THANK YOU Dave G!

[Adam Saarinen 0]

THANK you very much Dave G! I'm pretty shore it was you who mentioned a while ago about using rabbit zonker fur instead of marabou for wooly buggers? We have a run of white fish now & on tuesday i went to the river after work to see if they were coming because there had been a lot of rain, i seen a seasoned angler putting on his waders & showed my new white fish flies i'd tied, egg paturns, he said he has always had more sucsess with a egg sucking leech, so i went home to ty some, marabou was messy & time consuming! I tied 6 very quickly with zonker fur! Today i sat down to ty more! Cut 1cm of zonker, then cut the skin off & ty in as tail! Looks good & super quick, tied 15 flies in 2hours, all selable quality! Guess i just want to say THANK YOU! And THANK YOU to all the other fly tyers here with many many years of experiance behind them! The information you all share that might seem so small can sometimes be so big for some of us! Quick tying time = more fishing time! THANK YOU ALL!

[Piker20 0]

Pictures?

[Dave G. 0]

Yes I tie Wooly Buggers with rabbit fibers in the Tail instead of marabou, especially on my smaller ones. But I also tie a specific leech pattern with the Zonker strip . I tie them in a motor oil olive or purple and some black.. On the Wooly bugger I tend not to tie in Zonker Strip but just the fur from a strip unless the bugger is big. But anyway, you're welcome how ever you did it !! If it's working for you that's wonderful !

 

The leaches we used in Maine quite a bit. Caught some big togue in slow runs of rivers on purple when leeches are prevalent ( May, early June) and also Salmon at sunset (on purple or black ones for the Salmon) when ever salmon are there.. Then my son adapted the Big Purple ones for bass fishing up around Plymouth Ma. caught some pretty big bass on them in ponds too !

[Adam Saarinen 0]

I used orange brass bead head, black zonker fur with black crystal flash for tail & mixed black & purple wing & flash for body & ruffed up with a wire brush! Piker! I'm a computer dumb ass, no picks yet! But if you & only you PM a address i will send two from the land of Santa Claus totally free!

[Adam Saarinen 0]

Yep, i believe the salmon on the leech! One small one wednesday evening on, small about 45cm, seen whole fish in air, broke 5x line! Thursday posible other one, didn't see it, but no white fish, line broke! Line never brakes with white fish, hook always pulls, white fish problem, small mouths & very very soft! It's normal to land only one fish in ten hook ups, especially in moving turbulant river water, but a lot of fun & smiles alround to be had! The white fish run here now is always something fun & special!

[Dave G. 0]

I used orange brass bead head, black zonker fur with black crystal flash for tail & mixed black & purple wing & flash for body & ruffed up with a wire brush! Piker! I'm a computer dumb ass, no picks yet! But if you & only you PM a address i will send two from the land of Santa Claus totally free!

Sounds more complex than mine but interesting !

 

My Big Purple leeches ( completely different from my buggers) are all Zonker strip. I use a #2 or #4 4x long streamer hook. That hook shank is wrapped with silver tinsel over a thread base with Sally Hansons or super glue soaked on it. The Zonker is pre stripped but I may cut them the long way on the smaller leaches ( most of you won't like it but i use a single edge razor blade for that and after 30 years still have all my fingers).. Anyway, These days a shot of super glue goes a long ways over the back of the hook over the tinsel before laying down the Zonker with equal length tail as the hook shank length if not even a little longer, then cinch the strip down over the back using a red/orange mono cord at certain tie in points, usually three will do. Having left room on the shank to spiral three turns of the zonker around the hook till just behind the eye about an eye length or so. Form a head from the same mono or matching 140 denier thread. It's a very simple, very plain, very effective and very rugged tie. The silver tinsel for us is enough flash. Certainly it can be altered with something more if one chose to.

 

To be clear, these end up maybe 4 inches long or more. They get heavy when wet, my preferred rod is a 7-8 wt. All the glue is that salmon have teeth but also big pickerel (fully mature well fed) like these, And they have crazy teeth.

[Dave G. 0]

Yep, i believe the salmon on the leech! One small one wednesday evening on, small about 45cm, seen whole fish in air, broke 5x line! Thursday posible other one, didn't see it, but no white fish, line broke! Line never brakes with white fish, hook always pulls, white fish problem, small mouths & very very soft! It's normal to land only one fish in ten hook ups, especially in moving turbulant river water, but a lot of fun & smiles alround to be had! The white fish run here now is always something fun & special!

These are fished well sub surface, you can go to 2x and not scare anyone away. At least that's my experience, certainly 3 x but I've even used straight 8lb running line as leader with sinking line. In fact we troll that way on lakes with the theory if we can't go fine line we can go long. And that can make a difference, we have run 13-20 ft of basically tippet in 8lb test. So lead core line, a 10 ft leader, then 13-20 ft of tippet trolling . The potential of fish in size with these can be *pretty big*. Holding them in turbulant water on 5x would be tough to hold.