be! I guess the Jersey folks have BOb Popovics, so there is that.

PortlyJoe: That would be awesome! I'll return the favor and send you something for the salt up there, although you New Jersey folks pretty much wrote the book on flies for Striped Bass, I'll see what I can muster...send me your address as well. The reverse tied sheep wool on a stainless wide gap maybe? BigFly Bob: Nice group of forage fish you have...Game Changers are ultimately just a new style of fly tying altogether. Some times I curse my luck for ever seeing those things because I'm obsessed with perfecting them at the moment and I am a long way off. Let me know how they swim with the weed guards, as it never occurred to me to tie those in. One thing I will say is this: GC's are neutrally buoyant and are meant to suspend in the water column (like a scuba diver suspends when properly weighted to neither sink nor float) even when fished with a fast sinking or intermediate line to get it to stay down in the water. so that when you strip it, it just darts about and can look crippled when it flutters on the pause triggering a strike (hopefully). I highly recommend picking up the latest copy of FlyFisherman magazine and read the Blane Chocklett article. Blane goes into detail about how he ties and fishes them. I have been tying these for over a year and I'm just now starting to understand why they work and how they need to be shaped to swim correctly. The narrower the head is and the the thinner the body is, the more the action will improve, in my opinion. I do not use UV Resin and am an old school ZapaGap/Softex guy, so I cannot give you any other tying help except that I do coat the heads with a moderate amount of Softex that causes the water to push off and away which causes the fly to dart in a livelier manner, again in my opinion...Best of luck! Holler if I can ever help. The really neat thing about these flies is that potentially any species of fish can be caught on them.

bigger fish seem to really like that color....at least with LMB's. Blane Chocklett ties his musky flies in an Olive/Pink combo that is proven itself time and time again. PortlyJoe: I'm on the dockett for a land-locked Striper (here in South Carolina) outing in another month or so and I'll get a full report out on the pink GC. I've had a lot of Striper guys tell me that pink is what causes that predatory instinct to kick in. I know it's ot the salt, but it'll have to do

THere are not any pink bait fish, anywhere that bass live that I know of either, rich. I have found that when I fished for bass with conventional tackle, it wasn't what lure matched the forage but what the fish either saw as an intrusive fish (pink, for example) and produced a violent "reaction strike" as largemouth bass in particular are very "non-neighborly" as Dave Whitlock would say. It's a study of bass psychology that catches these fish...conventional fishing people have this stuff down pat. I hope I never pick up another spinning or casting rod for bass again, but I may. In the end, I sure learned alot and I hope I can transfer that to the catching of bass on the long rod.

What bass fly collection would be complete without a bubblegum fluke? Ok, actually it's "Fluorescent Fuschia":

Fugly, indeed...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ao_DV_pdxY