Dog Hair Flies for Pike

September 21, 2022 / galen / Fly Fishing, Life at the Cabin

Maybe I’m a purist. Maybe I’m just cheap. Maybe both.

I’ve been tying flies for 25 years. I like to use natural materials whenever possible, especially if I gather it myself. From peacock hurl picked up at the zoo, I have made a killer summer trout fly, The Super Jumbo Mosquito. From numerous waterfowl hunts I have gathered duck feathers and down and I have made a few unnamed flies that have worked on trout and perch. With a great deal of cutting and bundling, I have made caddis-like flies from goose feathers. Even a few gaudy dry flies from sandhill crane wing feathers that have convinced a few fish to take the chance and give it a bite.

I’ve been tying flies for northern pike for 10 years. For the first 8 years I used store-bought materials. Coloured fibres and Superhair and a few other items such as Chenile to dress them up a bit. I started from Clouser Minnow patterns and eventually just added length.

A few years ago I snipped some brown hairs off my son’s dog, Kershaw (yes, named after that Dodger pitcher). From that came the first Dog Hair Caddis. It landed a few trout but was even more effective on perch off the dock. Another pattern, from my son’s other dog, Doc (yes, named after Roy “Doc” Halladay), and I made a very successful “Perch Snatcher” fly, a bit like a miniature egg sucking leach.

Then came the ideas. Why not use the long dog tail hairs and build some pike streamers from dog hair? I tried last year, tying the first Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer. I took this up north to Cree River Lodge and tossed it with my 8 weight rod and managed to land a few small pike. Call that success. By small pike, I really mean small pike, hammer handles, 20″ and less. The following day using a fly from 100% synthetic materials, a pattern I named the Go Go Ray, I landed a 46″ monster pike. The same fly pattern, along with another of my own creations, the Iron Butterfly Minnow, have helped me catch pike on the fly at Wakaw Lake for a few years now.

Time to put the ideas to the test, beyond tossing a few casts in a place know as the pike fishing capital of the world (Cree River Lodge). One day when all three family dogs where at my house, I took my fly sculpting scissors and took a bit of free materials from all three dogs.

I tied and improved on the original Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer, making it longer with bigger streamer hooks for catching pike.

Then I took the Go Go Ray pattern which was working on the Wakaw pike and used hair from my daughter’s dog, Bauer (named after her favorite brand of hockey equipment). The result was the Go Go Bauer. That next weekend all three dogs caught a fish! The improved Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer landed both pike and walleye. I switched to the Go Go Bauer and landed a pike. Back at the dock that evening, the Perch Snatcher (made from Doc hair) hooked about 20 perch.

I thought the idea of catching a fish with all three dog’s hair was quite a novel idea. Why not all three dogs at once? Next day at the tying desk, I made a few more “Go Go” flies. A Go Go Kershaw, another Go Go Bauer, and a Go Go KBD (Kershaw Bauer Doc).

That evening, with the Go Go KBD at the end of my pike leader, I caught three more pike.

By the way, go check out the Cree River Lodge site Testimonials. That’s me in the second and third pictures, with my best fly-rod walleye and my all-time personal world record pike on a fly 46″ monster.

The Big Cabin Clearout, Episode #2

August 27, 2016 / galen / Life at the Cabin

When we bought our cabin, it was all inclusive of everything in the cabin and in the yard, with a couple of exceptions. That meant all the furniture, tools, cookware, appliances, etc. The cabin was full. Of the roughly 1000 square feet of floor space, it seemed like there was only 200 square feet not covered. Every space on the shelves had something, every drawer was filled. If there was one dish cloth, there were ten. If there was one wine glass, there were a dozen, and at least 3 different styles. If there was a TV, there were 5, yes, 5 TV’s at the cabin. If your going to just watch TV, may as well just stay at home in the city, at least that was our thinking. In the living room, there was a large 50 inch TV with a high end surround sound system, and a smaller TV hanging from the ceiling above it, and another 32 inch TV at the other end of the room.

