Zonker with a Laser Dub Head- It Caught a Smallmouth Bass!

That's right!  The fly that I have been posting about lately (and hoped to catch a smallmouth bass with) accomplished another mission.  To be clear, I didn't catch the smallmouth, but the angler that can be see in the picture at the top of this post, did!  I sent a few of my unnamed streamers to my good friend Ryan Walker who is a smallmouth fishing guide in Southwest Missouri.  I asked him to give me some feedback on the pattern and if he had some confidence in the fly to maybe fish it a little bit.  

Ryan not only gave me some great feedback on the fly but also had a client of his fish the fly on a recent trip.  The excitement that I got when I received a text message from Ryan a few days ago was palpable.  To know that this fly can catch both largemouth in impoundments and smallmouth in rivers is a big deal.  It is one thing to have a fly that is effective for one species and/or in one situation is one thing.  For a fly to catch multiple species in different settings is monumental to me!

 With the feedback I have received from field testing, I think I am about ready to start offering this fly in my online store.  I will post about it when it is available which might be a couple of weeks because I have a lot to tie before putting it in the store.  Until then, feel free to visit the store to see if there are any streamers that you would like to hit the water with.  Have a great day and good luck on the water!

Another Good Day on the Water with the Unnamed Streamer

After fishing the unnamed streamer on one occasion, I decided that more data needed to be collected.  I know what you might be thinking.  "Is this guy going to take the fly to a farm pond and call it 'effective' if he catches a bunch of fish on it?"  That statement would be understandable because I do that a lot.  If farm pond fish will eat the fly, then that tells me that it is ready to move on to other fisheries.  I use farm ponds as "proving grounds" on many occasions.  The farm pond that I went to was a little different than other haunts.

I had never caught a single bass out of the pond that I went to.  I heard they were in there.  I heard about other folks catching fish there.  Heck, I even helped stock some of the fish that I hoped were still in the pond, but I had never caught anything out of the pond.  I figured that made the conditions a little more challenging, and thus, a little more interesting.  

To make a long story short, I did catch some fish and the fly performed extremely well.  I caught 5-6 fish and almost every one smashed my fly with reckless abandon.   Since the fly doesn't sink much and I wasn't fishing out of a boat, I threw it in the shallows.  I was hoping that the bass were either still in prespawn mode and crushing anything that moved or just recently spawned and hadn't moved to cover just yet.  I think they had all spawned but were still happy to run down my erratic streamer.  

On another outing at Rocky Hollow Park in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, I landed a 15 inch largemouth as well.  While this lake is a solid largemouth fishery, I arrived later in the morning than I would have preferred and the bass MIGHT have been spawning.  I fished the fly around heavy cover and structure to avoid snags.  I only got hung up twice and both occasions were due to poor casting.  The fly has such a slow sink rate that it never had a chance to get deep enough to get snagged on rocks, vegetation, or laydowns.  I tried to work the fly above the structure and it worked out perfectly.  The one solid eat that I got came from a little pocket on the bank that was surrounded by boulders.  Honestly, it felt more like a smallmouth eat on an Ozark stream than a largemouth take on an impoundment.

This fly is just about perfect to me.  It sinks slow and has a great side to side motion.  If stripped correctly, it will go from facing left to facing right.  When paused, it sinks slowly with it's head pointed down but when stripped, it's head rises and zooms to the surface like a dying baitfish.  It seems like this fly can do a little bit of everything and that includes catching fish...thankfully!  This fly might very well end up in the online store, soon!

 

Zonker with a Laser Dub Head- How it Fished

Alright, I wasn't expecting the results that I got from field testing.  Truth be told, I took this fly on a fishing trip with the middle school fly fishing club that I sponsor.  I was planning on just tossing this fly in the shallows a few time and playing around with it.  To really test its sink rate, I started making longer casts to see how fast it got down in the water column.  At some point I decided to cross over from testing to actually fishing the fly with the hope of catching a fish or two.

The conditions seemed right for a largemouth to hammer this fly.  I was fishing a wind-swept bank that was rocky, the fish were in pre spawn mode, and my students had not fished this stretch of water.  It seemed like this was where the bass would be.  If this was indeed where the fish were supposed to be, I wanted to see if they would try to take my new fly down.  The results of my little experiment came quickly.

On my third cast, my fly landed between some aquatic vegetation that was growing along the bank and some cabbage that was growing in deeper water about 10 yards away.  It seemed like the perfect ambush point for a pre spawn bucketmouth.  Apparently, I made the right assumption because a 12 inch largemouth darted out of the depths and hit my fly on a pause.  I missed that fish.  It happens.  Two casts later and I was hooked up with the same (or maybe a different but nearly identical) fish.  It wasn't a big fish but it got the ball rolling in terms of determining whether my fly was effective or not.  More testing was needed.

