First attempt at bass flies

[tangledup]

14 minutes ago, jdmidwest said:

Someone spent alot of time painting those up with markers.  Good looking flies, and the fish seem to think so too.

Buddy whacked a goose on the tail with a Heddon Torpedo on Duck Creek one time long ago.  It stuck and the goose took flight.  Bye Bye lure and a spool of line. 

The markers didn’t stay on too well in the water. You can see that in the last picture. Those silly ducks followed me all around the pond chasing that fly. They actually made it hard to fish. Even the wild mallards who adopted our pond chased this thing around. It almost seemed like a game to them, grabbing the fly out of the water and swimming off with it as fast as they could. 

[jdmidwest]

Waterproof Sharpies would work better.  The design and the art looked good.

[fishinwrench]

Does it dive, wiggle, or anything cool?   To look at it I'd figure it to just be a plop and twitch fly.   Obviously it does something right.  👍

[tangledup]

It dives when you strip it, although you have to strip it pretty quickly to get any kind of depth at all. Luckily the fish were in a mood to chase things last night. But I did catch a couple by doing exactly what you said: toss it out there and let it sit for a while then twitch it a little. It didn't cast very well on my 5wt though lol. 

I don't think this is a fly I'm going to tie up a bunch of but I did enjoy making it. More of a tribute project than anything. The craftsmanship on the originals caught my eye and the wistful way my father in law spoke of his departed friend (the original tier) pulled at my heart strings a little. He was pretty excited when I told him I was going to try to recreate them and even more excited when I showed him the pictures of the fish they caught. All in all it was a fun project.

[jdmidwest]

It's a Dahlberg diver design, should dive nose down each time it's stripped hard and wiggle some, then pop bach up. 

[tjm]

I thought Dahlberg used deer hair?

[tangledup]

Yeah it is basically a dahlberg. You can use deer hair or foam I believe. At least that’s what I saw during my YouTube research.

[tjm]

oh, utube, I had only seen Dalhberg's stuff in glossy magazines, must be 30 years ago. As I recall he featured long hackle tails/legs, so the foam and craft hair  thing didn't even stir that memory. It's kinda counter-intuitive to make foam dive isn't it?

Your flies looked pretty nice but also looked pretty complicated to build, way beyond my patience level. Like fishingwrench I thought they a sort of popper. I tied a few of Larry's deer hair style back then and they took me quite a while, and mine didn't dive very well; so I turned to Gurglers as my top water go to.

[fishinwrench]

Dalhberg divers are cute, but they suck in the durability catagory.   Take 45 minutes to tie and are junk after 15 minutes of actual fishing.

Pack them too loose and they might as well be a 45 minute muddler.   Pack them tight and they won't dry out, so they rot down where hair and thread meet.   Poorly engineered by my standards.    

How they stayed so famous for so long is a mystery to me.

Chad Johnson designed a better one. Can't remember what he calls it.

[fishinwrench]

Here it is.  👍 

Dally has stolen it.   😅