I made two short videos how the articulated pike streamer move in the water. The blue streamer is the same as the white/olive one, just another color. Due to the big head made from uv-resin, the craft fur keep its volume in the current and moves really nicely!
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/52331026[/vimeo]
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/52330517[/vimeo]
One of my most fished patterns for pike. It’s easy to tie, very durable, you can tie it in the length you want and it wiggles nice through the water. You can also use arctic fox for the front collar instead of finn raccoon. Works well, too.
Materials:
Tie in a piece of mono for the ribbing and mix ice dub pearl and ice dub holographic silver. Then split the thread and put the dubbing mix into the gap. Spin the bobbin to twist the dubbing. Wind the dubbing hank around the hook shank and give it a good brush with your velcro.
Tie in a piece of finn raccoon zonker 5mm next to the hook eye. Then ribb the raccoon zonker with the mono to secure it on the hook shank and catch the mono with your thread.
Tie in the krinkle mirror flash and the gliss’n glow. Then form a loop with your thread and wax the loop. Put a piece of finn raccoon in the loop and cut away the leather. Twist the loop with the raccoon slowly. When the fur is secured in the loop, wind the raccoon around the shank to the hook eye. Comb the twisted raccoon after every turn.
Tie in a strand of lateral scale pearl on each side and split the thread. Put again some dubbing in the gap und twist the bobbin Wind the twisted dubbing around and brush it with your velcro to give the head some extra sparcle.
If you like it, you can do a little hot point with some fluo thread. Glue some sexy eyes on the head and secure the head with Bug Bond.
Ready for pike!
tl Holger Lachmann
Here’s an example for an articulated pike streamer, which is easy to cast, because we try to create volume without putting to much material into the fly. To much material makes the just inflexible (and expensive ;-) )
I used for this pattern the new articulated shanks from the Flymen Fishing Co. in 35mm to get the right movement and position of the hook.
Material:
Put the hook into the vise, do some turns with your thread and tie in the fox as tail and some strands Flashabou Mirage.
Split your tying thread or form a dubbing loop and put the ice dub between and twist it. Then brush it with your velcro and wind it around the hook shank.
Tie in some fox with the tips pointing to the hook eye, cut the waste, put again some dubbing between the thread, twist it and wind it to the front. Then go with the thread between the fox hair to the hook eye.
Push the fox hair with an empty pen towards the hook bend. Then tie in a green grizzly hackle on each side and some strands of krinkle mirror flash. Whip finish and secure with super glue.
Attach the hook with the articulated shank and put the shank into your vise. Then close the gap with a strong thread and super glue (the little pearls on the thread) to fix the hook. This will hold forever!
Create another dubbing hank and wind it around to create a little bump. Then tie in a bunch of artic fox on the hook shank and a bunch underneath. Comb the hair carefully. Another dubbing hank will follow.
Tie in two green grizzy hackles and some krinkle mirror flash. Then comb a bunch of black arctic fox and tie it in like shown on the picture. Trim away the waste and do some rounds with dubbing and do a quick whip finish secured with super glue.
Push the black fox backwards, attach the eyes and secure the whole head with Bug Bond.
That’s it! Ready to go. Have fun with the pikes!
Holger Lachmann
Everybody knows Bob Popovics‘ famous Surf Candy. A really great pattern to imitate bait fish and sandeels. I always loved this pattern. The only thing I didn’t like was the stiff material, which is used for it. For my seatrout fishing in the Baltic sea, I wanted the pattern to move more like the real sandeel.
I was always a fan of soft materials, so I tried polar fibre which looks fantastic underwater and moves really nice. The big problem: It was wrapping around the hook bend while casting, which was annoying. The solution was to expand the epoxy body behind the hook bend. This prevents the tangling extremely well.
Another important feature is the weight in the front of the fly which causes a strong jigging effect. The natural behavior of a sandeel when chased by a predator is that it swims as fast as it can to the bottom to hide in the sand. The jigging effect imitate this behavior.