I worked my way down the bank and my fly ended up getting hit by another bass as it sunk down into the depths of the trough I was fishing.  This fish felt more substantial than the last one and when it headed towards open water, I could feel its weight.  My line started to come to the surface and when the fish jumped, I finally got a glimpse of what I was hooked up with.  The bass definitely weighed over a pound and I really wanted to land it.  Thankfully, I got it to the bank and the confidence that I had in the fly grew.  This fly's maiden trip wasn't over there though.

After the release, I started to move towards a spot that I had been eyeballing and I was excited to fish.  I had seen many fish caught in the spot over many years.  The conditions were right for another fish to be there.  Nobody had already fished that spot yet either.  With light and cautious steps, I made my way to the last spot I wanted to throw this fly.

The wind (totally the wind's fault) caused me to make a few bad casts but I eventually put one where I wanted the fly to go.  My line came tight on a pause and a proper strip-set ensued.  Like the last fish, the fight started off slow but the heft of the fish was easy to recognize.  This fish also headed to open water and lept from the water.  This fish was bigger...noticeably bigger.  The fish was fighting hard but slowly tired as it approached the bank.  This is always a point that makes me nervous because of so many memorable fish that I have lost at the bank.  Thankfully this story had a happy ending because I was able to get my hands on it.

The hydrilla gorilla weighed in at 3 pounds exactly!  It was my biggest bass of the year and the nail in the coffin on the matter of whether this fly will catch fish.  It will and I will be cranking out some more of these in a variety of colors really soon!  The next step is to see if a smallmouth will eat this and I like the odds of that happening.

Zonker with a Laser Dub Head- How it Field Tested

Recently, I took my new (to me) fly on a fishing trip with my middle school fly fishing club.  While my students were fishing, it was my hope to see how my fly behaved in the water.  Since the fly is unweighted, I wanted to throw it on a floating line so I could see how it behaves just below the surface of the water.  I intend to fish the fly on sink tip line but with murky lake conditions, I wouldn't have been able to see it's action deeper in the water.  I was looking at its vertical motion, horizontal motion, and wiggle.  What I mean by wiggle, is that I wanted to see how the tail wiggled, how the laser dub head fluttered, and how the silicon legs when stripped.  Here is what I found.

The fly did almost exactly what I wanted it to.  While it did have a little bit of a nosedive when paused, it had a great side to side motion.  It did not have a jigging motion at all which is what I was hoping for as well.  While it had a decent wiggle, I think the magnum rabbit strip, if paired down to a normal size, will provide more motion in the water.  I'm wondering if a keel weight is in order but I want to see how the fish respond first.  With different stripping cadences and rod twitches, I could get this fly to do some extremely erratic stuff.  I can see this fly triggering some predatory responses in both largemouth and smallmouth as a result.

Overall, I'm really happy with this fly.  It's not incredibly complicated to tie, which is nice.  More steps plus more materials equals more time and money.  It holds its profile well in the water too.  Some flies seem to pulsate in and out and I tend to not like that.  I like for a fly to stay the same size in the water, or as much as possible in order to make it realistic.  So while I am happy with the fly this far, I also understand that there are flies that catch fish, flies that catch fishermen (i.e. they buy it because it looks good dry), and flies that do both.  I'm hoping this fly does both!

Zonker with a Laser Dub Head- How I Tied It

This idea started off with the intent to make a weightless version of my favorite streamer, The Brave.  While that was a simple task, it got me thinking.  I removed the cone head from this pattern to give it less of a jigging motion and hopefully give it more side to side motion when fished on sink tip line.  I also really like a streamer called "Matt Bennett's Lunch Money" but again, I wanted a version of that fly that was not weighted.  What I ended up with was a little bit of both.  

What I created was part zonker (like The Brave), part Lunch Money, and part Roamer.  I gave the fly a combination tail with one part marabou and the other part rabbit strip.  From there, I gave the fly a rabbit strip body and used the same rabbit strip from the tail as the back of the fly.  I added some silicon legs to give it a little more flutter and to break up the overall silhouette.  Finally, I used four total clumps of laser dub to make the head.  I used two clumps that matched the rabbit strip (gray in this case) that I had used for the back and two clumps that matched the rabbit strip (white) that I had used for the body.  

I have really high hopes for this fly.  I hope that it has a nice hover and maybe a side to side motion like a jerk bait when stripped aggressively.  I thought about keel weighting these flies but want to do some field testing first in order to see if a keel weight is necessary.  I tied these flies on a 1/0 Gamakatsu B10S which I think is a perfect fit for the materials that I am using.  The fly is 3 and 1/2 inches long and has a great taper to it.  The materials go from more bulk at the head to thinner in the tail which is similar to the idea that most of the mass of a fish can usually be found in the front half of its body.  Field testing is in order now and I will post about the results as soon as possible.