Big fish flies

[pittendrigh]

Streamer flies are supposed to imitate minnows and sculpins.

But we've all seen--or at least heard stories about--big
fish caught with six to ten inchers still stuck in their gullets.

If you want to catch a big fish, it makes a lot of sense
to experiment with flies that imitate grown fish,
rather than juvenile minnows.

But how do you do that? How do you make a 7 or 8" fly
heavy enough to sink, yet still light enough to cast?
Here's what I've come up with, over the years:
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Streamers/Roadkill-Streamer/index.html

and, even better:
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Streamers/Pig-Sticker/Pig-Sticker.html

[obiwankanobi]

Tube flies, my friend, tube flies!

I agree with the fact that if you want to be a shark hunter like me, then you have to be willing to put on a big nasty and go hunting. The shanks of even the longest hooks don't allow for that to happen, but plastic tubes come in all lengths.

What I like to do, which is similar to what you are showing is construct 2" lengths of bunny or of palmered squirrel and stack these fuzzy tubes to desired lengths. On the water, if you want a smaller fly use one segment, if you want to really get crazy use 3 segments. Being that this type of fly is built on the water, you can adjust for fish size. Another great bonus is that two tubes stacked together back to back on one line, has a hinge point, giving the fly articulation.

The nasties that you show, will do the trick as well!!!!

[riseform]

Sinking line, unweighted articulated flies ala Kelly Galloup. Easy to cast all day.

sculpin http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=21234&ppuser=8823
trout http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=20763&ppuser=8823
crayfish http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=20758&ppuser=8823

I once had a brown in Michigan take my struggling hooked rainbow, which earned my respect for big streamers (swallowed it head first...tail sticking out it's mouth). The majority of hook ups will be on that front hook when targeting aggressive browns.

While the big flies are fun, autopsies of those big fish still find bellies full of 2-4 inch sculpins, so regular streamers still get big fish.

[pittendrigh]

Tube flies, my friend, tube flies!..........

Yes I love tube flies too. The only difference here (what I'm trying to accomplish
with the flies I mentioned) is the flexible length of the fly, which you don't get with
tubes. I'm not saying tubes are no good. Quite the contrary. But I do think
extra-flexy, front-to-back undulation of the fly has its own niche in the big picture. The Roadkill Streamer
and the Pig Sticker do that: if you jig the line (bob the rod tip) slowly, as you retrieve,
these flies snake through the water like something that just has to be alive.

The most surprising thing is how many ten inch fish will eat an 8" fly.
Also, I like to put the hook in the middle. Trailing stingers never seem to do anything
but get tangled. The fish *always* seem to bite these things in the middle anyway.

[pittendrigh]

Sinking line, unweighted articulated flies ala Kelly Galloup. Easy to cast all day.
sculpin http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=21234&ppuser=8823
trout http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=20763&ppuser=8823
crayfish http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=20758&ppuser=8823


Thanks. Those are good flies, good links. Dan Delekta (has a shop and guiding bidnes down closer to
Cameron Bridge) makes flies a lot like that too. That seems to say something (two of the top
local guides make big, articulated streamers much the same way).

I don't know about Kelly, but Dan's biggest flies are about 4" long.......maybe 5" at the outside.
The Pig Sticker's I've been making are up to 8-9" long. And they work.....like I said,
they don't replace anything, but I do think they have their own niche to fill.

One other interesting point....Yes, predatory fish ALWAYS swallow their prey head first.
But they don't attack it that way. They invariably attack from the side, biting at the
prey's "center of gravity," which in a fish or minnow, is almost always a bit toward
the gills from dead center. Then they head shake, juggle and then swallow, like
a heron swallowing a frog, to get the head going down first:

T.E. Reimchen:
In his 1991 paper on the 'Evolutionary attributes of headfirst prey manipulation and swallowing in piscivores,' T.E. Reimchen observes that
'cutthroat trout often attack prey near the center of mass, which tends to be closer to the head than the tail in most fishes,' and then,
a few sentances later: 'prey that are attacked at mid-body are generally rotated into headfirst alignment for swallowing.'

