# thinking tarpon



## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

Those flies look great!! I couldnt imagine not tying a fly since last summer. I havent tied a fly since last night...LOL.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> I havent tied a fly since last night...LOL.


I used to be that way too, any more I pretty much only tie flies when I need something or I see a pattern that inspires me to give it try. 

I'm really a blue-collar, ham-n-egg tier though. I stick to the same handful of patterns, deceivers, clousers, deer hair sliders and such, rarely do I venture out and try any of the newer patterns. Guys like Bob LeMay (lemaymiami) tie flies that look like art though.  I'm not that meticulous nor do I have the patience or deft to create flies like that. 

Tying is a great pastime though, I do enjoy sipping a little Grand Marnier on the rocks while tying something up to fish with the next morning, or maybe I just like the cognac.


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

> I'm really a blue-collar, ham-n-egg tier though. I stick to the same handful of patterns, deceivers, clousers, deer hair sliders and such, rarely do I venture out and try any of the newer patterns.


I'm the same way. I have a huge box with a ton of different patterns. All tied cause I thought they were cool, and most have different techniques, so I wanted to tie them all to learn. But, when it comes right down to it I prob. use the same 5 patterns all the time. Good to have around just in case.


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## JRH (Mar 18, 2007)

Lookin good.

I'll take 1 of each color please.


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## orlgheenoer (Dec 10, 2006)

Very nice I am aiming for my first tarpon on fly this summer


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## HaMm3r (Dec 11, 2006)

Nice...I may have to tie one of those first ones, just in case I run into a tarpon someplace. I do see them on occassion in the residential canals...

So, how do you create that solid-looking head? Is it just red thread coated with epoxy or maybe colored nail polish? Thanks!


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

Epoxy


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

well, I'm trying to add to the collection little by little, but I think I'm averaging about 1.2 flies per day so far, darn job, kids and wife keep gettin in the way.  

These are 4/0 circle hook experiments. I've had great success on small snook and tarpon with some #2 light wire circle hook flies, but haven't tried them yet on bigger tarpon. Hopefully I'll get a shot or two Sunday. 

this is trying to be a crabby lookin', shrimpy lookin' or just something darker to eat than one of the red and white ones.  









sorta conventional stu apte yellow/orange thingy, cept the tail hackles are a tad long, by design on my part though. I'm trying for about 4" of profile with all of these.


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

How are those circle hooks workin for you? I've been curious about tying with them.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> How are those circle hooks workin for you? I've been curious about tying with them.


Like I mentioned above, I've had very good, actually excellent, hook up ratio I would say with small snook, ladyfish and tarpon (<20lbs) down in Flamingo. There are some pic's somewhere around in here from last summer I believe, I'll dig around and maybe I can find the links. These were small flies, like these tarpon streamer kinda things above only tied for #2's. I just dug out the model info from my hook box, Mustad Ultra Point - Demon Circle 1x fine wire. Anyway, the hooks were set in the corner of the mouth on nearly every fish though. Can't really say whether I would have hooked more or less fish with J hooks or not, but based on the corner of the mouth hook sets, I'd have to say they more or less worked as you would expect a circle hook to work. 

Overall, I was pretty impressed which is why I want to see what happens on bigger, fish, well much bigger fish that is.  Hopefully lady luck will offer a shot or two and I'll have something interesting to report.


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## Guest (May 16, 2008)

> Very nice I am aiming for my first tarpon on fly this summer


Yeah me too, but at this rate I may have to break out the AR. ;D ;D ;D

%$&*($#@ deerfly, now I'm obsessed. :-[


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

Well I got the itch to tie a tarpon fly on a circle hook. I used a 2/0 owner light circle. Will post pics later.


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## JRH (Mar 18, 2007)

And here I thought I was the only person in the U.S. that used empty Skippy peanut butter jars as containers/organizers out in the garage.

Can't say I've tried the Welch's juice containers though....


P.S. Flies look great. Can't wait to field test a few.


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## Guest (May 17, 2008)

> And here I thought I was the only person in the U.S. that used empty Skippy peanut butter jars as containers/organizers out in the garage.
> 
> Can't say I've tried the Welch's juice containers though....
> 
> ...


I'm still trying to figure out the Bullfrog :-/ :-/


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> And here I thought I was the only person in the U.S. that used empty Skippy peanut butter jars as containers/organizers out in the garage.
> 
> Can't say I've tried the Welch's juice containers though....
> 
> ...


I don't think anything in my garage could be considered an organizer, dis-organizer maybe, organizer no way.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> Lookin good.
> 
> I'll take 1 of each color please.



these will be waiting for you when you get here.


