Bass Flies

[dsaavedra 0]

i am yet to catch a bass on a fly, and need some largemouth flies. im kinda lookin for baitfish flies, and crawfish. of course, anything else will work. how well do mice work? i might tie one or two up to try. thanks!

[MIKE*A 0]

I caught the majority of my subsurface LM bass this past Summer on chart./white & black/white clouser minnows and olive or black bunny strip leeches. You can find both patterns in the "pattern database" on this website along w/some other great patterns. If your not familiar w/the two patterns I mentioned(I don't know what your experience level is... :dunno: ) They are both easy ties. On the surface, deerhair, foam, or cork poppers/sliders will do the job.....Good Luck!

 

Mike

[dsaavedra 0]

ok thanks man. i never really thought to tie clousers. and i dont have any well...not enuff i should say...zonkers to tie buny strip leeches, but i have tied some in the past. as far as my skill level, i would say im pretty good.

[flyfishingtaz 0]

matukas and anything fluffy. if it can catch ur eye, it will the fishes eye as well. tied up a few minnows with a rattler in it. waiting to see how it fishes this weekend.

[Guest]

Toss BIG Wooly Buggers, White Zonkers, adult Dragonfly imitations, and you WILL catch Largemouth.

[dsaavedra 0]

wow thanks guys!!! really helped

 

what are some good feathers to use for matukas? i like olive grizzly, but i dont have any, and dont like to color every feather i want to use with a green sharpie.

 

any ideas?

[JJD 0]

Down here in SW FL I'm having great luck with a tan mirrolure fly with a marabou & mylar tail on a #4 3407 hook. A White bendback tied on a jig hook or a generic white EP-style fly also does quite well.

 

[dsaavedra 0]

cool. looks nice.

[super_fly 0]

Clousers work consistently down here in SE Florida. Also great for peacock bass. I also do pretty well with glades minnows and craft fur streamers for both species.

[stony 0]

Around here in Colorado, I have used a fly I tied that is a knock off of a Montera Marvel. They are basically pistol petes but a little different.

 

These are easier than all get out to tie and I can really knock the bass dead with them.

 

Here is the place that sells them but they aren't hard at all to tie.

 

http://www.fliesbyguy.com/flies_lures.htm

[beaverfsu 0]

 

Same story here-clousers, big buggers plus seaducers.

[Hairstacker 0]

For me, the real draw of fly fishing for largemouth bass is the explosive strike at the surface, so I make over 35 trips a year to the California Delta in my kayak and mostly throw topwater deer hair bugs that I've tied. The fish in my avatar photo to the left was caught on a size 2 red/white Tap's Bug, which is a GREAT fly and can be worked in a surprising number of ways to entice topwater bass to strike. The Tap's Bug is probably my all-time favorite topwater bass fly:

 

 

I've also experienced great success in terms of numbers and size of bass using Dahlberg Diver style flies. Here's a a 5 1/2 lber I caught this past year on the surface with one of these things (you can see the fly she was caught on -- it's an almost 4-inch long black and yellow Dahlberg Diver-style pattern):

 

 

I have had great fun and success with these surface flies, although I have found that where and how I present these flies on any given day is just as important as the particular pattern fished. Also, in the California Delta, you'll often find the bite visibly turning on and off during a given day, so a pattern that didn't work early on may just be the ticket later in the day.

 

On those days when I just can't get them to strike on the surface, I resort to 3 1/2 - 4-inch long chartreuse/white flashtail Clousers. I tie these on a size 1/0 EC413 hook with small red dumbbell eyes, chartreuse and white bucktail, and 20 strands of pearl Flashabou and 4 strands of silver Krystal Flash sandwiched between the two colors of bucktail and extending just beyond the tips of the bucktail. The small dumbbell eyes allow you to pause it during the retrieve without it taking a rapid nosedive, and it also allows you to retrieve it over shallow, submerged weedbeds without getting gunked up as badly.

 

If the Clousers don't work, then I'll either go back to one of the above topwater patterns or perhaps tie on a size 6 olive woolly bugger, particularly in mid-summer when there's a lot of bugs in and above the water.

 

-- Mike

[dsaavedra 0]

cool. arent those dalbergh divers supposed to dive? i'd like to tie some. does anyone have a GOOD step by step link to how to tie one of these?

[stony 0]

http://www.stripersurf.com/FG_Dahlberg.htm

 

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flytying/fotw/52598fotw.html

[Hairstacker 0]

Dahlberg Diver-style flies do indeed dive when you give them a good strip. Thus, one possible retrieve I often use is to strip it hard, thus making it dive, then pause to let it resurface, and then immediately give it another hard strip to make it dive again, and keep repeating the sequence during the retrieve. I’ve had bass clobber it very aggressively on such a retrieve. (By the way, you can make a Tap’s Bug do this very same thing.)

 

You can also fish it popper-style, where you toss it out there, let it sit for a few moments, then make it kind of “pop” forward before pausing again. Then maybe give it a couple of pops in quick succession before pausing it once again. This was the approach that netted me the 5 ½ lber pictured above, as well as quite a few other nice bass.

 

There are different ways to tie divers and various materials can be used for the tail. For the tail, I like to use either straight ostrich herl (20 strands) or a combination of strung neck hackle, marabou, and Krystal Flash (i.e., tie in marabou like for a bugger, then 20 strands of Krystal Flash that extends well past the marabou, then 2 matched pairs of strung neck hackle, one pair on each side).

 

For the body, some like to tie them by just spinning deer hair up to the eye of the hook. Others, like me, prefer to stack, rather than spin, the hair up to the eye of the hook. (By the way, I tie the Tap’s Bug with a combination of spinning and stacking.) A couple of pictured tutorials can be found in the intermediate fly tying section of www.flyanglersonline.com. I’m sure there are others on the web, as I’ve seen them but don’t recall where.

 

Regardless, unlike the Tap’s Bug shown above that fishes best when it’s not packed too tightly, I feel Dahlberg Diver-style flies fish best when they’re packed as very tightly as possible. Indeed, when I get it right, the heads on my divers appear to be solid foam rather than being constructed out of deer hair. You want them tight because, once they become water-logged (which they will become eventually regardless how tightly you tie them), they do not fish well – for example, it will take longer for the fly to re-surface after being made to dive. This may cause your approach and timing to be limited by the fly rather than by what you feel is appropriate for the situation. At that point, you just have to replace the fly with a fresh one. Good luck!

 

-- Mike