Epoxy Flies Made E-Z
Synthetic materials have helped fly tiers around the world tie realistic looking fly patterns. New Jersey’s Bob Popovics was one of the first and best-known tiers to use synthetics, and since then many other tiers (especially saltwater tiers) have used synthetics to imitate small, slender baitfish such as sand eels, silversides, bay anchovies, and finger mullet. Not only are synthetic materials realistic, they are more durable than natural materials, making them ideal for saltwater fish like bluefish and albacore.
The first synthetics tiers experimented with—like Ultra Hair and Super Hair—are relatively stiff and coarse, but today many softer and more supple synthetic hair materials help create flies that look more lifelike in the water.
For the past decade, Bob Popovics’s Surf Candy has been one of the most popular saltwater flies. Bob ties Super Hair on the hook, adds a sparse amount of flash, and coats the front half of the fly with epoxy to produce a slender baitfish imitation. The Surf Candy’s indestructible body makes it impervious to toothy gamefish.
However, when I tried to tie Popovics’s pattern, I never could get it to come out looking as good as his. He applies his epoxy in two stages and turns the fly in the vise while the epoxy dries. While Popovics makes it look easy, most tiers I talk with—who are not familiar with working with epoxy—sometimes struggle when tying this fly.
I began to look for an easier way to finish this fly so that anyone could tie a perfect epoxy baitfish, and I thought of Jack Gartside’s Corsair Sand Eel. The Corsair tubing material provided a beautifully shaped sand-eel profile.
My local fly shop carried a material called E-Z Body, packaged by Bill Murphy (Murphy’s Fly Box, 401-333-4733). This woven monofilament tubing helped me design perfectly tied, small, slender baitfish patterns. My first creations used rabbit and Craft Fur for the body. Later I used Polar Fibre, which made them breathe like no other small baitfish pattern I have ever seen.
Like the original Surf Candy, these are simple to tie, but they are even easier to epoxy. The E-Z Body forms the baitfish silhouette over the Polar Fibre. Once you apply a light coating of epoxy over the E-Z Body, placing the fly on a rotating dryer is not necessary. Five-minute epoxy evenly soaks into the E-Z Body and cures quickly. A single coat of epoxy over the E-Z Body leaves a realistic scalelike finish on the fly. You can apply a second coat, but it is not necessary. For those that do not tie, these patterns are available through Umpqua Feather Merchants.
Sand Eels
Sand eels are a prominent East Coast bait ranging from 2 to 4 inches, though some grow to 8 inches. These slender, olive-backed baits are important from North Carolina to Maine. The farther north you go, the more likely you are to encounter sand eels all season.
Coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island can get big runs of stripers feeding on sand eels during May and June. Just go to any sandy beach and look for a drizzling or raindrop effect on the water’s surface. This is usually a dead giveaway that sand eels have taken up residence.
The best fishing often occurs in low-light conditions, and sunrise and sunset are prime times for anglers to walk into a blitz of stripers feeding on sand eels in the spring. Because sand eels and stripers do not tolerate lots of noise and movement, stealth is necessary. When fishing sand-eel patterns use short, slow strips.
Silversides
From North Carolina to Maine, stripers,
bluefish, false albacore, trout, tuna, fluke, and a host of other gamefish feed on silversides from May through November. A silverside ranges from 2 to 6 inches long and has an olive back with a prominent silver lateral line running lengthwise along its body. New Englanders also call them white bait, anglers in the mid-Atlantic states call them spearing, and anglers in North Carolina refer to them as glass minnows.
In New York and New Jersey, stripers feed on silversides in June, July, and August, especially around inlets, rivers, estuaries, and other tidal outflows that stretch along the coastline. Once water temperatures heat up by mid-July, fishing at night often provides the best opportunities to find actively feeding fish. When fishing to stripers feeding on silversides, I like to use erratic, 4- to 6-inch-long strips.
Bay Anchovies
Bay anchovies signal that the East Coast’s fall gamefish migration—and the bait they eat—is in full swing. Bay anchovies (also known as rain bait) can vary in length from 1 to 5 inches long. However, most anglers tend to find fish feeding on 1- to 21/2-inch-long baits. A bay anchovy is pale tan (almost translucent) with a prominent silver sac on its belly. Matching the hatch can be critical when fish are feeding on bay anchovies.
False albacore love bay anchovies, and North Carolina has a predictable run of bay anchovies from early September until mid December. That is one reason why that area gets a great false albacore run. The waters turn brown and red with bay anchovies forming bait balls. The key to being successful is to fish your flies extremely fast with hand-over-hand retrieves.
Henry Cowen designs flies for Umpqua Feather Merchants and guides on Lake Lanier for stripers. He lives in Gainesville, Georgia.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
Comments