My New "Fly"

[John H]

I am trying to improve my bass catch. On a good day on the flies I catch roughly half of what the gear guys get. Outside of the reservoir float n fly I don't think anyone fishing a fly rod is getting much closer to the gear catch rate than that. To close the gap I am trying to rip off some of their tricks without actually fishing gear. I have nothing against gear fishing but that is not the game I am trying to play with the bass. Last year I got dragon tails at the fly shop that made pretty good worm flies that could be jigged and they caught fish. The problem was the tail fell apart after about two or three hours of casting. Given the effort needed to make the fly I wanted a little more durability that that. My idea to improve on the dragon tail was to replace it with a soft plastic.

For my new "fly" I tied a rabbit fur jigging fly with rubber legs, lead eyes some flash and plenty of weight. I added a centering pin which is a gear fishing gadget that allows me to screw on about any soft plastic. I have a small Z Man crawdad twister tail on this one. If the plastic comes off or gets chewed up I can put on another one. This is intended to be a crawdad imitation and I plan to fish it along some deep riprap. It would not be legal in the Bass N Fly tournament as it is not "in the spirit of fly fishing" which is how they judge what a fly is. Hopefully it will be in the spirit of catching some big bass on a fly rod. Jigging the Z Man fly in a kayak for bass is a long way from traditional fly fishing. We will see how it works. My guess is it will get bit.

[Darian]

I like it!!! The Bass will, too. Has all of the elements of a good Bass bug. The use of the centering pin in tying in the plastic tail appears to solve the problem of snapping plastics off on the cast. But, it does look like it adds a lot of weight to the fly. Will casting this fly be difficult out of a Kayak??? Looking forward to your photos/report.

[John H]

It will be more of a flop than a cast. You only want to throw it 20 or 25 feet. More than that and you can’t feel the sinking fly and the bite. It is kind of a funky way to fish but sometimes the alternative is to not catch fish.

[MThompson]

The fur and silicone are going to prevent the legs on that soft plastic from kicking. Need to shorten all that stuff up.

[John H]

Good idea.

[Darian]

Trimming back the legs is not a bad idea. In another view without trimming, could the fly be seen as a fleeing Crawdad, all packed in and fleeing backwards using fast strips during retrieve?? Lotsa ways to see and fish this fly that's one reason why I like it.