It’s almost the fall streamer season.
This one is beyond deadly. One of the best streamers I ever tied.
The body is semi-clear plastic worm resin poured out flat in the bottom of a glass dish surrounding a bit of spawn sack netting. And then cooked in the microwave just long enough to turn the worm resin from milky white to clear. But not so long you melt the spawn sack netting.
Then cut out a minnow shape. Sew in a tail. Thread a snelled hook through the front end a few times. Press on some stick-on eyes. Then goober a fat bead of UV glue around the edges of the eyes. Kick off the glue with a UV light. Put a tiny drop of thin CA glue at the butt ends of the tail fibers, right where they sew into the soft rubbery body (but not where they leave). CA glue does not stick to many plastic materials. But it sticks to plastic worm resin like paparazzi to a film star.
This streamer has a good end-to-end wavy action in the water. It also has a nicely-semi-transparent look the fish seem to find irresistable. Making the worm resin sheets is a bit of a flap. But one session with the microwave and glass dish does make a whole season’s supply.
…interesting footnote: Someone else (on another forum) pointed out they make the same flies in New Zealand using silicone caulk rolled out and shaped between two layers of cling-wrap. I’ll have to work on that. Although they do tend to make the New Zealand versions a lot fatter. Embedding spawn sack into the clear rubbery body allows you make a much thinner, more flexible body, still stout enough to hold together.
Transparency Matters
The importance of transparency is a new discovery for me. But matter it does. I can see some new sculpin patterns down the road a bit. Combining traditional fly tying techniques with moldable resin–or with sculptable silicone caulk–opens a door to a whole new realm out there. I have an idea about making flexible, fuzzy-edged abdomens with spawn sack, combed-out dubbing and a thin narrow bead of silicone, pressed to shape between layers of cling wrap.
I suspet that you could use any fine netting material like they make bridal veils out of. You can get it at Michaels. You could even add just a bit of color to the netting for a different look/effect. I’ve never tried this pattern but it sure looks like it would work great on bass here in Georgia.
Spawn sack is a fine grained, fine-fiber nylon netting North West Coast bait fishermen use for bundling salmon eggs. It comes as 4" wide rolls of white, yellow or fluorescent orange. I buy the white stuff and dunk it into Rit dye to custom color it. I use it for a…variety of fly tying purposes. Handy stuff.
Shouldn’t that be “sculpinable” silicone caulk, Sandy ??
You surely do come up with some very interesting stuff. Can’t see myself doing flies in the microwave, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find the creative things that you are doing fascinating. Surely something will stick and will show up in one of my flies on down the crick.
I did buy a $30 pawn shop microwave, so I can do this out in my wood shop.
I’m also thinking about starting a new support group called Fly Tier’s Anonymous for compulsive obsessive tiers. Perhaps another too–called 12 Steps Anonymous–for those addicted to 12 step self-help programs.
Rather than going to all the trouble of pouring the plastic, why not start off with something like a Sassy Shad that come in sizes from 1" up and color that are transparent and not, then modify it as you see fit?
I like Uncle Jesse’s Sassy Shad idea. I’ll have to try working with bags of molded blanks a little. Most bass-oriented moldings are too heavy for the flyrod. Keeping the weight down is part of the engineering fun. Adding feathery adornments does make them better flyrod lures. Flures, I guess.
There’s probably no one quite nuts enough (besides me) to actually pursue this. But I started it. So now I’ll follow up. Making the sheeting (described above) is easy enough. I use a pawn shop microwave and a ceramic plate. I tape spawn sack down tightly to the plate. Pour on a layer of resin. Turn on the microwave. You have to experiment with times. You don’t want to melt the spawn sack.
Now cut out a minnow blank. Wash the front end with rubbing alcohol. Put a tiny drop of thin CA glue on the back of a stick-on plastic eye. Glue the eye in place. Same on the other side. Now slobber thick UV resin all around the eyes, so you have it surrounding the entire head portion of the flure. Turn on a UV flashlight. Now use a wide-eyed sewing needle to sew in adornments. Lock each adornment in place with either thin CA glue or water based fabric cement. These are durable flies.
And they reeeeeaaaalllly do catcha da fish.
RE> “wide-eyed sewing needles”
You can’t buy these. Not with a wide eye and a thin shank. I use them constantly. They’re useful for sewing rubber legs into foam, among other things. I make them. Put one needle vertically in the vise. Heat the eye of another with a cigarette lighter. Jamb the red-hot eye down onto the point of the vertical needle with the tube of a bobbin. Rubberleg needles are handy tools. To use a rubberleg needle to sew in fibers–say perhaps a clump of Ice Dubbing–I use a bobbin threader to pull the end of the fiber clump into the wide eye of the needle. Now you can sew it into foam and/or worm resin blanks.
Beyond the fringe:
If there was a precise, directional microwave pistol, you could make almost anything. I might have to buy another pawn shop microwave. And start hacking on it. Point and shoot directionally-focused microwaves, combined with soft, heat set vinyl worm resin, would be the bug sculptor’s holy grail.
Most of the current ultra-realistic bug sculptors use various polyurethane glues to create intricately realistic works of art. But their work tends to be hard and brittle. With a directional microwave pistol (which as far as I know does not yet exist) and worm resin and feathers and hairs, etc. you could make intricately realistic bug sculptures…that would be soft and gooey flexible. And realistic. And durable. I’m going to work on this. It would be important not to accidentally cook your fingers now that I think about it. But what the heck. I’ve been working over top a table saw for 40 years now. And I still have all ten fingers.
I hope you didn’t jinx yourself there. I have a friend who does safety work for a large insurance company who is only about 5’7" or so. And then he got the ends of the fingers on the left hand in the table saw, lost about a quarter of an inch. He typically answers to Stubby.
You have inspired me, I dug around my spinning lures last night and found 3 different swimming shad type lures which if I don’t forget them will get a try next time I’m on the river. I was thinking of adding a Makuta type hackle fin to the largest but could not get my CA to cooperate.
