Dragonfly Nymphs and Bass

[k.hanley]

Say hey Fats,
The foam eyes work pretty cool. The idea for the fly presentation is to wait until your sink tip (or full line) is sunk first. In otherwords let the line get down and establish what level the pattern will be worked.

Once the line is down (often on/near the bottom), make a long pull to drive the fly towards the cover and another series of strips through the jungle. If you pause a bit between strips the fly will make a subtle movement upward. Up, down, through, up, down, through - you get the idea I'm sure. Fun stuff.

Certainly plenty of patterns to catch fish on. I love the creativity out there. I use a variety of dragon nymphs during the season. I enjoy them all.
Cheers, K

[bcarson4374]

OK whats the story with the whole floating, and surface fishing of these flies? I assume it is the same principle of an emerging nymph?

All I know is I went out today and slayed them again, Im hood on these flies now!

[jbird]

Bass are opportunistic. They are not selective like trout. You do not need to immitate actual insect behavior with bass. A dragonfly nymph will never be alive and floating as the way I present mine for bass. They are striking it on instinct. They will even inspect it VERY carefully and still eat it. I have seen bass hover motionless under my topwater nymph. Then it becomes a game of tickling their instincts. Sometimes you give it a twitch and that triggers the strike. Sometimes the twitch will cause the refusal. And then Ill not move it at all when the bass apears under it. He will slowly get close and then quietly inhale it.

Natural dragonfly nymphs do swim and they are predators but most of this behavior happens at night. They mostly crawl along the bottom and along foliage like spiders. If you are lucky and can witness a mass hatch, they can be seen in giant armies, marching out of the lake in the evening and climbing up anything to hatch. They actually look like little crabs invading the shoreline.

This natural migration can be very hard to imitate with a fly for obvious reasons.

so anytime you are stipping a dragon nymph pattern in the daytime, you are not immitating natural behaviour. But it will catch fish as fish can be opportunistic and may throw caution to the wind for a meal. Bass are notorious for such brazen behavior.

The floating dragon nymph with a sinking line is a very old method discovered in Europe called "booby" fishing. It is extremely popular in BC as well (specifically Kamloops.) Any fly can be tied "booby" style. It is esentially an ungodly huge set of foam eyes that makes the fly boyant. This type of fishing is frowned upon by many purists do to it being downright deadly and it being near impossible to feel the bite. Resulting in very deeply hooked fish.

Bass respond VERY well to any buggy profile, floating offering. Try a foam hopper for instance. Cast it deep into cover and twitch it.

[Fats]

When I use the sinking line floating fly technique I tend to stick with flies with a diving collar. The Dahlberg Diver is the grandfather of this style of fly but when you strip in the fly, it really moves toward the bottom. A foam bodied diving fly will actually work for more than 20 minutes which is about as long as a deer hair bug will last fishing this way. A floating nymph would be a more subtle approach but I'm sure it would work as well. The dragon nymph is big enough to get the bass's attention when suspended in all the "goo" found in a typical warm water lake. ( I like getting back in the thick stuff!)