How heavy

[coinman66 0]

Every lead eye has its place. But when fishing in a pond or lake (still water) i prefer bead chain eyes too. I discovered last fall when pond fishing for crappie with my handtied clousers, the ones i made with the lead dumbell eyes sank too fast. I switched to ones with bead chain eyes (same color clouser) and started catching crappie like mad! I think the crappie were in a sluggish mode, and didnt want to chase the faster falling lead dumbell eyed clouser. The bead chain sank at a much, much slower rate, keeping the clouser in the strike zone longer. I think the sink rate speed made a big differance. Hope it helps.

Oh, is that a hand tied clouser in your mouth Mr. Crappie?

[fishabuoy 0]

I find that bead chain, as well as lead eye clousers - all have their place. Just depends what you're fishing and for what.

 

Sometimes the fish just want a slower sinking fly, like last week when I went to my local pond. I kept thinking they were deep and continued adding split to drop my rig deeper, faster. As it turns out, I started doing better when I took all the weight off the leader, and let my clouser and smaller gillie trailer fly sink slowly with nearly no retrieve. The water you're talking about <6ft or so would fish ideal w/bead chain.

 

When I'm fishing the Delta or surf, the LMB and/or Stripers would probably never hit a lightly weighted clouser. I almost always have heavily weighted clousers with larger I-Balz style eyes or use real-eyes in addition to the fast sink, heavy shooting head. The surf would be impossible without it, and I typically do better in water deeper than 10' with a more heavily weighted fly.

 

Best-

Bob

 

Hairstacker - you fish the delta from a tube or are you yaking it?

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

Has anyone here taken beadchain and sprayed it with Rustoleum paint? Just curious on how long the paint held up as I have some currently drying. :whistle:

 

Bryan, I used spray enamel and it worked fine, my only pet peeve with it is that the paint gets on the whole bead chain including the little connector between the beads and when you cut your set of eyes the little connector does not fall back into the bead like uncoated ones. The little protrusion helps the beads that already catch some grass to catch more grass. I've taken to filing the protrusion down to flush with the bead face.

 

Also, I've just begun to paint the eyes once they have been tied to the fly but before I tie on the wing. I tie several bodies with the eyes and then dab some paint on to make painted eyes on my bead chain.

 

Here is the finished fly, I think it is a size #8, Mustad 3366. I didn't take any pics of the body and eye painting process.

 

Kirk

 

 

For tying the eyes on, either bead or lead, I like tying and super glueing mono on each side of the hook to make a flat base. It seems to anchor them in really good and prevent twisting, which can happen after a few fish eat your fly.

 

Secure eyes with a few figure eight wraps as normal...

 

...then add some super glue to the eyes and finish tying in with under the eye over the shank wraps to make a disk of thread after which you lock that down with more figure eights.

[TheCream 0]

I do a ton of Clousers, mostly in smaller sizes like 6's and 10's, but sometimes as large as 2's. I match the eyes by size to the hooks I am using, but as others have said, sub in bead chain for flies I want to fish shallow. The bead chain versions almost suspend, very cool action. My second biggest bass last year, at 19", I sight casted to with a #4 bead chain Clouser. I casted a foot or so in front of it and a few feet past, twitched it right to the fish's nose and let it hang for a sec, then gave one quick twitch and it pounced on it. I use mostly small brass eyes on the smaller Clousers, bigger lead eyes on the larger flies.

[Hairstacker 0]

Hairstacker - you fish the delta from a tube or are you yaking it?

 

Bob - I fish the Delta out of an inflatable kayak and have done so for years. I can carry it under one arm and scramble down and launch it from almost anywhere. Not to mention it inflates with a hand pump in 5 minutes and fits in the trunk of my Civic with room to spare for all my other gear.

 

-- Mike