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## Guest (May 18, 2008)

> > Lookin good.
> >
> > I'll take 1 of each color please.
> 
> ...


Jason,

Hold out for the flies and 3 "cold ones"


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

Heres two I tied on 2/0 circle hooks.


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## Guest (May 18, 2008)

> Heres two I tied on 2/0 circle hooks.



Looks like catfish bait to me. ;D ;D

I'll let "deerfly" splain. [smiley=secrets.gif]

Nice work though.


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## JRH (Mar 18, 2007)

Deerfly put on a little fly tying clinic Sat. night in his garage. What resulted is now named the "14 beer Seaducer."

She produced some nice results on Sunday:


_"See, Jason, these fancy drags are all hype. This is how you palm the reel."_


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## Guest (May 18, 2008)

Great job guys. 

Nice job of sticking it out? [smiley=1-thumbsup1.gif]

Sorry I had to leave before the chum machine started. ;D ;D ;D ;D Sure would like to have seen it.


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## orlgheenoer (Dec 10, 2006)

great job guys!!! looks like you where having some trouble fighting the fish with that platform up front.


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## tom_in_orl (Dec 9, 2006)

Nice one. Wish I could have been there.


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## Guest (May 18, 2008)

> Nice one. Wish I could have been there.


Just got off the phone with df. He hopes to "take you there" in a little while. Stay tuned to this thread for more details.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

processing video is a pain in the ... well, here's what I have. I tried to shrink 20 something minutes to 6 and only a about 5 uploaded to photobucket. 

A few things to note here... we hooked the fish (55-60lbs guess) on a 10wt which did not have the backbone to turn this fish. We were both very tired of casting my 12wt in the high winds after about 3 1/2 hours. In this area you can try to sight cast to suspended fish, cast to a rolling fish or blind cast hoping for the best. On this day though the water was way too rough to see very many fish either rolling or suspended, I think we only counted maybe 4 fish in 5+ hours rolling, Jason saw one suspended fish and we drifted over 1 fish. So today it was 99% blind casting for an entire drift, which was about 1/2 to 3/4 of mile each time. I never counted but I guess we'd make 75 casts or more per drift and we were at it for about 4 hours and on about the 7th or 8th drift when this fish hit. On this fish I did happen to cast near a rolling fish that was too far out to reach. I did throw nearly the whole line out to reach it but it was probably 25ft or so shy of where it needed to get. If this strike was from the same fish I saw roll then I was indeed very lucky this day.  This 10wt is Jasons rig, really nice Sage with an Islander reel, but the reel handle is on the left, I've been using a right handed retrieve since forever so I wasn't used to that at all. We fought the fish for about 1/2hr and had the leader in the guides several times, but I could never really back the fish up the way I needed to and break his spirit, so we decided not to continue any more. It just wasn't worth it to us and especially this great fish. I had maximum pressure on the fish for 90% of the fight too, meaning my hand clamped on the spool and letting the fish tow the boat and only releasing pressure on a burst run or jump. Bottom line is the rod just didn't have the muscle to subdue this size fish. So I got the fish to where Jason could grab the leader and when he tried to grab the shock tippet with his other hand the butt section connection to the class tippet gave out. Jason did a superb job running the boat and videoing every chance he could under very crappy water conditions. This was a very tough day and we were very lucky to hook up.

The 14 beer fly was exactly like this one but with brown tail hackles and some flash instead of barred hackle. A fly pattern than can be tied successfully after drinking 14 imports is truly a great pattern.


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## Guest (May 19, 2008)

Awsome guys.  Thanks for sharing. 

Was it the angler, the boat operator or the bheer that made you sucessful? ;D ;D ;D


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

That sure was boring.....LOL!!! ;D  Tarpon are awesome!!


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## Guest (May 19, 2008)

> That sure was boring.....LOL!!! ;D  Poon is awesome!!


Out of respect for the fish, Mr deerfly would prefer you not use four letter words.  Just saying.


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## tom_in_orl (Dec 9, 2006)

You guys made my Monday morning. Thanks for taking the time to video tape the fight and share it! Its 100x better to watch friends catching fish than it is to watch a fishing show on TV.


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## St._Sophie_Girl (Dec 13, 2006)

Awesome Eric! Good things come to those who wait! I like you're line in the video,"Did you get that?!". ;D


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> > That sure was boring.....LOL!!! ;D  Poon is awesome!!
> 
> 
> Out of respect for the fish, Mr deerfly would prefer you not use four letter words.  Just saying.


its funny you would bring that up, it is true I've never been comfortable with that term for such a magnificent fish. I don't mind when people use it, but it does seem like a condescending term to me. Must be an old guy vs generation X thing.


