Last Year Flies

[Morrowboarder 0]

I just wanted to post some photos of some work I did last spring. I wanted to write a quick review of how they did last year, but something came up. I will update this as soon as I can.

[fshng2 0]

Very nice work. Do you tie your pearl popper over preformed foam?

[mikechell 0]

Some nice looking flies. Looking forward to hearing the stories of their success.

[Morrowboarder 0]

The popper was interesting and will have to show in a video. I used pond foam (insulator foam) for the popper. The body was hollow at the end of the tie, then I took a can of the foam and filled it. After expansion (foam is dried), just cut off the excess with a razor. Then cut a little piece of foam in a circle shape and glue it to the front of the popper as a mouth and seal it with UV resin. The pre-made popper bodies are way easier to tie with, but I have a hard time painting the body to something I like and plus this body really does well with smallmouth bass in clear rivers along banks.

 

The dragon fly nymphs in the picture under the brown scud worked well for stocked trout in Iowa streams and actually hooked into a nice carp along some lake banks.

 

The brown scud was too large and watch too many fish inspect it and move on, mainly trout. I tied up some smaller (18 and 16) olive patterns of this that did awesome in SW Wisconsin streams.

 

The wooly bugger looking flies with the bead heads worked best when dead drifting fast waters for smallmouth. Even pulled out some catfish with the darker pattern.

 

The third picture was suppose to look like a mayfly nymph emerger. It was a little too light (floated) but would eventually sink after being in the water a while. Once you get to that point, I did well with it on a central illinois stream for smallmouth. Nothing big was caught with them, but caught enough to rip up all 5 patterns I had in my box. For the amount of time it took to tie, the durability isn't enough to make me want to tie more.

 

The third fly there was suppose to be a grub and was tied for carp. I only nailed one good size carp last year as I was kayaked through I spotted it grazing the banks. I threw it about 3 feet in from of the carp and scared the fish away for a second, then it did a double take and went for it! It was a fun experience so I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

 

The cricket pattern wasn't as aerodynamic as I hoped (twisted my tippet a lot). It worked great for small bass and blue gill.

 

These weren't my most successful flies of last year, more like honorable mention. Expect a more detailed post later with some of my favorites from last year. Thanks!