Imprisonment

This is the ideal moment to fish for pike here in Belgium, but with the stormy weather we’re having at the moment, I can’t leave the house because there’s something very wrong with my ear. It’s like I’m walking around in a Star Wars movie. Voices sound like Darth Vader and every other sound is like a saber fight. IT’S DRIVING ME NUTS!

The doctor gave me some medication, but it doesn’t seem to work. So I’m trapped inside, reading (with no music!) and tying flies of course.

 

I’ve tested the last flies I posted,

in Holland and was very satisfied with the action, so I’ve tied me some more.

But I left out the glass rattles.

 

I don’t use rattles that often, but when I do, these are the ones.

But the only good thing about glass rattles, is the fact that they really ‘rattle’, but they’re very fragile. I should test some plastic ones in the future.

On my last post (of these flies), Michael D. Johnson, from http://pikeandferrets.blogspot.com/ left a comment saying that he had trouble with his rattles getting crushed by fish bites. Now, I’m sure I broke some by hitting something on a back cast, there’s always something in the way if you fish from the border here in Belgium, if it isn’t a tree, it’s a wall or a telephone pole (I also hit a car a while back). But I’ve broken some others that were a mystery to me, because I couldn’t believe a pike was able to crush it (these are hard things to break, I thought).

But a couple of days ago, I found out how fragile they really are. I had just tied in the rattle on my hook, when I saw that I didn’t polish the barb off yet. So I took the hook out of my vise and took my dremmel tool, like I always do. But the moment the little grindstone hit the barb, the vibrations made the glass rattle explode in my face!

 

This is what’s left of it.

And if that wasn’t enough reason to never use them again, the day after has put a picture in my mind that I won’t loose very easily…

I had to visit the dentist. And although he’s a nice guy, I hate going there nevertheless. But the moment he came at me with this ‘dremmel-like’ tool to clean your teeth, and felt that vibrating feeling in my mouth, I just couldn’t keep the picture of exploding glass out of my head.

My teeth are still intact, but I can guarantee you that it was a very unpleasant experience!

But that was enough horror for one day. I tied some other stuff as well.

 

This fly is actually the same pattern as the last one, but instead of using Flash’n Slinky Fibre in a brass wire dubbing brush (cut into shape), I used bucktail in a brass wire dubbing brush (not cut into shape).

This creates a lot of opportunities (both the bucktail and the pattern), so I’m still experimenting.

 

In this case for example, my dubbing brush was a bit short, so I tied in a dubbing loop of chartreuse rabbit fur in front of it

 

Here, I used a double rabbit zonker for the tail instead.

 

And this is a tandem version.

And more will follow…