I think I tied now over 1000 Baltic Candies and they changed a lot over the last years. The first years I used 5minute epoxy for the body and I developed some tricks to build a perfect smooth body without a lot of efforts. I showed these tricks at a lot of fairs in the last years and there was always an „Aaah!“-effect for the audience and even for some of the other tiers, but I wouldn’t tell you the tricks! ;-)
Why? The answer is quite simple. I don’t use epoxy anymore. I was annoyed by the yellowing of the epoxy after some months. It doesn’t matter which epoxy brand you are using, everything turns yellow! You don’t tie a BC in 5 minutes, that’s for sure, so it’s hard to see your with love tied flies turning yellow. The other important point is, that epoxy is very unhealthy. So I changed to uv-resin, which means all my nice epoxy tricks were useless….but that was not to bad, because working with uv-resin is quite easy, especially when you are working with „tackfree“-resin.
A Baltic Candy wet and dry
My Baltic Candies becomes smaller and thinner over the years, because of a lot of improvement. It’s harder for the fish to find out if it’s real food or not, when the fly looks a bit blurry in the water. Another advantage is, that a slim sandeel pattern with weight in the front flies through the air like a dart. Even with your hand you can throw a Baltic Candy several meters! Try this little experiment with a normal fly….you’ll see whats happened. ;-)
Bernd Ziesche with perfect baltic silver. You can see my Baltic Candy on the cork handle. ;-)
This sbs is for a „fully dressed“ Baltic Candy. You can use less flash if you prefer it. Personally I got Baltic Candies with different amounts of flash material.
Two important tips: First, strip the Baltic Candy really fast through the water with some stops. You could never, really never(!), strip the BC too fast. We could never reach the speed of a spin fishermen, so there is no „too fast“.
Secondly, it could happen that the polar fibre is a bit disarranged after you caught a fish. Just use a velcro on your jacket or vest as a comb to brush the BC.
At last, I have to thank my buddy Bernd Ziesche (great guide, superb casting instructor and owner of the fly fishing school www.first-cast.de) for his tests and comments over the years!
Materials:
Wind the lead wire around the hook shank and secure it with super glue.
Tie in the twisted flash.
Twist the flash and wind it to the front and catch it with your thread.
Tie in a little hot bite point at the end of the shank.
Tie in a bunch of white polar fibre on the underside of the fly.
Tie in the angel-hair.
Tie in bunches of blue and olive polar fibre.
Tie in two strands of krinkle mirror flash on each side and do a whip finish.
Pull the fibres with your left hand and apply the Bug Bond and cure it with your uv-torch.
Put the stick-on eyes on each side and apply the second thin coating of Bug Bond. The Baltic Candy is tackfree and now ready for fishing. If you are a crazy fly tyer like myself, you apply a third quick coating of Bug Bond, which gives really a smooth high end finish („black“ photo)! ;)
That’s it, the Baltic Candy, my modified version of Bob Popovics‘ famous Surf Candy.
tight lines
Holger Lachmann
Put a tungsten bead on the hook (here it’s a TMC 2312 #12)
Tie in some fibres from a Coq de Leon hackle as tail.
Tie in stripped peacock quill.
Create a tapered body with the tying thread.
Wind the quill around the hook shank. The dark side of the quill should point to the hook bend.
Put a small drop of uv-resin on the body and cover the quill with a small coat.
The uv-resin after curing. Now, the quill body looks really nice and it’s secured against the trouts teeth. A tack free uv-resin works best.
Tie in some pheasant tail fibres for the wing case.
Tie in a hen hackle with the tip first. The hackle will create the legs of the nymph.
Dub the thorax with a dubbing of your choice. I used SLF-Spicky-Dubbing.
Fold the hen hackle first and then the pheasant tail fibres to the hook eye and catch it with the thread close to the tungsten bead.
Cut the hen hackle and the pheasant tail fibres close to the tungsten head and make a whip finish.
Finish the fly with a drop of uv-resin on the wing case.
A heavy nymph with quiet a real shape, nice colours and very durable.
Holger