Outside was full of patio furniture, deck accessories, bicycles and other assorted items. The all inclusive package included two lawn mowers, a 30 year old gas powered mower and a new human powered rotary push mower. There were a number of other yard tools. Over the next few days we would soon discover what was still in working condition. We knew the cabin had hardly been used for recreation the last few years. That much our real estate agent was able to get from the previous owner. What had become clear was that it had become a big storage closet for a wide assortment of trinkets and knick knacks.

On day 1 of possession my oldest son and I took our new set of keys, loaded my truck with tools from home, and headed to our new cabin to begin. Job 1 was to knock down the grassy weed field we were hoping would eventually be our yard. We took everything we might need to cut, dismantle, knock down and remove as much excess stuff as possible. But, cabin rules, before starting any work project, we cracked open the first beers on our new cabin property.

We went in with the assumption that any tool the previous owner had left behind was not going to work, if it did, that would be a bonus. I set the lawnmower wheels as high as they would go, told my son to wear boots to protect against whatever shrapnel might be encountered, and sent him to cut the knee high front lawn. I pulled out the man-powered rotary lawnmower and decided to give it a try in the back yard. I soon discovered that while everything was turning properly, the rotating blades could not get on top of the tall grass/week combination and all I was doing was rolling over the plants. Next I pulled out the gas mower, set the wheels to maximum height, filled the oil tank, filled the gas tank, and started working on the pull cord like I was at the gym doing one arm dumbbell rows. On about the third set of 10 pulls, it sputtered to life, backfired, blew smoke, sputtered and stalled. A few more sets, a few more episodes of back fires and stalls, and it kept running. Excellent, free lawn mower. (Edit: 4 summers later, still running). In need of a tune up but a free lawn mower saves me a few hundred bucks. After three passes, adjusting the wheel height each time, we had knocked it down to a reasonable height. Crappy lawn, mostly weeds, but gotta start somewhere.

With the yard knocked down we moved on to what we knew was the big job, getting all the junk out of the cabin that we didn’t want. Along with the all inclusive purchase plan, we knew there would be a big pile of stuff we didn’t want or need. It didn’t take long to fill up the first of 5 truck loads of junk we would take to the dump. To get to the dump, we drove around the west end of the lake, south to the highway, back east a few miles, then 5 miles south on the grid road. About 20 miles round trip. Return and do it again. It was a few weeks later that we learned about the transfer station located about 2 miles straight west of us.

As loaded up the truck each time, we would send out group text pics of items in the cabin we came across to everyone in the family. That helped us with the 3 piles of stuff to definitely recycle/throw out, the donation pile, and the smaller pile of surprising discoveries. One of these was an old cream separator that was tucked under the stairs, under a fake plant, partially hidden from sight. A really cool antique piece that now sits much more prominently. More treasures were found such as paint ball guns, brand new life jackets, wet suits, window mount air conditioners, a foldaway cot, old movie posters, 20 strings of Christmas lights (not counting the ones already wrapped around trees outside) and more figurines than we knew what to do with (1 is too many if you ask me).

There were more discoveries to occur down the road, more in future episodes, but for now, after a full day of making space in the cabin, it was now time to sit on the deck, on the newly discovered lounge chairs, and finish off the rest of the beers. While my son took the kayak down for a paddle, I watched. It was a full day of work and we were only just beginning.

We Bought a Cabin

August 22, 2016 / galen / Life at the Cabin, Outdoors

Episode #1, We Bought Cabin

And so it begins. It’s late summer of 2016 and we have become cabin owners. We are also the owners of a 5 year project list to overhaul, renovate, update, and change every square inch of the property, from the lake shore, to the yard, to every surface and fixture inside the cabin. We think we are reasonably handy, semi-crafty, and quite resourceful. We shall see how the project list goes. I’m hoping to chronicle some of the experience here. In the event you find it interesting, while I’m glad to have entertained. In the event you find it helpful, well I’m glad to have provided the value of my experiences. In the event we never see you again past this point in the first episode, well, thanks for sticking it out for almost a paragraph.

