With DFL and myself finding a few hungry cutt's yesterday looking to munch on a few chum fry I though I'd bring this back once more. I was asked to do a step by step last year and never got around to it, so here it is. Pretty simple pattern, it helps to flatten the stem of the grizzlies at the tie in point and keep it sparse. You can tie these on any short shank saltwater hook, I use a size 8.
I've been thinking about early spring and the chum fry hitting the salt, and we all know what will be waiting for them, don't we? Anyway I thought I'd try and come up with a little more realistic pattern than the chum baby, don't get me wrong, I use it and it's a great, super easy, pattern, just not very realistic. Any way here's one I came up with, I wanted a big head, with big eye's and something to represent the parr marks. I like floating lines so I thought I'd go with a bead head and decided to put eye's on the beads and epoxy or hard head them, works good. Probably won't last long after it hits the beach a few times, but oh well.
Put a couple of grizzly's back to back for parr marks and used white buck tail, grey buck tail, and some dark olive/brown marabou on top. I had to make some pink one's too, just cause they looked cool. Hope you like them.
Thanks for the compliments guys, I always liked gold hooks, but didn't know where I would use them, until I started thinking about Chum Fry. I also toyed around with a Lady Amherst tippet eye, but it didn't look right and I didn't feel like the way any of my stick-ons looked either. The eye is definitely a dominant feature, and I'll keep playing with it.
Mountain Trout, it's two feather's (Whiting Dark Barred Ginger Cape) over sparse long tan calf tail w/ 3 strands of root beer Krystal flash. The belly is a blend of white and tan calf tail, and the throat is red calf tail. I'm on a calf tail kick right now, it's an amazing material.
Tied another fry fly, this one with a bit of red for gills. The eyes, by the way, aren't pink. THey just seem to reflect the fluorescent light that way.
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This will be my last posting to this thread (before you guys throw me off)
THis is a simple little fry fly that I was using for cuts long before I became aware of the Chum Baby. It is quick, easy, and cheap to tie. AND IT WORKS.
The bead chain eyes come off my old dog tag chains. Bead chain was used before the widespread availability and use of all the special (and expensive) beads and cones.
FLy tied sort of clouser style. Just some krystal flash and olive bucktal.
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Jackd- those are outstanding. Just one more post as I am having some problems getting this to look very good. What is the hook of the last one you posted, where you note the pink reflection in the eyes? Is the head(eyes) on a bead? or is it coated with epoxy?
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Marc,
The (silver) hook is a Tiemco 9394 #6. I used the long shank just to be able to have a longer body of holo gold mylar. A shorter shank saltwater hook like Gamakatsu SS15, Tiemco 811s, or Mustad 3407 would be just fine. The eyes are just little stick on jobs on a built up thread head and then epoxied. The pink tint is just a reflection.
Probably the best color eyes would be gold and black. These are pearl. I ran out of the gold. Size of the eye is 1.5mm. Hope this helps. I'm going to be giving these flies a good workout this weekend. Jackd
Nice, Jackd, I like that one. And thanks for sharing. Good luck on your test fishing! I bet the cutts see your L'il Chummee as the eye candy we do.
All these flies posted here look like winners.
There are some really nice flies on this thread. Chum Fry are fun to fish and I will never forget an afternoon with Roger Stephens where we came upon a school of Sea Run Cutthroat that had "herded" a large school of Chum Fry into a small cove and they were literally gorging on the fry. I have fished Bob Trigg's Chum Baby for years but have to admit that I am afflicted with Roger's Topwater focus. I tied a version of the Miyawaki Popper as a Chum Fry several years ago but the head was just too big. I have just finished a new Chum Fry Slider that I will tie this weekend at Cutts & Chums. The key to this fly was cutting a Rainey's Pee Wee Popper head in half to scale it down to the size of a Chum Fry. I also tied it on a tube to keep the hook small and short shanked. I will be testing this fly this weekend on the OP. The head is small enough that it may not keep it totally topwater but I am sure it will v-wake, even if just subsurface. I also added a hackle feather flat wing style to give it even more motion.
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