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!
No comments:
Post a Comment