Why Episode #1?

I’m a marketer by trade so to follow the format of today’s popular streaming services, Season x, Episode Y just seemed to be a natural fit with how people are now consuming content. The word episode also captures what I anticipate to be a series of successes and a few failures. The 5 year project list seems to be guaranteed to deliver a few minor injury reports, a few marital disagreements, and a great deal of good times that far outweigh the pain, sweat, and dollars it’s going to cost. By the way, when we got serious about this particular property, my project list had about 16 items on it. The official list, including my 16 items, has grown to about 50 items. I still contend the original 16 were enough. Oh yes, 5 of those items were definitely to take off the months of June through August and enjoy our progress, 1 for each year of our 5 year project.

The Back Story

I’ll save you most of the details of our personal lives leading up to the cabin purchase, most of them. Even though I’m sure you would find them fascinating (we consider ourselves the world’s most interesting people based on a sample of 2). By the way, I’m incredibly humorous and my wife agrees, seldom, but often enough to keep me trying.

Not our actual trailer, but this looks a picture out of the family archives.

For many years my wife and I had talked about the mutual desire to own a cabin. She grew up with a cabin in the family. I grew up with family camping trips in a tent trailer. My in-laws sold the cabin, the year before we were married. I only had the opportunity to experience it as a visitor, not as a semi-resident. We did both the tent trailer camper experience and the cabin rental/borrow experience enough times to know we enjoyed both. The cabin experience was far above the camping experience for us. Busy jobs and busy kids, with sports activities that kept us driving to every hockey rink, baseball field, basketball court, wrestling meet, volleyball court, and football field in all of the land, made it obvious to us that we did not have the time to fully immerse ourselves in the Life at the Cabin lifestyle. Instead we bought a sport boat and made day trips to the north, south, east and west to spend time on the water when we could. Often we would brings friends with us, or meet up with family and burn through a tank of gas, or more, and return home at the end, exhausted and happy.

The New Boat

Family at the Lake

The planets started to align when we had the first two kids in university and our third (and last) in grade 11, with the end of high school and minor sports over the horizon and around the bend, it was close enough. We started to get serious in our talks about about cabin ownership. Also aligning was our financial ability to afford a cabin. The house mortgage was on it’s last few months, money we could redirect into retirement savings, or into life enjoyment now. We choose a real estate investment with the potential to be both.

Back to Today, Buying that Cabin

We knew our criteria, we had a budget, we had a list of properties to explore. I suppose everyone has their own list of criteria for a cabin property. We certainly had ours:

* lake front
* 4 season
* within 1 hour drive
* 3 bedrooms
* no stairs
big deck
wide open yard
move in ready
dock and boat lift included

‘*’ the must have list

Our search began. We soon found out that our “enormous budget” didn’t put us in the category of walking in, no worries, and just relaxing. We saw cabins that were best renovated with a Wylie Coyote bundle of dynamite, cabins with endless stairways from cabin to water, cabins that were nearly perfect, minus a must have from the list, an

First view of the property

d cabins that were perfectly suited for other families. On about cabin inspection tour #3 we had a couple properties lined up that had possibilities and we stumbled across a for sale by owner cabin that was not listed online anywhere. With no one home, we took a walk about and overgrown yard told us a couple things. The owners didn’t there very often and we had to get our real estate agent on this one.

It had that “cabiny” feel to it, the “cabiny” look, and the potential to be the one. A brand new two level deck also had our interest. After all, you don’t buy a cabin to spend your time inside. I can do that at home quite nicely.

A week late and our real estate agent had the keys we had our inside look at the property we eventually bought. It was during that inside tour that the project list grew, grew some more, and extended past cutting the lawn to a 5 year list of renovations and overhauls.

In Episode #2, The Clearout, our discoveries begin.