subject: Blank Buster Buzzers - The Scientific Creation of A Trout Fishing Fly [print this page] Fly fishing buzzers, tedious buzzers! Buzzers, there are lots of, ranging from epoxy buzzer and anorexic buzzer hybrids not counting the countless variants like Chew Buzzers and Shipman's Buzzers. Could they possibly be made better? During 1920's Dr Howard Alexander Bell developed some extremely good slim buzzers looking like the midge pupa for fishing on Blagdon water. Buzzers existed since 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 you cannot breathe without having them swallowed into your throat. The buzzer is a key ingredient in the staple diet among the still water trout , so, the buzzer is a vital fly . could Sandy improve a fly that could be in almost every fly fisherman's box - the uninteresting buzzer? Sandy thought so. This buzzer, Sandy's Blank Buster Buzzer, required a scientific approach which taxed their inventor Sandy over many years until their perfection.
The creation of new fishing flies can be a highly demanding exercise, requiring a scientific approach and sometimes even the creation of leading edge materials. Sandy Dickson is one of the 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 extremely proud of. Charles went on stating that Sandy's patterns are "completely divine". What more can anyone say? Could improvements on the boring 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 and at different times of day
2. Size- the buzzers had to look real' to trout, they had to make anorexic buzzers look fat but they had to be lifelike, ribbed but not like most of the horrific ribs found ona lot of buzzers today.
It took Sandy lots of experimenting with thread and materials to develop a new tying method for tying thread and materials making it much thinner than normal. The buzzers are tied utilizing a special technique that Sandy developed. Many tyers seeing these buzzers are unsure of how there're tied.
Sunlight Colors & Ultraviolet Light
Reading books from the 1960's for instance Clegg and Keen on fluorescence and the way colors change with different light conditions the very first consideration was colour of a buzzers trigger points. One colour is not going to work all day, so a range of buzzers needed creating. Science does give us indicators regarding a perfect colors to utilise in numerous conditions. Put simply, light is formed up simply of various colors, red, green and blue plus ultraviolet (which burns us!). For a lure to show up as red then red light lure sun needs to be hitting it, for the yellow lure yellow light has to be hitting it. It is a popular 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 with a cloudy day the red colors for a fly will be black since the red rays from sun will not be reaching the fly! Which is why we never bother utilizing a brightly colored lures at depths in lakes like {Grafham Water and Rutland, there is just no point, the colors will not be visible for the trout.
However determining what colors are visible at various depths of water is mostly a science, an analysis from the physics of how light interacts with water particles and other light absorbing particles that could be present in the water we are fishing. Its never possible for a fisherman to consider a calculator to a lake, analyse what light absorbing particles are present within the water so see what colors are visible at depths. Sediment can absorb colors that may be visible at different depths, so peaty water and clean lake water may not allow similar fly to work on exactly the same depth during the same time of day!
Have you ever wondered why people say to make use of 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; that happen to be best choice on those beautiful bright days. So if it's dark or cloudy, running bright colors has little effect because unless they are being run totally on the surface those colors are usually not visible. Why run dark lures on dark day then? Since the colors aren't going to show, it becomes a matter of contrast, lure action, and lure size, and dark lures contrast more effectively on dark days because they're darker to begin with. As an example an orange lure down deep might work, nonetheless it is really 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 a box under Ultraviolet light when the trigger spot glows. The range of colors for fluorescent materials of the flies developed in the scientific analysis - Scarlet, Hot Orange, fluorescent Green, luminous or Phosphor Yellow. However, the challenges still wouldn't stop however, first attempts at tying the thorax over the black silk body were fine but the colours simply didn't fire-up' their fluorescence as much as they should. The answer 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 up the colors giving just the right trigger that Sandy had been seeking on the Buzzers. Finally utilizing a black box he had made to research luminosity, a box with ultra-violet lights were utilized test the luminosity of various materials of 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 fresh buzzers were born from a variety of 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 being deadly. Even a really wary of trout may be tempted by Sandy's Blank Busters with the use of a long leader, often up to 20' in length with nothing more than just one Blank Buster Buzzer at the end. Essentially the most wary trout were regularly fooled by these superb buzzers in trials in Scottish and English using this long leader technique with a single buzzer. Most amusing of 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 be 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
Blank Buster Buzzers - The Scientific Creation of A Trout Fishing Fly
