THE 'TROUBLE' WITH BUCKTAIL?

If you tie flies, 'Bucktail' is probably one of the most widely used natural materials. We use it in all lengths and colours, but I prefer the moderate crinkle.  It is reasonably priced, and for me it is essential to stop the tail wrap of other materials that I use with it.   Most prefer the hair closer to the tip of the tail, because the closer you get to the base of the tail the hair tends to be hollow and flares up if you tie it down too tight.

Nearly all my larger flies have a bucktail component like these..

These are on 3/0 Limerick 1830 Maruto hooks

On the recent trip to Bynoe we lost a lot of flies, we had a few on 6/0 hooks but most were on 3/0 SL12's.  They were all tied similarly to the bottom fly in the photo above, in that they did not have the long gar beak,  and with the exception that we had added the aluminium material with the blue DNA..

The materials used

NOTE: The Stig did tell me what that aluminium material is called but I'm afraid it went in one ear and out the other, but it is cheap and from spotlight in many colours.

Most of the flies were taken by schools of barracuda about 70cm long.  We would be trying to entice a large queenie or trevor onto the fly when the barracuda would come in and bite the fly off.  At one stage there were about four barracuda jumping out of the water trying to throw the flies they had bitten off.  Those schools may be around all the time, but we have not seen so many there in the past.

A bit blurry but you get the idea, there were schools of these around

Getting bitten off isn't usually a problem because I used to have heaps of flies, but we haven't been loosing too many so I have slowed up on the tying, and have also been concentrating more on flats flies (things) rather than all round deceivers or clouser type.

Even flies with a short wire trace were bitten off, because the fish took the fly right at the boat, and its mates were trying to belt the fly as well, biting at the leader and any knots that took their fancy.  It was just one of those days, but it was great fun.   Even when we had queenies or trevally on the cuda would still have a go at both the fish and the fly.  Must have been hungry?

So if the bucktail has a problem it is this, when there are heaps of small toothy fish attacking the fly, they shred the bucktail and leave only a small amount of the synthetic on the hook, which may still catch the smaller fish, but the bigger fish don't seem as interested.  I hear you say, "....just tie on another fly!" but when your in a feeding frenzy all common sense seems to go and you have to cast out whatever you have on, I just can't relax, sit down and tie on another fly, much to the annoyance of the Admiral on the boat.   Having too much fun.

To give you an idea of the damage here are they main hooks that I use and you can see what has happened to two of the flies in the photo that were only slightly smaller than the undamaged one above.....

NOTE:  I do like SL 12's but I favour the Mustad C70S D because they are a little bit longer on the shank and seem lighter.  Plus they are about a fifth of the price.  Cathie favours the limerick style hooks with a gar beek, because the first Saltwater competition she won was on those type of hooks, so when your on a good thing....stick to it!!

The two bottom flies are what was left after, small queenies and blue salmon gave them hell, we swapped to a smaller total DNA fly and the fly stayed together but being smaller the blues swallowed the whole and if you didn't manage to hook them in the side of the mouth, their teeth wore through the leader.....that's fishing...and is was great fun.

A blue and white DNA clouser that catches everything....Dion got a trout in Yellowstone National Park on one of these!!!!!

Truth is you can't beat the bucktail for what it does, so I just have to tie more flies and replace them on the boat as I am usually ordered to do.