What are you tying now for this years warm water fishing?
I am in semi-panic mode. I fiddled around much of the winter and didn’t tie much of anything. I don’t need to tie much, but am busy now trying to chase down tying supplies.
I am hoping to try to catch a bluegill in a week or two, so will be tying again very soon.
My priorities for now are:
foam spiders
cyrstal buggers, Murray Mauraders, and buggers in very small sizes
Black leeches ranging in size from 2 down to 12. I use black arctic fox body fur for the tail and for the leech body I use dubbing brushes made with black seal fur. My absolute go-to pattern for springtime warm water fishing. The small sizes kill bream, crappie and small bass and the larger sizes are my best springtime bass producer. I also tie some of them with a red bead head to add a spot of color and it seems to help when the water clears up a bit.
I’m laying in my Summer supply of size #12 Gurgle Pops. I tied 20 today with yellow foam, yellow legs and yellow tails with a Master Bright ruby red belly. Tomorrow it’s chartruese. If it ain’t chartruese, it ain’t… Then I need to do white/orange and then dark green. I’ll do the size #8’s and larger later. BTW, I caught my first topwater bass and topwater brim of the season on a Gurgle Pop two days ago. Water temperature was 59 degrees. A new season begins. 8T
I finally got a chance to get out in my kayak to chase bream. I was fishing a Carter;s Sculpin in all black and while I ony caught 6-8 bream one of them was 13 inches long. The bass wouldn’t leave the fly alone and I ended up catching around 25 bass ranging is size from 14 to 18 inches. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours:) The reason I tell you this is to encourage you to tie up a dozen Carter’s Sculpin on size 10 or 12 hooks.
Good luck and let me know if you need the receipe for the Carter’s Sculpin. Super easy to tie and very productive.
Hook: 2X Size 10 or 12
Thread: Black 6/0
Tail: Black rabbit fur
Body: Black Chenille or Black dubbing brush
Collar: black or grizzly hen hackle
Eye: black or silver dumbell eyes
Beard: 8-10 strands of Black Krystal flash
Very straight forward and easy to tie. Tie in the tail and body material. Tie in the eyes on the top of the hook shank. Tie in the hen hackle and make 3 wraps behind the eyes. Advance the thread in front of the eyes and tie in the Krystal flash. Trim Krystal flash off just past the point of the hook.
Cast it out, and retrieve it with short 3 to 6 inch strips with a one or two second pause between strips. Absolutely top producer for late winter and spring bass, bream and crappie. It is a bit more effective for crappie when tied in bright colors like white and purple etc. but black is the best bass and bream color.
I 've been playing with little Buggers and foam Bass poppers. I’ve come up with an easy Craw in size 6 & 8. Using a short shank, bent-eye hook, I tie on a dumbbell weight so it will ride hook up. I then make 2 'claws" using Pugliosi 3-D fiber (browns and greens. I wrap the body with yarn or chenille and then wrap hackle the length of the hook. It looks great, we’ll have to wait on the ultimate test.
I finished Galloup’s streamer video and tied 2 twin tail articulated attractors - one in white Rabbit and the other in blond with a bit of orange for gills.
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