Ryan's Muddy Bloddy Balance Leech Pattern

[RyanRuttan 0]

Oops, spelling mistake in the title and I can't edit it. The fly is called muddy bloody leech haha.

 

Hi Everyone, just wanted to share my favorite fly from this summer and it's still doing very well in just about any lake. I'm calling it the muddy bloody leech because of the brown and red colors.

 

It's a leech pattern that hangs under an indicator. The first picture shows the balanced fly at the top and the trolling version below it.

 

Size 10 long curve hook by Mustad - The hook has to be bent at the eye of the hook in order to be attached to the line (more info below)

Brown feather fibers for the tail.

Brown Llamma dubbing for the body.

Copper bead size 1/8.

Red small wire for the body wrap.

Black thread.

 

For the balanced fly, bend the eye of the hook so that it shoots straight down, you can just see the eye of the hook where the point of the hook is pointing. I bend the eye of the hook right where the eye starts. It doesn't need to drop down very far at all. The head of the hook is extended by heavy red wire and tied onto the hook first. Then dub around the extension. you can see the perfect balance in the second image.

 

Two main reasons why I love balanced flies is that:

 

1. The hook lays flat in the water, and not hanging vertically. A vertical bug in the water usually means it's dead.

2. The hook is point up, in the picture where the fly is hanging balance you can see how the fly will almost always catch the fish in the roof of the mouth. I really think that this helps for getting better hook sets that are harder for the fish to escape from.

 

 

 

 

Caught these two guys at Dugan Lake 4.1 lbs and 4.4 lbs Both fish are over 21 inches.

[RyanRuttan 0]

Almost forgot, I used 20 feet of 4lb test line from the indicator to the fly. There's enough weight on the fly that I didn't have to use any split shots to get it down there.

Fishing in 30 feet of water and the fish were holding around 20 feet.

It wasn't possible for me to cast this setup because of the length of the leader but throwing the whole thing overboard and then paddling off slightly worked very well. There wasn't any wind so this method was easy to maintain but in wind I would anchor up, throw the fly as far as possible and then use the rod to get the indicator over top of where the fly landed. I had no problem getting fish on with the indicator only 15 feet away from my anchored pontoon boat.

[JSzymczyk 0]

those are some big fat rainbows!

[bad fish rising 0]

you should look into using small jig hook so you don't have to bend the hooks