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

> That sure was boring.....LOL!!! ;D  Tarpon are awesome!!


Didnt mean to offend anybody. Fixed my post for you old guys ;D


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> > That sure was boring.....LOL!!! ;D  Tarpon are awesome!!
> 
> 
> Didnt mean to offend anybody. Fixed my post for you old guys ;D


no offense taken here my friend, nice looking flies too btw. I haven't messed with bunny fur, need to do that.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> You guys made my Monday morning. Thanks for taking the time to video tape the fight and share it! Its 100x better to watch friends catching fish than it is to watch a fishing show on TV.


Tom, glad we could "jump" start your week. 

Next time I'll try to edit in some lunker sauce and banjo minnow advertisements to make seem more like a "real" fishing video.


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## JRH (Mar 18, 2007)

Just to add to the story... 

We got on the water at 6:00am and were greeted with 20mph winds in our face and completely overcast skies. The conditions remained like this till about 11am and as we were motoring back up to make our 7th drift, the wind started to lay down and the sun came out. We passed by an anchored boat and 2 minutes later they hooked up on bait and fought the fish for about 20 minutes. Deerfly hooked up to his fish about 15 minutess later. Right after we broke off our fish, a third boat jumped a fish.

Within minutes of the 3rd boat jumping their tarpon, the wind picked back up to 20 and the sun went back behind the clouds. So, out of the 5-6 boats out there, 3 hooked up, one right after the other during that hour window of "nice" weather. No action the rest of the day.

It's all speculation, but it did reinforce the notion that weather can have an impact on when the fish bite. Then again, it could have been a coincidence...


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> It's all speculation, but it did reinforce the notion that weather can have an impact on when the fish bite. Then again, it could have been a coincidence...


Speculation or not, it did happen that way. That small window of nice weather may have been enough for the fish to start actively feeding, if only for a little while. Except for the catfish of course, they were "hot" through the worst of it.  

I have, no doubt, caught my share of catfish, but never on a 12wt and a tarpon fly.  And I have to confess as well, even if it detracts a bit from an otherwise noble day on the water, the catfish you caught on my 12wt was at least twice as big as the one I caught. ;D 

I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"


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## aaronshore (Aug 24, 2007)

Those rabbit strips are alot of fun to tie with. I prefer the magnum cut strips for a bushier tail. The only thing is the leather on the bottom of the strip hold air like deerhair and it takes a few minutes to get out. You can get around that by adding heavier eyes, but I'm sure you didnt need me to tell you that.


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## Guest (May 20, 2008)

Sure wish we were closer. It would be fun to get together to tie at least once a month. you know - "tie flies - tell lies". Used to go watch at a local shop and now I regret not getting more involved. Drug out my stuff over the weekend and going to try to figure it all out.

You guys think you could do a pic tutorial of what you are tying. If you could just snap pics of each stage so I can get an idea. Maybe tie a tutorial thread? I'll reciprocate with pics of "dead soldiers" ;D ;D ;D That part I've got down pat.  Don't have to write an explanation, I'll ask if I'm having trouble figuring it out.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> Awesome Eric! Good things come to those who wait! I like you're line in the video,"Did you get that?!". ;D


thanks Sophie, after watching it we thought it was kinda funny too, but it wasn't meant the way it may have come out, like a vane statement or something like that. 

I'll use your comment to elaborate a little more about what was going on. The thing was I was never really sure when Jason was able to get the video going and also handle the boat too. We were hoping to get as many jumps as we could on video but we missed several others because its just too much for two guys to manage with a fish that size and under those weather conditions. For Jason's first fly caught tarpon on his skiff, he really did an outstanding job at the helm and behind the camera. No after the fact aggrandizing here either, he just about anticipated every thing I asked him to the point where I didn't bother saying anything about boat handling as the fight progressed. He kept me on top of the fish the whole time. 

Anyway, I'm trying to get the whole unedited version uploaded which is 11 minutes and 41 seconds of about a 30 minute fight. In the full version you'll hear me ask if the camera is running a time or two as well as us discussing the break off. We knew we were too long into the fight and figured we had to have had enough decent footage to document the event. The shark potential was going up exponentially with every minute we had the fish on the line too. I think you'll also get a better feel for how well Jason managed his end of the deal which was as important as anything I did with the rod. 

In retrospect I think Jason may have been able to get the shock tippet in his hand if the boat wasn't bouncing up and down in the waves. No worries though, considering the conditions everything went as good as we could have hoped for and we ended up with some decent video too, which was a bonus. Certainly a boat side hero shot would have been great but not at the expense of prolonging the fight any more than we did. We would have been heart broken if a shark ended up grabbing the fish towards the end there. Fortunately we didn't have that problem, but its always risk when you go after these fish. Truth be known a shark may have got it at some point after we broke it off too. You can never be sure. 

