My dreams and flies are tied each other as I am determined to make them happen. The first saltwater patterns are done and that’s not a wrap, but a start. Last months I bought fly tying materials off eBay sellers because these are the foundation for every great fly pattern.
I could have gotten much cheaper with the flies offered by the Tourette Fishing guys but in the past I’ve always tied my own trout and chub flies. I think that was a personal challenge, to see if I have the skills to tie such patterns.
I’m a long way from getting it done. I’ll really need to speed up and tie all the patterns Mark and Rob and others with Tourette Fishing recommend for the Nubian Flats trip.
Back in 2000 I was learning to tie trout flies from printed books with black and white pictures. Now I just open the YouTube, go to my „SW Flies” playlist with almost all the patterns that I need and I just follow the instructions while working on a fly. Can’t get much easier than that.
Without further much ado, let’s see what I’ve done so far.
NYAP’s or Not Your Average Popper topwater fly, tied as per Martyn White Flicking Feathers instructions from his YouTube channel. NYAP is usually a Giant Trevally fly, effective when these incredible predators are pushing and chasing the baitfish on the surface – at least that’s what I heard but I plan to test that by myself.
How to make NYAP foam heads instruction can be found here, on Rupert Harvey’s channel.
Then I took on the Sempers, or the Semper Fleye as Bob Popovics called this pattern, earlier known as the Jersey Knight. Apart from the palmered soft hackle head, this fly’s unique trait lies in the way the tail feathers are placed.
First you add a clump of bucktail, then you cover that with long, saddle hackles, tied 360 or „in the round”. This pattern will eat through quality feathers (long ones and wide, soft Schlappen ones) so make sure you’ve got lots of them.
The Semper is just another fly for GT’s, let’s hope I’ll come across some of these beautiful beasts while wading the Nubian flats.
Purple Semper:
Black Sempers with a touch of purple (small collar of arctic fox and one schlappen in that color):
Then I took on the GT brush flies. In order to get these properly done, you need some good quality brushed made out of synthetic and/or natural fibers. Since I lack the time and the means to make the brush-making machine, I have to buy them. I got some from South African brand H2O (Steve Farrar), a couple from Hends and a lot from the U.K. manufacturer Veniard. Unfortunately, only the South African ones are dense enough to build the correct volume and thickness for a really great brush fly. I’ll have to find some black brushes since I’m not happy with those from U.K. at all. The flies tied with H20 brushes turned out quite beautiful. If I’d be a double-digit GT, I’d be all over them, I think.
The Bleeding Black:
I call this The Black Star:
The GT brush flies main colors for the Nubian flats are Black and Tan. The tan flies will do some damage there. For the black flies I’ll still need some larger, thicker brushes.
Meet The SunTan:
The Fatboy Slim Anchovy:
That’s one nice fly I made out of a H2O brush in „Bleeding Mackerel” color, hence its name. QED: good quality materials make for good flies. It also contains a „heart” of olive bucktail, olive Craft Fur and strands of green Krystal Flash.
The Bleeding Mackerel:
I’ll have to tie some more of these but I only found 1 brush with the eBay shop in Poland, Taimen. As of yesterday I also dug in the world of crab-imitating patterns, and tried my first Velcro Crab fly.
Thanks to some really nice instructions found on YouTube here and here I was able to put together my first 2 Velcro Crabs. Dave Marshall’s crab tying instructions were especially thorough and well explained.
Everything went OK except for the glue. So I tied the first one and glued the Velcro carapaces with Loctite gel while on the second one I went for Bison 5-minute epoxy. We don’t have brush-on Zap-a-Gap in Romania… so even must be bought off eBay or online shops.
I made some stencils to cut out the shape of the carapace out of velcro (even this is sparse here and hard to find). Getting the rubber legs in place and sticking the two carapaces together are the tricky parts.
New crab eyes made out of colored or glass beads, heavy mono and thick UV curing resin and a laser torch. 15 years ago, UV resin and laser torch would have seemed a little Sci-Fi, me thinks.
The crab claws are made out of rabbit 3 mm wide zonker strips, in tan color, of course.
I need to practice and to get these done without messing the crab eyes (that I’ve made myself from colored beads, 0.50 mm monofilament and UV resin) with any kind of glue.
I’ll be back with more thoughts about the new patterns as I’m tying them. this is new to me, never tied a saltwater fly before and everything is a challenge. Hopefully I’ll pull this one out just in time for the Nubian Flats trip.
Thanks to my Canon EOS M10 mirrorless camera, I can now document all the steps with much better pictures than before, especially in low light conditions (since I tie these flies mostly at night). Kudos to Canon for this compact wonder that’s very close in usefulness to a point&shoot camera.
Will return with more SW flies and ties!
