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Here is SBS for wool head pike streamer I’ve posted earlier. It is kind of new type of pike streamers for me. It should be hard to cast, but also will make lots of noise underwater because of bulky wool head. For these streamers I’ve used short-shank-big-gap carp hooks (they are sharp as hell… poor fingers :] Used the same:

“sculpin wool” I bought in sewing craft store. This wool is used to make these or these. Costed me a buck for one big pack of wool.

This wool comes in variety of colors and could be used to tie any color combinations. This one is “fire tiger” (maybe I should paint stripes with permanent marker).

Materials used:

• carp hook size 3/0
• some lead for weight
• synthetic fur in yellow, green and chartreuse
• couple feathers of marabou
• yellow wool and doll eyes

make a thick mono loop. It should prevent tail from tangling around the hook:

tie in green marabou (actually it’s a turkey)

wrap it

do the same with yellow “marabou”

nice heh?

tie in big bunch of wool (actually I will make tutorial how to make wool heads)

bend it back and put a drop of superglue

repeat as many times as you need to cover hook shank, again drop of superglue, clip off thread

form a nice flat head (round, slim, wide – as you wish)

glue in doll eyes

and that’s it :]

All kind of leeches are very successful patterns for early spring trout fishing. Lamprey are migrating to their spawning grounds and are easy pray for hungry trout. Presentation should be slow and as near to bottom as can be. Sinking or sink tip lines are must. But first – we need to tie some flies.

Here is a try to make a simple one material streamer. So we will need mink fur strip (long enough to match real lamprey length), two hooks, some backing (braided line) and eyes (optional – dumbbell or beadchain). Front hook is kind of worm or similar to that – he has two barbs on the shank. It will help to fasten rear hook better.

tie in mink strip (somewhere in the middle)

palmer the rest of strip towards

tie in eyes

make dubbing loop, tie around the eyes

cut the front hook

attach rear hook (loop to loop technique) and that’s it

So, here is SBS for pike streamer I posted earlier. I’ve never used this kind of flies, because I had light rod (7wt.), and it’s not easy to cast such fur ball, soaked with water… And this streamer because of very heavy dumbbell eyes weights 4 g. … I can imagine, it will be hell to cast, but also streamer will have lots of up-and-down movement in the water. Some test drive on the water will show who is who

This is slightly modified version of Pike bunny streamer. Instead of cross-cut rabbit strip, I’ve used synthetic flash material (bought in craft store – it is kind of decoration stuff for sewing) and synthetic fur.

Materials used:

• Front hook – saltwater Varivas hook, rear hook – smaller carp hook;
• Wire strand for mounting rear hook;
• Dumbbell eyes;
• Rabbit strip;
• Some flash and synthetic fur.

Finished fly:

This plastic coated wire strand I’ve bought in craft store. It is used for making necklaces.

this picture shows how flash material exposes trough synthetic fur creating very lifelike look

As I wrote in my article on Globalflyfisher.com – chubies love bugs. Bug makes noisy splat that draws their attention to what is going on on the surface. Those days I was fishing big bugs, and actually they produced some real nice-sized fish, but now I am fishing with light rod (8′ 2wt.), so trowing chunky flies is kind of trouble.. So I had to decrease size and do some research with color combinations. Here is quote from my article on GFF:

The bug fever started when I got a foam beetle from my friend Darius Vaskevicius.
Within short, the fly caught me my biggest chub ever, which was close to 60 cm/24″.
So this bug was so attractive, that I started experimenting with shape, colors and other woodoo things. One of the experiments resulted in a beetle with creamy body and mint colored foam. It was tied just for fun and not for fishing. However, one day, when the fish were not biting, I tied it on and within a few hours I caught many and nice chubs. It does not look natural, but it certainly works very well. Now I am aware that it works best under the pre-spawning period. The rest of the season, the fish prefer brown and black flies looking more naturally.

Rest of article along with some photos you can find on Globalflyfisher – HERE

Tying instructions

• Cut a foam strip. You’ll need any foam, any color – it will be used to form the body. Tie it as shown;
• Cut a LOCO foam strip and tie in. Can be used regular foam in any color you prefer;
• Put some dubbing in loop for the “hot spot” – chartreuse, orange, red will do fine. Wrap it;
• Make another dubbing loop and put there darker dubbing for the body (here I use Peacock dubbing from Siman);
• Wrap 2/3 of body, bend Loco foam and tie it with your thread. Make one turn with dubbing (optional);
• Tie in the legs, bend the rest of foam and form the head…
• You know the rest – whip finish, varnish, blah blah blah

There can be hundreds of color combinations, just try to find what is best for your favorite waters. Good luck!

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This streamer is tied using the technique found on Hatches magazine but instead of cross cut rabbit, I’ve used synthetic  fur, bought in local sewing craft store. For this fly you will need: cheap front hook, carp trailer hook, synthetic fur, some lead and eyes (dumbbell, bead chain), backing, monofilament or braided line for trailer hook and thread of course.

Here is a quote from Hatches magazine:

The Strung Out movement was created by Pacific Northwest guide Derek Fergus. Articulated flies are nothing new, but this method of tying permits an angler to create very large flies with articulated action yet eliminating a solid, long hook shank. Tube flies can give you large flies and small hooks but they loose the articulation some folks find very appealing, especially on flies intended to be swung and not retrieved. Articulated flies use the long solid hook shank of a front hook to build the fly, but that shank can be used by the fish as leverage to work the fly loose or break the leader. Fergus’ Strung Out philosophy of tying involves tying the fly on section of “string”.
The MOAL (”Mother Of All Leeches”) is a successful version of the Strung Out Leech.

Here is my synthetic version of MOAL leech in reversed red head version:

Bunny strip (zonker) streamers are good lifelike flies, but they are hell to cast. Fur soaks the water and streamer becomes heavy and dangerous projectile. There is one way out of this situation – I’ve read about it in old Fly Tyer (Summer 2007) magazine under “The Leather Tail” title.  It is a bass pattern but works great for trout and sea-trout fishing – imitating various ‘leechie’ creatures.

The main idea is to lighten the tail by cutting off all hair, leaving just leather strip. Article author (Jay “Fishy” Fullum) gives brilliant idea – replace rabbit (bunny) strip with black pigskin. Rabbit fur is not a problem for me (have whole black dyed rabbit skin) so I’ve tied this streamer with shaved rabbit strip (fur gone for making other flies and mixing some dubbing).

So here it is – the recipe. Actually it’s more tying style not the recipe:
Hook: any streamer or salmon hook you prefer;
Weight: dumbbell eyes or (and) some lead [I used bead-chain eyes + lead];
Tail: small bunch of bucktail (any color to match) and bunny or pigskin strip tied above;
Body: mohair yarn [pict] (can be replaced with any matching dubbing);
Head: artificial fur dubbed in dubbing loop.

Tying steps:

mono line loop and bucktail prevents long rabbit strip from tangling around the hook