Catching a 50+lb tarpon on a fly rod is a special experience though, I cherish every one and would encourage anyone thats trying to get one to stay hard it until you do, you'll never be the same afterwards.


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> Sure wish we were closer. It would be fun to get together to tie at least once a month. you know - "tie flies - tell lies". Used to go watch at a local shop and now I regret not getting more involved. Drug out my stuff over the weekend and going to try to figure it all out.
> 
> You guys think you could do a pic tutorial of what you are tying. If you could just snap pics of each stage so I can get an idea. Maybe tie a tutorial thread? I'll reciprocate with pics of "dead soldiers" ;D ;D ;D That part I've got down pat.  Don't have to write an explanation, I'll ask if I'm having trouble figuring it out.


I would have to think about that. There's really so much tying info out there already, both free and DVD/Video that I doubt we could add much value here and I don't consider myself a great tier anyway. At least not to the extent of trying to instruct others. For that you need to get after Bob LeMay (lemaymiami). I took a tying course from Bob at Broward Community College some time in the early 80's. He's a great instructor, but may be too busy guiding these days. PM him, maybe he has some material he would be willing to share with us though.


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## HaMm3r (Dec 11, 2006)

That was very cool!  Thanks for sharing the video and the flies.


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## HaMm3r (Dec 11, 2006)

I made my first attempt at tying one of these flies tonight. Definitely doesn't have the polish that yours do, Eric, but it's a start.   Only took me about an hour.   ;D


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> I made my first attempt at tying one of these flies tonight. Definitely doesn't have the polish that yours do, Eric, but it's a start.  Only took me about an hour.  ;D


Polish and finesse will come in time, that looks great for the first one. I'm sure pretty much any game fish in your area would eat it.


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## Guest (May 21, 2008)

> [quote author=JRH
> I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"


Hmmmmmmmmm. I couldn't find this patten here:

http://hatchesmagazine.com/patterns/category/saltwater/


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> > [quote author=JRH
> > I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"
> 
> 
> ...


probably because the pattern is still too new, the fly fishing industry hasn't "caught on" yet, so to speak.


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## Guest (May 21, 2008)

> > > [quote author=JRH
> > > I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"
> >
> >
> ...


heard you tied it "in the bottle" ;D ;D ;D


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> > > > [quote author=JRH
> > > > I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"
> > >
> > >
> ...


the exact procedure is still a bit vague, but as I recall there were plenty of empty bottles available.


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## Guest (May 21, 2008)

> > > > > [quote author=JRH
> > > > > I may have to recommission or rename this dude to the "Gaftopsail Grabber"
> > > >
> > > >
> ...



One fly per?


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## HaMm3r (Dec 11, 2006)

> Polish and finesse will come in time, that looks great for the first one. I'm sure pretty much any game fish in your area would eat it.


So, answer me this, if you don't mind...

Are you mixing color into your epoxy for the heads? I did mine by building up layers of fleximent. Then when the blob of glue was big enough, I wrapped it with red thread, stuck on the eyes and gave it one more thick layer of glue. Is there a better way?  :-?


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## deerfly (Mar 10, 2007)

> > Polish and finesse will come in time, that looks great for the first one. I'm sure pretty much any game fish in your area would eat it.
> 
> 
> So, answer me this, if you don't mind...
> ...


I actually do both, depends on whether the thread I tied the fly with is what I want for the head color or not. If it is the color I want and it usually is, I just epoxy coat over the thread. Just saves the painting steps and the drying time. If I want a different color or want to jazz the head up a bit with metal flake or something like that then I'll paint over the thread with water based acrylic and then epoxy over that. 

Here's another little twist, if I decide to paint on the eyes instead of using glue-on's, I'll put a light coat of epoxy on the threads before dabbing on the eye colors and then another coat of epoxy after the eye paint dries. That way you are applying the eye color over a smooth finish of epoxy and get nice uniform circles. Once the eye paint dries you put another coat of epoxy over the whole head and you almost get a bit of a 3d looking eye under the cover coat of epoxy. If you try to dab eyes over painted thread or unpainted thread for that matter the edges of the eyes will be a bit irregular and don't look quite as good. Well to us anyway, I doubt the fish give a hoot.


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## fatalbert43 (Dec 13, 2006)

OK, so when is the next trip????????????????????????????????????????????

Somebody better call me next time! :'( :'( :'(


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