...that jives with my own obsrevations. Brown Trout always seem to swirl and attack from the side.
When I fish giant, 8" long flies, stinger hooks never do anything except snag the gill plate, on
the outside of the mouth.

Leading hooks (at the front end) never hook anything, and they cause innumerable tangles.
A single mid-mounted hook (in a giant long fly) is always the one that gets them.
To fish a long flexible fly with (only) a mid-mounted hook, I use a shock tippet, with
a double surgeons knot around the front end of the fly, so the hook is in the middle,
but it still pulls from the front..........

[chadk]

There are many fine examples of extra large flies in this sites gallery. Big stuff for browns, dollies, steelhead, etc.

[riseform]

Nice source... That first stun hit probably is toward the mid-front end. You're correct, the flies I posted max about 5-6 inches, so the back of the front hook would be the hook up area. For your 9 inch flies, I'm inclined to agree with your setup.

I talked to Kelly about this very issue after reading a lot of old WFF threads on which hook to clip if you're limited to just one on an articulated fly. He catches almost all fish on the front hook. He recommended clipping the back hook (keeping the bend as a rudder) if regs required removal of one or the other. He also said the back hook hasn't resulted in an eye piercing or lethal gill hookup, which hasn't been an issue in all his years of guiding. The key here is that large, aggressive, hungry trout are being targeted, as opposed to tail nipping territorial behavior.

His take on really large (8+ inch) streamers is that he didn't necessarily catch bigger or more fish beyond the 5-6 inch size. He mainly emphasized the improved motion of the articulated patterns triggering strikes. Your flies seem to combine both properties nicely. Are you using a sinking line with the pig sticker?

[pittendrigh]

Are you using a sinking line with the pig sticker?

My streamer rod (a 9' 6" older Sage rpl+) has a sink tip line on the reel (that I never take off).
So yes. But on wade trips I don't take two rods, so then I usually take a 6 weight 9'
rod with a floating line. I like extra stiff leader butts, so if I want to swith to streamers
I use a loooong leader and weight, as needed.

I don't fish the Madison in summer much. It makes me feel bad, just to look at all
the boats and over-crowding. But I do fish it a lot early and late. Even then streamers
don't usually work all that well on bright sunny days. But when it's stormy and cloudy,
look out. And I don't float down the middle of the river poking a the bank. I float down
the edge of the river, poking at the deepest, bluest troughs in the middle of hte current.

That doesn't necessarily work so well on other rivers, but the Madison is like a 60
mile fast shallow riffle. The big fish are in the deep water. You could poke the edges
for 50 years and not see as many big fish as one float, on a stormy day in April,
targeting the deep fast water in the middle of the river.

[obiwankanobi]

I was talking to a few guys at a local fly shop yesterday and I told them about a story of a elderly gentleman that would dye leather boot shoe laces "blue" and cut sections of the lace to thread onto a hook and make a "worm" like teaser. He would cast nothing but a section of lace, dangling from the bend of a bare hook and strip it fast and due to the erratic motion, brown trout would come out of hiding and smack it.

This was interesting to see, but being that this is a higly regarded spring creek, many die hard's scoff at those that throw anything larger than a size 18 Compadun or No Hackle. Being that I am a little rebellious, I have some streamer patterns that I have tied for that creek that will raise the eyebrows of the largest brown trout. It usually doen't take much before I get approached with what I am using, since a large brown can make a huge commotion amongst bamboo rod throwers using 7X.

Sometimes I get the typical "snub" from the die hards that have been fishing this place for the last 20 years and deem it as being the top places to dry fly fish in the country. Most of the time it usually amounts to compliments and the typical exchange for "drags" of scotch for a fly or two of what I have been consistently using that day.

During the "fashion show," where everyone stands around the cabin or parking lot showing off handmade rods and expensive reels, discussions go on into the night. What was surprising is how much annomosity was given to guy using shoe laces to catch fish. While we all agreed that everyone saw him catch fish throughout the day, we all agreed that the art of fly fishing/fly tying superceeds just being able to catch a fish.

