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Rabbit Skins

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One of my projects this winter will be dig deeper into materials, and first out is a project to dye skins and material to see how that is done and to get more familiar with creating things from scratch. First out is rabbit skins: I got some skins the other day that I will start using for my tying. I ordered a natural brown to create the Kutling, a white to experiment with dying and a black for general zonker strips.

I tested out some different ways of cutting zonkers, but ended up with a method of creating your own zonker cutter on youtube. This has proven to work and I get consistent strips to work with. The natural brown rabbit I got had some long hairs and some good spiky tips that is perfect for the Kutling.

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Here is a version where I used silver fox for the tail (instead of spey hackle) and a white salt-water dubbing from A. Jensen

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Another version, but this time with a orange salt-water dubbing from A-Jensen

2014.10.18.dryfly.me.kutling_redI have tied up a set of these and will test them out later on,  but I’m quite happy with the material so far and the next thing to do is to order color to start dying that white skin. I also plan to look into bleaching and maybe buing a whole Roe  skin to color and use for tying. But first things first: more rabbit!

 

Baitfish day

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Hook: Allen SW001 #4
Thread: Benecchi White
Body: Hareline Select Craft Fur white/black/olive, flash, anglehair
Eyes: 6mm 3d, Bug Bond cover

My new saltwater box needed some baitfish and I found a box of Allen SW001 that is quite short and have a nice open bend that I like in this pattern. When tying these long hairy baitfish you can use a range of material: bucktail, fox, templedog or craft fur as I have done here. This is a really quick pattern to tie up, and most of it is actually spent curing the bugbond!

The primary colors I fish with is green and black, but I have some blue, yellow and red that I will give a go later on. The eyes are attached with superglue and then some layers with bugbond around to form the eye, they are still a bit tacky, so I want to try out some other UV resin soon to see how they behave.

As you can see in this picture I tie these really slim, but the movement this gets when you pull it quickly in have triggered the most of the seatrout I have landed, so I never go out without a couple of these in my box

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Autumn fishing

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It’s autumn again and we are already far into October, but these days can give some crystal clear days when everything is perfect to go out fishing. It has been a busy autumn for my part with traveling and work, so not so many trips out to fish in the Oslo fjord. But I started on a new job last wednesday, and with that I had some vacation days before leaving my old job so I I tied up some seatrout flies and the weather went into picture-perfect mode for two days!

If you have read this blog before you will see that this is a place I have visited before, and that is true, this place is easy accessible, you need waders to get out there and along the shore you can strike gold on a good day. I tie up a lot of flies for my box, and part of going out like this is also to get the new flies into the water to see how they behave. Even if people say that this and that fly is best I like to see how they react and behave before I make up my mind about them (and go back to make adjustments). Here is the lipstick shrimp variation I tied up the other day, I want to get a little bit of lead in the front part to get it to walk a bit different, but that will be for the next trip out here.
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So I had some food, rigged up my Guideline LPXe #6 and started fishing along the shore, it didn’t take more than 3 casts before a cod followed all the way up to the shore and nibbled the shrimp, but it turned aournd just 1 meter out, a close encounter!  I quickly realized that a big flock of small bait fish went back and forth along the shore, and with it came the hunting fish. I tied up a rusty magnus and started casting in and  just outside the big flock to see if something would hit it, but I only got two-three nibbles. So I sat down and paused a bit, these days are good for just sitting down to relax and look at the sea. I kept the rusty magnus on and threw out again, and at one point a fish came up a meter behind my fly, I could see the fin, and it aggressively attacked the fly, but did not take…

Not the best picture, but this is how it looked when the flock came along the shore:

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The seatrout was very jumpy (quite literally) this day: several times I saw seatrout jumping up, one cleared the watesrwith 50cm+,. They also hunted the baitfish all the way in to the shore: you would see a couple of small rings in the surface, then suddenly hundred of small fish would rush in the surface past you, making a wooshing sound as it went past, and you saw the fish hunting them, all the way in to shore and a couple of the small fish went ashore! Then it went silent…. until it happened again 30 minutes later.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe evenings was great though: had picture-perfect conditions for fishing, but sat down and looked at this view quite a few times.

Not the worst of places to be a monday evening!

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At one point a huge rushing sound came right above me and a huge flock of crows was flying past me, I have never had a “The Birds” moment like this before, I got the camera up a bit too late to get a good picture, but if you click on this one an see all the black dots above the building: birds! (and there was even more to the right of the picture)

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Even though the seatrout was out and around it didn’t want to hook properly this time, but I did catch a couple of this with the spaykutling that I have made a set of.

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The Big Hole Demon got a chance to swim as well, but didn’t get any hits. This one I need to varnish or layer with bugbond on the body so that it keeps longer.

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The second-to-last throw and I got this one (also on a spaykutling), It has been a long time since I’ve seen such a fat/round fish! It must have been full of small fish that it had been hunting along the shore.

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Rusty Magnus

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Hook: TMC777SP #6
Thread: Benecchi Red
Tag: Benecchi Red Thread
Tail: Hareline Wooly Bugger Marabou Rusty Brown
Body: Hareline Hare’s Ear Ice Dub
Hackle: Whiting Bronze Brown
Rib: Copper thread
Eyes: The Fly Co Beadchain Black #M

Magnus is a classic scandinavian seatrout fly, here tied in a rusty version with brown/rusty colors in the hackle and the tail. This is a very durable fly: the hackle is secured with a copper rib and the head is finished with superglue, then Bug Bond to create the head around the bead eyes. It can be weighted down with some led, but these have no additional weight as I want to fish them in shallow waters and slowly.

Inspiration came from the “Flugfiske i Norden” (Flyfishing in the nordics) magazine that have a great article on hackle flies for seatrout in the latest edition.