I took part in a couple of fly swaps this last month one with a bunch of guys from Australian Saltwater Flyfishing Forum (5 others) and a solo swap with Ariel Levin a trout fly fishing guide from California from FlyFisherGirl.com forum. Both swaps have been fun and really worth while with some great variety and quality in the flies. The swap with the saltwater guys was a Jungle Perch and Sootie Grunter swap and the swap with Ariel was for large terrestial flies (trout) but all are suitable for surface fishing for our local bass. The saltwater swap basically consisted of six of us all tying one surface fly and one sub surface.The flies from Ariel are mainly variations of Hopper patterns with some awesome foam creations in there thanks Ariel the bass will love them. I've been tying up quite a few other foam patterns myself on a bit of a "foam binge" tying at the moment just wish the conditions on the water were a bit better. We've had over 600mm of rain this year with 240mm in the last week turning our rivers and creeks to muddy torrents. Hopefully I'll get the chance to fish some of these patterns before summer ends !! Pat
This was my first real attempt at carving a Cod lure (Murray/Mary River) so decided on a red and black colour theme. The original black and red with the gold dusting was ruined by getting too close to a heat source so I scraped and sanded it back to paint the red and black final colours then epoxied over this. The bib slot and lure shape was cut by a jigsaw upside down in a vise with the blade reversed then shaped with a sanding belt. The Red Back Phoenix bass and cod lure.