It was once told to me that if you had just dubbing and a hook you could immitate 90% of the time consuming ties that we use today. For instance, if you used a small hook and fuzzed it out, then you could immiate a scud, emerger, caddis pupa, egg pattern etc. If you used a longer hook you could trim the dubbing to immitate all stoneflies. A dry fly hook and sparse dubbing, could immitate all adult mayflies and caddis, depending one where and how the dubbing was applied. All of these "patterns" would indeed catch fish, but does it reflect the purity and essence of fly tying/fishing?

I understand the problem that you are tying to solve with your "Road Kill" streamer and know that just a hook, weight and bunny zonker strip, you could immiate a baitfish, but again getting back to the true essence of fly tying/fly fishing, it breaks conformity.

I'm not trying to ridicule or condemn, but being somewhat of a traditionalist, I see that if all we as "fly fisherman" or "fly tiers" are doing is attaching shoe lace or bunny strips to a hook, then we are regressing from centuries of fly fishing/tying innovation.

That's just my critical opinion, but I was taught by my grandfather that tied alongside with Dan Bailey and many fly tying legends.

[pittendrigh]

I'm not trying to ridicule or condemn, but being somewhat of a traditionalist, I see that if all we as "fly fisherman" or "fly tiers" are doing is attaching shoe lace or bunny strips to a hook, then we are regressing from centuries of fly fishing/tying innovation.
That's just my critical opinion, but I was taught by my grandfather that tied alongside with Dan Bailey and many fly tying legends.

...I'll have try the shoelace idea. What I don't understand is why so many people seem to think
appreciating tradition and complexity means you *cannot* appreciate anything else.
I'm a guy who doesn't like boundaries. I know as much or more about fly fishing tradition as anyone
I know. And I love and appreciate and participate in those wonderful traditions.
And yet I still like to fish a worm every now and then too.

When I do appreciate fishing that isn't fly fishing, I don't feel like I've damaged fly fishing in any way.
I feel like I just took a well deserved break. Here's some more about territorial traditions:

<b>Halford</b>
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Lure-Flies/Introduction.html

<b>Sandy</b>
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Mayflies/index.html

<b>Earnest Traditions</b>
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Articles/Henryville-Reprobait.html

[riseform]

I once attended a lecture by one of the leaders in my profession who has advanced the field through innovation and invention. He always pushed the envelope, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. His advice at the end of the lecture....spend a lot of time in hardware stores browsing the aisles to incorporate existing solutions into our specialty.

For fly tying, I think you can change that to craft stores and fabric shops. There are a lot of examples on this board of people who have designed flies from things laying around the house or found in a craft store (note the recent fly made incorporating easter basket grass). LaFontaine did it with antron yarn. Sandy is obviously one of those people who looks at every scrap of material he crosses and thinks in terms of a potential fly. I'm not going to argue with the simplicity of the "road kill fly", but if you look over the pages of his other flies, it's just one of many ideas.

I'm intrigued with the extended feather body idea. We've recently been challenged on the "undersea bugs DVD" thread to design a fly that mimics the arching emergent midge and mayfly, struggling as it attempts to pierce the film (head and tail attached to the film, body in a "u" shape beneath). Maybe that feather body, a puff of cdc instead of a tail, coupled with a small rib of weight at the bend of the hook, will allow us to invent a fly that pulls the underside down while keeping the floating head and tail in the film to provide such a fly. I say keep the ideas coming, no matter how simple. We can always build upon the ideas.

[Mark Bové]

http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=18234&ppuser=8321

In a few western rivers with very large trout I fish the Whity fly. It has a half inch cone head and is about 8-12 inches long. I fish a black version on really bright days. I think the fish see it better... and a white one on cloudy days. The fly is really tough to cast with your standard trout rod so I fish a XTR 6 and eight weight to chuck him with a full sink line. This fly has hooked me some of the largest fish i have ever seen on a trout stream out of a boat. All you need to do is cast it into a deep slot and kick out line. Have the guy rowing to back row hard. Throw a large down stream mend to make it swing cross current and hang on... the grabs can be scarry... Remember you want to fish to see how long it is so make sure it is swimming across the current.

