Other people's fly of the week!

A bit about flies that are not mine, but you still need to know about them!

 

Sasquatch!  Out in Utah there is a fly fisherman who has been hunting monsters.  His name is Nick Granato.  In winter and fall he hunts browns, in summer and spring he chases tiger Muskie.  A long time ago he thought about how he wanted a fly that pushed water, worked for both cold water and warm water fish, and had movement.  Unlike most fishermen, it seems, he felt that movement was key in his flies.  This may be due to the fact that he was once a gear chucker, but learned about fly fishing and was then soon sick of nymphing.  After years of chasing things that kill, he decided that he needed a fly that was not out there.  Deer hair headed flies with dumbbell eyes tend to sink to slow and ride upward in current.  Plus most articulated flies, with two hooks, get in each other’s way when fishing for warm water fish, but as I know, single hook flies get a lot of short strikes on trout, so you have to find the magic amount of hook length.  He, like me, decided that he need razor sharp hooks.  The best freshwater hook out there for fly fisherman is a Gamakatsu b10s stinger.  It’s just the sharpest you can find.  I fell in love with this fly the first time I saw it on Nick’s Blog, “Fly Obsession”.  I got largemouth here, in the mid-south, almost instantly on these flies.  Later I would land my first fly caught Brown Trout out of Lake Michigan.  These flies are just the best.  Their craft fur head allows them to sink faster and stay deeper.  From Muskies and Kings Salmon, all the way to tarpon and Brown trout, this fly will work.  I’m currently working on a tube fly version for Gar.  If you need one streamer to take anywhere, take one of these.  Soon I’ll be throwing them at Lingcod out west!

 

This Just In, New Gar Fishing Method!

This just in, rope flies not the best option for gar anymore!

That's right there is another way monster chancers, as it turns out people all over have been looking for the monster fish and found a few things they did not expect. Deep in the true heart of gar country, Texas that is, Casey Smartt made a discovery chasing the gar in his local water. “My best luck has been with a tube fly circle hook set up. The fly I am currently using most is the tube fly below.  1/2" long tube and Fishair body in chart/white or grey/white, plenty of flash.  50 lb leader threaded through and pegged with toothpick on rear of tube.  Hook is a 3/0 Gammy octopus or Mustad Demon circle.  Fly is 4" long.  The long nose I fish for are usually feeding in deep water 10-20 ft, only gulping at top.  I blind cast over area of activity and use a fast sink or intermediate sink line with a steady slow twitch retrieve.”
That is some seriously deep water to chase gar, most fly guys I know don't want to cast to anything that deep. But it makes sense. So how dose Casey fish then, is he a rope guy or a treble hook guy. The answer is neither.   It’s a Circle hook.

Now when I herd this I thought, no way. What if the gar is facing towards you? You’ll miss the hook up right? In reality, no. I found that gar will still go for a side bit!
This idea is simple, the hook slides in and catches around the jaw. If the fish tunes its head, the line is stuck in the jaw. The best part is the hook needs to be pulled backwards to come out, so a barb will stop it, if the pressure in on the hook, it can only go deeper into the fish.
Is this a better hook up rate then rope? I’d say about the same, maybe more so! But there are other things that make it better.
1. Rope flies are hard to cast, if you are sight casting you have hope, but if you have to blind cast, it could be eighty to a few hundred casts before a fish. A rope fly will get heavy and hard to cast. But a tube fly with only a single hook, that is easy.  Think you can make some eighty casts with a 3/0 hook and a five inch fly?
2. Quick release, the first two gars I got on this rig was a thirteen inch longnose and a 29 inch shortnose gar, and both times it worked great. But the best part, one quick pop with pliers and the fish was free. No longer did I spend up to fifteen minutes removing the rope. This time it took a second and boom, free fish.
3. Safer fish: gar are the toughest of tough. They have bullet proof (I mean it I herd of then being shot and it not happening.) scales, and they can breathe air! But nothing can live if it doesn’t eat. Rope flies, if the gar gets away, can keep their jaws shut for a very long time, maybe too long. Most of the time the trick is to use 30 pound test line, but with a circle hook, all you need is some ten pound test and a length of fluorocarbon that is over sixteen pounds to with stand the wear and tear of their teeth. You don’t

even need a good hook set, and if the gar breaks the line, the hook will rot out, and won't inhibit their feeding.
4. Flies not just for gar: since it’s a tube fly, you don’t have to keep it in a gar only box, just change the hook and attack some browns or stripers. The sky is the limit.

Gar are fun, but not every outing will be a slam dunk. I spend most of my time fishing them from a stand up kayak. But this is not the only way to target then. Some river can provide sight cast from the bank. You just have to find gar. With a rig like this I can now cast a four inch long gar fly eighty feet, this has turned some spots, that before I just drooled over, into my new favorite honey hole. A 3/0 will work for small or large fish, have faith, and be ready for a fight. Oh, did I mention that the fish seem to fight harder on the hook rather than the rope?

Circle back to the Parie Tarpon.

I have been working at the bench more than at the water’s edge lately, and I have been looking into certain things that I have before deemed impossible.  Most know me for my work with Gar and lack of knowledge regarding a spelling and grammar check.  Gar have been a way of life for me since I  moved far from the home range of Pike and Muskie.  I had once felt gar would fill the void left in my angling obsession buy the biggest monsters of my childhood.

 

Gar have not really replaced esoxs, but they have made themselves out to be a better option than I had thought.  Like all fish, big Gar are hard fighters, but monsters really can be a hand full.  Up until now I have only tried one method for Gar.  The ever more debated rope fly method worked for me for years.  It catches fish, and with some invention is a dynamite method.  But fly fisherman have issues.  Purists say it is not really fishing, or whatever.  But I will give out one thing.  Rope gets heavy.  Casting rope flies is like casting a wet beach towel.  You need rope flies to be in then ten inch size range to tangle the best, and you really need to get out massive size rods to cast them.

 

Rope also is more nice to the jaws of fish, but the back fire of this is that the gar don’t feel like they are in as much danger and don’t fight till the see you.  This doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen a lot.

I went looking at new ways to catch them.  Fly fishing gives us the best chance to set a hook into the solid bone like jaws of a Gar.  The problem is that unlike baby Tarpon, the jaws are thin and give little of a target, you have a decent chance of missing the jaw.  Some decided to use a treble hook.  But if you have ever landed a treble hook in the back of your head, you don’t want to.  The advantage to using hooks is that you can have a quick release, and remove the hook, and say the fly get away attacked to a fish, it will dissolve out and like is back to normal for the fish.

SO I decided to trade in my rope.  I found another option.  Gar fishermen around the country are trying to find new ways to catch fish.   Casey Smartt or Gartooth Outdoors found a interesting solution.   He started to use a genius method.  With a tube fly and a 3/0 circle hook he found the hook caught around Gar’s lower Jaw.  I have been working on this method.  So far, I have had trouble getting to Gar.  Droughts have shrunk my favorite Gar holes.  Now I have to travel or fish the muddiest and dying Kansas river.  Once a gar high way, now a place to forget to memory.  I have a time to make more than a afternoon trip this week.  I’m planning a on a big trip, but here is the flies I have designed.  Here is to hoping they work.