Saltwater tying tips

[bgersbach]

Starting to tie for the salt and need a few tips ...
1. What's your preferred hook for small (6 and 8) Charlies and Clousers?
2. Other than Bucktail, what are the natural options for small (6 and 8) Charlies and Clousers?
3. Synthetic options for small (6 and 8) Charlies and Clousers?
4. Is all Bucktail the same? I bought a Deer Tail and the hair seems to splay out too much and is too straight, if that makes sense.
I'm getting some flies together to fish the Swan.
Thanks.

[Hirdy]

G'day mate,

I'll try to answer some of them for you.

1: Gamakatsu B10S and SL45 and Mustad Tarpons all work for me. I even use up to size 1 & 2 SL25S in the Swan though.
2: Arctic fox is pretty good, but I tend to move away from naturals in the Swan due to the short work blowies make of them.
3: EP blend among others.
4: No, it's not all the same, even within the one tail. The tip hairs are softer, less buoyant and less likely to splay when tied tightly.

Cheers,
Graeme

[bgersbach]

Thanks Graeme. I'm from the land of Pheasant Tail nymphs and Parachute Adams so this is all a bit weird. I tried getting on the Bream bandwagon a few years back but there wasn't a seat for me - only getting on the Swan/Canning a few times a year wasn't enough for me to figure them out. So I'm hoping the Herring around Bicton might be kinder to me.

Pretty disappointed with my Bucktail Clousers - they don't look like they have any 'mojo at al, maybe some Fox tail? I'll check out the EP stuff at Flyworld. My Arctic Fox fur Clousers look better - but its pretty soft stuff so I'm not sure if it will foul when wet (how sparse is sparse for a Clouser?) I've used some Possum fur for the Charlies - was wondering about mohair maybe? I'd post up some 'pics but can't find the instructions.

[Roger Smith]

If Bicton Herring are as suicidal as Mandurah Herring I would just keep it simple.
I generally use a No6 long shank hook , eyes cut from bead chain, white craft fur, plenty of silver flash. You can whip it with some red FWN if you want it to look pretty. Very cheap, simple and disposable, as the cheap hooks I use generally rust after a few sessions.
Rog

[Hirdy]

Herring, eh? I reckon you're over-thinking it then! Try a very sparse Clouser-style fly tied with some crystal flash as the only material Half a single strand, doubled over and cut numerous times will be enough material for a fly. Fluro-orange thread works well on herring.

If you're going to carry on with buck tail clousers (which work pretty well for just about everything) you can get away with say 4 hairs of white and 6 hairs of your chosen colour on those small flies. You don't need much to make a good fly. Mixing bucktail with the other fibres of your choice also works pretty well.

By the way, you probably already know that tying the buck tail on with a lot of thread tension will flare the bucktail more than loose thread, and the hairs from the base of the tail flare the most.

Cheers,
Graeme

[stanw]

Hi Blaire fancy meeting you here!
Goat hair works quite well on Clousers also.

Chris at Flyworld has a good range.

[Tony Ong]

Have a look at craft fur. Fantastic stuff. Don't dress too heavily, as it will foul.

[Dave Bailey]

Hi Blaire,

I like all of the hooks Graeme has mentioned, plus Mustad Big Game Lights.

In the Swan I too only use synthetic materials because of the blowies. I would add Sparkleflash and DNA Holofusion to the list of materials the guys have mentioned. These are both quite soft, but I find fouling it not too much of an issue when used on smaller flies like size 4 and smaller. Just keep the length of the wing relatively short.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Rohan]

Hi Blair,
I agree with most of that too, I particularly like the Tiemco 811 as a hook for smaller clousers and charlies though. The Bucktail is a great material, but the bigger ones get a bit stiff and like Graeme said, the tip hairs are the best. When tying try to tie the last few wraps of thread that hold the material, with decreasing tension, this helps to hold it down without splaying it. It's also horses for courses with which material to select, you can use a vast array. In the swan the blowies will shred anything natural quickly, for Tuna flies or toothy critters like Tailor, supreme hair or unique hair is tougher, less likely to tangle, but has less movement of its own, this however is not need for these faster moving species. For bream etc where natural movement at slow speed makes a big difference try DNA Holo Fusion as a synthetic with just the right amount of flash ( that bream love ) built in, or for natural fibres try like you said, things like fox tail or squirrel tail and the like. I like arctic fox but it does seem to find a way of not staying attached to the fly, which ends up in a sparce fly after a bit of use, not always a bad thing though. I also like to tie my #1-2/0 clousers with a synthetic like unique hair under in white and then topped with a 3/4 length of coloured bucktail using the tip section. I find as the bucktail is more buoyant than the synthetic it has the added advantage that it helps to keep the fly the right way up and help it lift enticingly off the bottom when stripped ( makes the fly slightly more neutral in its buoyancy ).

[Rohan]

Here is another clouser/charlie style that works very well for me, on bream and herring in the swan, also good for many other species as it looks like both an anchovy style baitfish or a shrimp depending on how it is fished. It goes directly against the "natural, not too much flash" approach but does work extremely well, probably due the fact that the water usually holds a lot of suspended matter in the swan, so the flash increases visibility. I tie these on a 6, 4 or 2 hook. Medium bead chain eyes for a slightly "suspended" sink rate, that the bream particularly like. The body material can vary, shades of green, tan, oranges, pearls and ugly (to us ) mixes of these shades are very good . The hook shank can be left bare or wrapped with something like pearl maxi flash. The wing can be 100% fine shimmer flash, maybe with an addition of some sort of krystal flash, or for a slightly less extreme version use Dna Holo fusion instead, which has great movement and a fair bit of inbuilt flash. Another version i use is the same again, but the wing is 100% chartreuse fluorofibre. This fly works equally well, if not better, and gets its visibility form the very bright and shiny fluorescent nature of this material.