Mark

[obiwankanobi]

Fly fishing and fly tying can go from very simplistic to very advanced, depending on how one wants to participate in this sport. Ideally, one can fish a large wolley bugger all day long on any lake or stream in the world and probably catch just as many fish as the angler that is trying to methodically "match the hatch" or lift rocks and logs and see what food is available in each and every aquatic ecosystem. You can fish an Eagle Claw with a like reel or fish a Winston bamboo rod, with a Hardy Princess. There is a large spectrum of choices a "fly fisherman" can choose from.

So what defines a "fly fisherman?" That answer is left up to every individual. For example, I was fishing the Cedar three weeks ago and three nice gentleman were casting from the bank with primitive fly gear, no real concept of fly casting or line mending and letting their flies swing across a pool. These guys were nice to talk to, enjoying their day and casting what they thought were caddis flies and letting these flies swing across the current and then they would dangle them for a couple of minutes at the end. They were using large wolley worms, which they thought were caddis flies. They were catching fish after fish and having a good time.

Another example was a guy doing his version of "fly fishing" at a local lake in Idaho. All he was doing was putting a 1" curly tail on a hook and trolling. Me being all "sophisticated", was using a small damsel. We had a great time talking and were catching nice native bows one after the other. We were both fishing barbless hooks and he, just like I, released every fish unharmed.

So what's my point. My point is the answer to what qualifies as fly fishing, or what qualifies as a "fly" is unique to every individual. I know guy's that won't use an indicator when nymph fishing, deeming it as bobber fishing. I know guys that hand make every leader and wouldn't be caught with a dummy tapered leader. I have seen people tie on a fly and weight it down with pencil lead and lob it to catch steelhead. I know the purists that hand make their rods, leaders, flies and know entomology and fish biology, down to scientific classifications.

Dec Hogan said that he always gets a rush of excitment tying on a beautifully tied fly to the end of his line. John Shewey is another higly regarded individual, commenting about the pure joy of tying on a beautiful spey fly, representing decades of tradition.

If using boot lace, or a Berkley twisty tail, or just a strip of bunny or whatever you choose to catch fish, is your choice and what you value in your passion for fly fishing. If using a indicator to nymph fish or buying a tapered leader allows you to enjoy this sport, then by all means do it. What I value with fly tying and fly fishing is different from what you value. That is great, as long as we can meet on one common ground, that we both do our part to conserve the fishery and allow the fish to prosper long into the future.


I use sythetics today that were not available when my grandfather was alive and commercially tying. If they were available then, he would have had much different looking patterns.

Getting back to the "essence of fly fishing/tying" one has the option to tie patterns that were tied 100's of years ago for Atlantic Salmon. These patterns require much time and very much patience and skill to achieve a perfect duplication. A person can get to that level or he can tie the typical

[kodiaksalmon]

I'm a big fly guy. I've not tied anything smaller than 2/0 for a long time, and most are tandems, in the 5/0 range.

I cast a nine or ten most of the time for pike and musky.

It's a dark pic, and the ruler is 6" for reference. The spinner blades are size 5 and 6.

http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=9626&stc=1&d=1183975340

[pittendrigh]

I'm a big fly guy. I've not tied anything smaller than 2/0 for a long time, and most are tandems, in the 5/0 range.
I cast a nine or ten most of the time for pike and musky.

Nice work. Do you cast those big spinner baits with a fly rod?
What rod, line weight? Leader?
Giant flies are often what's needed for Barracuda too (although they
will bite and slice a bonefish fly every now and then too).

[kodiaksalmon]

Thanks.

Like I mentioned, mostly nines and tens. To be specific, XP's and RPLXi. But yes, I cast all of those with fly tackle. I don't even own a spinning or baitcast rod.

Depending on water level and clarity, I'll run a 4'-7' leader of straight 40# Maxima. At the end of that I attach a 12" steel leader, and a swiveled clip to attach the fly. The clip is the actual "class" tippet portion of it, as it's about 15 lb. I don't give a flip about records or whatever, but I do need a weak link with the 40# mono, and 50# steel out there, so the clip will give, should the fish tangle it up, or a break-off is in order.