Blank Buster Buzzers - The Scientific Invention of A Trout Fishing Fly For Fly Fishermen

fly fishing buzzers, uninteresting buzzers! Buzzers, there are lots of, including anorexic buzzer and epoxy buzzer hybrids not counting many variants like Chew Buzzers and Shipman’s Buzzers. Could buzzers possibly be made better? During 1920's Dr Howard Alexander Bell developed some extremely good slim buzzers as an imitation the midge pupa for fishing on Blagdon water. Buzzers have been around since the early days of trout fishing. Any visitor to Scotland or if you go fishing in in Scotland will know those horrid times when huge numbers of buzzers swarm so heavily it is difficult to breathe without having them inhaled into your throat. The buzzer is in fact a major staple diet for the still water trout , so, the buzzer is a crucial fly ……. could Sandy improve the fly that may be in almost every fly fisherman’s box - the tedious buzzer? Sandy thought so. This buzzer, Sandy’s Blank Buster Buzzer, required a scientific approach which taxed their inventor Sandy over a few years until their perfection.

The creation good catching fishing flies could be a highly demanding exercise, requiring a scientific approach and sometimes even the creation of leading edge materials. Sandy Dickson is one of the most clever fly tyers around, making huge demands of himself to constantly improve and innovate. Charles Jardine has said that Sandy is “One of the greatest innovators I have ever come across”, a comment that Sandy is highly proud of. Charles went on stating that Sandy’s patterns are “completely divine”. What more can anyone say? Could improvements on the humble buzzer be achieved?

Fisherman and fly Tyers everywhere argue about what creates the best fly, many experts will argue size, others will argue shape or colour or movement. Sandy decided upon the basic recipe for his buzzers:
1. Trigger point thoraxes specifically designed for different light conditions at different depths at different times of day
2. Size- the buzzers had to appear ‘real’ to trout, they had to make anorexic buzzers look fat but they had to be lifelike, ribbed but not like lots of the horrific ribs found onnumerous buzzers today.
It took Sandy a long time experimenting with thread and materials to develop an innovative tying method for tying thread and materials which makes it much thinner than normal. The buzzers are tied using a special technique that Sandy developed. Many tyers seeing these buzzers are unsure of how they may be tied.

Sunlight Colors & Ultraviolet Light
Reading books from the 1960’s including Clegg and Keen on fluorescence and how colors change with different light conditions the initial consideration was colour of a buzzers trigger points. One colour will not work all day, so a range of buzzers needed creating. Science does give us indicators as to the best colors to use in different conditions. Put simply, light is formed up simply of different colors, red, green and blue plus ultraviolet (which burns us!). For any lure to show up as red then red light lure sun has to be hitting it, for any yellow lure yellow light needs to be hitting it. It is a popular indisputable fact that colors change at depth with reds typically disappearing at 15’ oranges and 30’ yellows at 50’. Over a cloudy day the red may only penetrate 10 feet! So below 10 feet for a cloudy day the red colors for a fly are going to be black because red rays belonging to the sun won't be reaching the fly! That could be why we never bother getting a brightly colored lures at depths in lakes like {Grafham Water|Rutland|, there is simply no point, the colors will not be visible to trout.

However determining what colors are visible at various depths of water is really a science, an analysis for the physics of how light interacts with water particles and other light absorbing particles which may be present in water we are fishing. It is in no way possible for a fisherman to take a calculator to lake, analyze what light absorbing particles are present inside the water so see what colors are visible at depths. Sediment can absorb colors that would be visible at different depths, so peaty water and clean lake water wouldn't allow equivalent fly to work at the identical depth in the the same time of day!

Have you ever wondered why people say to utilise bright lures on bright days, and dark lures on dark days? Does it make sense now that you know something about light penetration? NO? O.K., let’s try to explain. Firstly, bright colored lures are typically considered those belonging to the orange, red, green, and yellow variety; which are most reliable on those beautiful bright days. So if it’s dark or cloudy, running bright colors has little effect because unless the're being run totally on the surface those colors should not be visible. Why run dark lures on dark day then? Since the colors will not be going to show, it becomes a matter of contrast, lure action, and lure size, and dark lures contrast more effectively on dark days because these are darker to begin with. For instance an orange lure down deep might work, nonetheless it is basically showing a soft brown where as a black lure is showing solid black and a hard edge.

Obviously there is the hidden colour in the sun’s rays, the colors we cannot see, Infra Red and Ultra Violet lights. UV penetrates deeply into water, this provided a trick to making the Blank Buster Buzzers ‘firing-up’ its fluorescence when used at different times of the day. Ultraviolet penetrates the water all day so using fluorescent threads Sandy could maximize hitting power of the buzzers. Using highly fluorescent threads would help with making the flies attractive to trout.

The true science behind the Blank Buster Buzzers only comes to light when viewing them in any box under Ultraviolet light when the trigger spot glows. The range of colors for fluorescent materials for the flies developed during scientific analysis - Scarlet, Hot Orange, fluorescent Green, luminous or Phosphor Yellow. However, the challenges still would not stop however, first attempts at tying the thorax over the black silk body were fine but the colors simply did not ‘fire-up’ their fluorescence as much as they should. The solution came watching pike fishermen. They were painting their floats white before painting Luminescent paint on them, Sandy investigated materials from China before he found his magical answer, a material now called Sandy’s Thorax Magic, a white thorax backing material which when used behind the thorax tying really light the colors giving the perfect trigger that Sandy had been trying to find on the Buzzers. Finally using a black box he had made to research luminosity, a box with ultra-violet lights were utilized test the luminosity of various materials for the luminous buzzer and for breathers showed the Essential Fly Sparklemet, their Flashabou equivalent, this gave the high levels of luminosity that Sandy required. Two coats of varnish over the thorax only and the newest buzzers were born from numerous trials and failures.

First outing aided by the Blank Buster Buzzers Sandy and his testers at a Scottish Working Men’s Anglers Club landed over 50 fish, experiments showed them to be deadly. Even many wary of trout could be tempted by Sandy’s Blank Busters with using a long leader, often up to 20’ in length with nothing in excess of a single Blank Buster Buzzer at the end. Loads of wary trout were regularly fooled by these superb buzzers in trials in Scottish and English using this long leader technique with an individual buzzer. Most amusing within the tests was when a fisherman trying Sandy’s buzzers off of a boat tied one to the point and dropped it over the side, he continued to tie in two droppers on an extremely long leader as instructed by Sandy. Unfortunately the point fly was hit quickly by a huge trout, dragging the droppers straight into the fisherman’s hand. Expletives were shouted until the poor fisherman realized that he would never win!

The final variants were developed using Kamasan B100 grub hooks to present the ultimate skinny buzzer and thicker Kamasan B110 for specimen fish with the heavier guage hooks These trout flies proved to become deadly hence the name Blank Buster Buzzers. These trout flies are truly irresistible in tests prove very successful indeed. Surely they have to be an essential part of every Fisherman’s fly Box?!

Blank Buster Buzzers are a trademark of The Essential Trout & Salmon Fly Company

Article Source: http://gamblingarticlessite.com

Andy Kitchener is ceo of www.theessentialfly.com which designs, manufacturers and sells flies including salmon, trout, saltwater, pike, muskie and specialist fly fishing flies plus gear and tackle for fly fishing. Andy is a fanatical fly fisherman having fished for over 40 years. Andy has been lucky enough to have fished for 'normal' fish like trout & salmon as well as fish like the mighty Golden Mahseer in India, Sailfish and Marlin on the Great Barrier Reef and Cobb in South Africa.

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