Been playing with twine and glittery hot glue

[clm]

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Saw a you tube video on the hot glue heads...did a test float in the sink....and it sinks...should be good for jigging a little deeper.

[DanMarino]

Have you fished these glitter glue flies yet? Any success catching fish on them?

[clm]

Yep. The pickerel live them.

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[clm]

Love

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[HJS]

I'm guessing the glitter glue is applied using a standard glue gun? If so, what's the trick to get a nice smoothly rounded/tapered glue head? Practice??? I'm thinking if I gave it a try my fly head would be all lumpy/saggy and gross looking. BTW, it's snowing like crazy up here halfway up the side of the Catoctin mountains. I really hate the Corvid bigtime, but this crappy winter is starting to register a close second on my hate list!!!

[Mark]

Chip,

That's an interesting approach. It never ceases to amaze me what we can toss at fish and entice them to bite it. Good work.

I've never tried a glue-head on a fly. However, I frequently use consecutive coats of Sally Hanson Hard as Nails to build up the heads on flies. Here's a photo sequence of a Bendback I tied this weekend. A friend of mine asked me for step-by-step photos. These are the two photos for the head:

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The first shows the head of the fly with stick-on eyes ready to be cemented with the nail polish. The second shows the finished head after two or three coats of the nail polish. It makes a nice tapered head.

Howard -- A rotary vise helps the polish or glue to cure evenly on the head. You simply rotate the vise to disperse the adhesive as it dries.

"Loon" makes a glue that cures under UV light that works similarly. That way you can dry the glue almost immediately.

Now, here's another thing I did this weekend to create a large head on a fly. My wife gave me a bag of old bead necklaces:

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Just like bead chain, you can clip the beads off in pairs to make eyes for flies:

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Doing the same with old necklaces will allow you to created a fly head like this:

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I was looking for big gaudy lightweight eyes on my articulated crystal buggers. I didn't want readily available lead eyes because I don't want the fly to sink fast. I think beads above will do precisely what I want.

Now if this miserable February weather subsides in a few days as the forecast suggests, I'm going to test that ugly fly on a pickerel. I bet one will bite it.

[DanMarino]

Nice going CLM. Very cool to get a pickerel on it!
Mark, your flies always look great.

[clm]

I'm guessing the glitter glue is applied using a standard glue gun? If so, what's the trick to get a nice smoothly rounded/tapered glue head? Practice??? I'm thinking if I gave it a try my fly head would be all lumpy/saggy and gross looking. BTW, it's snowing like crazy up here halfway up the side of the Catoctin mountains. I really hate the Corvid bigtime, but this crappy winter is starting to register a close second on my hate list!!!

I slice off a disk with a razor, then cut that in half, or even 1/3....quickly heat the hook and set it in using a bodkin....then apply heat in little spurts (torch lighter), rotate the hook and it will take shape....