Chris McCully

Fishing Diary

Pike tubes

Monday, 6 October 2008 at 09:04

Assorted pike tubes Knowing of my fiddling with pike tubes, my reader, Michael Johnson, very kindly sent me one of his own patterns a week or two ago. This is pictured at the top of the assorted tubes shown right. Michael tied this tube on a piece of plastic tubing cut from ear-wax removers, equipped the tube with a #2 barbless Ad Swier Absolute pike hook (a good hook for tubes since it's tough and has a straight eye and a slightly offset point), and knotted the hook onto Surflon Micro-Supreme wire (11kg.), attaching a tiny swivel to the trace-end of the wire.

Michael's specimen pike (and zander) tube is superbly tied. I spent some time this past weekend, while the daily and nightly downpours continued to drum around our heads, the potatoes rotted in the fields and the local hens ran for cover, trying to replicate Michael's ideas - with indifferent success, I admit. But at least these present efforts are slighly more promising than the pencil-thin, relatively unbalanced horrors I began to experiment with last year.

The tubes shown (the bottom three are my own dressings) are between 7-10 inches long and incorporate plenty of flash. They have eyes, too - sometimes a pair of eyes epoxied on at the head, sometimes a brace of eyes epoxied into the front end of wound rabbit strip. The longest of the tubes - 10 inches - is tied simply with two bunches of Flashabou, and is very light and very, very mobile. It's the tube equivalent of the Flash Fly, of course.

For the mini-traces I used 11kg, plastic-covered wire and attached the hook with a Melt Knot. This is very strong and slides beautifully into the tubing at the rear of the lure. A further advantage of this rig is that the tube and its mount have a certain amount of built-in flexibility, since the hook can bend slightly within its rear plastic house. This should minimise the leverage problem. (I don't mean that the hook itself can bend, merely that it remains relatively flexible within its tube mount.)

One further tip, again a well-known trick. Once you've finished constructing the tube, hold a flame against the front lip. Don't burn the plastic; just heat it. You'll find that this action burns off any stray material from the front end, and raises a lovely little ridge in the plastic. This will stop the dressing sliding off the front end of the tube. You could do this, of course, before you tied your tube if you so wished.

Michael uses tapered leaders for his pike fly-fishing, but since this entry is already too long I shall write about those another time, noting only that one of the great things about fly-fishing is precisely this kind of exchange of ideas. Thank you to Michael, therefore. I am, as always, grateful to have a true expert on my case.

Dry fly storage

Monday, 6 October 2008 at 08:59

Most of the fly-fishing world got to this idea before me, but.... An easy, safe and cheap way to store dry flies without their hackles or wings being crushed is in pill boxes. Recently, my Mum - hi, Mum - got hold of two such boxes: a 7-compartment box, and a 32-compartment box with removable mini-trays. Both retailed for around 5 Euros. I have covered up the plastic graphics (M for Monday, and so on) with sticky labels. Yes, one did not watch Blue Peter for nothing. Into these compartments I can deposit a lifetime's supply of dry flies. In fact I shall be so old by the time I get round to exhuming dry flies from these compartments that I won't be able to read the handwriting on the labels. But there we are.

A note on the RANO day

Monday, 29 September 2008 at 08:24

Yesterday, en route back home from the Rotterdam ferry I stopped off in Kampen to be tested, along with a couple of dozen others, on my fly-casting competence. This training course, organised by RANO/VNV (I won't explain the abbr. to English readers, since you'd fall asleep in the soup before I'd finished), is the one you take preparatory to a fly-fishing instructor's course. I found it all frighteningly difficult. You're required to be competent in, and under exam. conditions, to pass, 17 different exercises, including double-hauling 23m (25 yards) with a 5-weight, roll-casting both forehanded and backhanded into targets, parachute, reach and bow casting.... It's all about timing, precision and control. In the event, I just about made it, despite having to be re-tested on my parachute cast, and was given a nice certificate to prove it. And a badge. I think the last time I wore a badge it had 'Now I Am Five' on it, and I'm possibly even prouder of this one, since it tells a resolutely unastonished world that I am a 'gecertificeerd werper'. Still, I have been called many worse things.

Huge thanks to everyone involved in organising the training days and the big event yesterday. From laying out the course to the patient, skilled and clear instruction to the provision of lunch.... You know who you are.

Bridgett's trout flies

Monday, 29 September 2008 at 08:19

Sea-trout flies tied in 1924 R.C. Bridgett published Loch Fishing in Theory and Practice in 1924. Last week I saw some of the flies favoured by Bridgett, which are part of Ade Bristow's angling collection. There they were, clicked into a folded slip of paper. Interesting, isn't it, that the great man fished his Red Palmer on the tail? Ade also has a wonderful collection of Yorkshire Dales-related tyings, diaries and flies, including 19th-century notes about fishing the Barden reach of the Wharfe hand-written on sheep parchment.

Klink and Dink on the Nidd

Monday, 29 September 2008 at 08:10

As part of the angling journeys of the past week I visited the River Nidd near Harrogate (North Yorkshire). It's a shameful confession for a Yorkshireman, but I'd never fished the Nidd for trout and grayling before this last visit. What a grand river it is, holding abundant stocks of trout and grayling. I was lucky enough to catch both on my allotted day, with the best brown going to around a pound and a half. The shot shows a nice Nidd grayling which took a Klinkhamer.

I learned a new technique last week. It's quaintly called 'Klink and Dink' by those in the know - a category which apparently includes everybody in the fly-fishing world....except me. A Klinkhamer is tied onto the end of the leader in the normal way, and then a 'Dink'- a Goldhead - is suspended from the bend of the Klink, New Zealand-style. Ade Bristow (see below) and Steve Rhodes fished this way a great deal on the Wharfe last season, and at the end of the year the respective scores were 50/50 to the Klink and the Dink.

Wild light at Mulberry Whin

Monday, 29 September 2008 at 08:08

September storm at Mulberry Last week I fished for a day and a half at Mulberry Whin on Driffield Beck in East Yorkshire. The weather was cool and even stormy at times, and the beck two feet above normal levels. Despite the weather I had a cracking time, and took four brace of browns to around 2lbs, all on dry flies.