Okay,
After being on the water for four hours Saturday without so much as a sniff from a pike, I find myself in search of the largest flies anyone has ever tied. I watched a guy in another boat land a 30" pike on a foot long musky plug and he invited me over to fish the area with him. Neither of us caught another fish.
I am looking to find a pattern with four traits:
1: Long
2: Bulky to “push” some water
3: Noisy (for obvious reasons)
4: CATCHES PIKE
The Snap Tandem pickerel pattern here on FAOL ought to be fairly easily modified up to the size you require. That’s one idea. There ought to be some more experienced pike hunters on here with even more info.
No specific pattern to recommend at the moment but if tandem hook rigs are legal where you fish that would probably be your best option for the size you want. I would try a dahlberg diver style fly with doll eyes for a little bit of noise, maybe with a synthetic tail to try to cut down on the weight.
I have also heard tandem wooly buggers suggested for pike and musky. These could meet your length and water-moving requirements.
If the tandem thing isn’t legal or isn’t appealing then I would look into the longer synthetic materials to create something with the length you want.
The biggest problem is probably going to be a balance between size and bulk vs. castability with the rig you intend to fish with.
This is a good time of year to pick up some material for big flies
I tie some surf flies for stripers that are 8-10 inches and I use Halloween wig hair as the main ingredient for the tail.
My flies just have a short wing and beard also of synthetic hair, but you may want to palmer some hackles, a’la’ Seaducer, instead
There are lots of good books out now on saltwater fly patterns and their construction. Check and see what looks good. I would pay particular attention to the big mullet and big bunker flies. Modify those to look like a yellow perch or a big shiner and you should have a winner. 8T
I have tied the Dahlberg Diver in the larger sizes (10-12 inches). Be sure to use synthetics in the tail as they will not absorb water and become a dish rag to cast. You can usually find the recipes on the web. Bill Sherer’s We-Tie-It.com has some good Pike Patterns also. His videos are good and will teach how to tie his flies which are huge and very productive.
I didn’t have pictures of them earlier, so here are a couple I have tied. Colors can be what ever you want, such and Red/White, Black/Yellow. The head (deer hair) and long tails (Big Fly Fiber) capture a lot of air and release bubbles as they go through the water making a lot of ‘noise’. Because the tails are synthetic they don’t absorb water and are easy to cast.
Clay, I met Brad at the Great Waters show in Minneapolis back in March and wow, does he ever tie some interesting and mean pike/musky flies. I popped $15 for one, then stupidly used it wrongly. We were fishing a MO farm pond, and after hooking a small bass I was playing along a weed line a massive bucketmouth whalloped that little bass and the fight was on. I’d hate to guess the weight of the second bass, but down at Lake El Salto I caught one that weighed eight pounds and it looked every bit of that. Okay, so I have this great idea. I had Brad’s fly with me in the pickup, so I tied that on figuring that the attractant was something very large and vulnerable stripped right along the weed line. Smart thinking? Well, it worked, and a fight was one ? until my line was taken quickly into some heavier weeds. Before I could react ? pop ? the line broke. Fifteen bucks for one lousy cast! Nevertheless, watching Brad tie some of those flies just absolutely destroyed any preconceived notions about fly tying. He is definitely outside of the box, and it’d be great if LF could convince him to do a FOTW. The kid is a “trout bum” with a musky eye! JGW
He was also at the Great Waters show in Chicago. I remember watching him tie some monster flies as well and that is why I posted his link. Lots of fur and feather. I could make hundreds of trout flies for the amount of material he was putting in one of those monster creations. Seriously cool though. On a local fly fishing board he posted a nice thread about “not fearing the 10 wt”. Big flies and big fish put a smile on my face.
