Many of us make changes to a fly pattern, either to enhance a specific attribute or because we don’t have the correct material. More often than not, the modified fly doesn’t really perform any better than the original. If we get lucky, it will have a slight edge and becomes our go-to fly. But every so often, if we get very lucky, the fly does something completely different and opens up a new way to fish a fly.
I got very lucky last year. Readers may recall the Fluke Fly, a pattern introduced in the November/December 2020 issue of California Fly Fisher. The fly was designed to mimic the Super Fluke, a highly successful silicone lure. The fly is little more than polyester cushion stuffing wrapped onto a piece of stretchy silicone cord and trimmed to shape. Fancy it ain’t. Despite its basic design, the Fluke Fly has proven to be as effective and durable as its conventional counterpart, landing everything from largemouth bass to halibut.
Paper Clip Chassis
The only downside to the fluke fly is that you have to hold the silicone cord in your hand when assembling it, because the cord is too flexible to tie with a vise. This isn’t a serious problem, but I figured replacing the cord with a piece of wire might make it more vise friendly. A three-inch piece of straightened paper clip was close to hand, so that became the test chassis.
Tying the fly was simple. I whipped a monofilament eye onto the end of the paper clip and constructed the body by tying on small clumps of polyester fibers. Once the body was complete, I trimmed it to shape and coated it with fabric paint.
The paper clip solved the vise problem, and several fishing trips showed the substitution had no effect on durability or effectiveness. It caught fish just like the silicone cord based original. But then, during a slow fishing session, I bent the fly, just to see what would happen. It darted sideways or made lazy spirals, depending on where and how the wire was bent. Neither of these movements was great, but they hinted at an interesting possibility: perhaps the fly could be bent to generate specific actions. It took quite a bit of cushion stuffing to get the design worked out, but the end result was worth it. The fly could indeed be bent to move in certain ways, including ones I had no idea were even possible.
Getting the Bends
While you can manipulate the fly to create a variety of shapes, bending the nose (the first quarter to half an inch behind the eye) seems to be the best arrangement. Since these are flies assembled by hand, and not molded lures, they are unlikely to have a perfectly symmetrical profile. As such, each one will require some on-the-water tweaking to dial things in.
Start by squeezing the fly underwater to wet it thoroughly, ensuring the fly wicks water and sheds air. Some tiny pockets of air likely will remain, but that’s a good thing, since they make the fly slightly buoyant. Cast the fly out and see if it veers to one side. It probably will. You f ix this by bending the nose a few degrees in the opposite direction. If it spirals through the water, you’ll need to reduce the length or angle of the nose bend. If adjusting the nose doesn’t iron things out, check the body for any obvious asymmetry and that the hook isn’t skewed off to one side. This iterative tuning process shouldn’t take more than half a dozen tweaks.
Bending the nose downward about 30 to 45 degrees provides three swimming motions. A long, steady pull moves the fly in a straight line with a slight body wiggle. Short, regular-cadence pulls will cause the fly to cut a zigzag path on top or under water, depending on whether you are using a floating line or a sinking line. Anyone who has fished Charlie Bisharat’s Pole Dancer fly or the conventional bass angler’s Zara Spook lure will be familiar with this “walk the dog” action.
Things get really wild when you fish the fly nose down on an intermediate or sinking line and make pulls of varying cadence and length. The fly kicks, turns, and darts in a completely unpredictable way. The closest thing I have seen is the conventional bass angler’s jerkbait lure. If the fly is running just below the surface, it may even leap right out of the water.
A straight nose and long, steady pulls will move the fly in a straight path, while short, regular-cadence pulls will give you a mild version of the zigzag. Make the pulls somewhat longer, but still with a regular cadence, and the fly will dip and rise due to its slight buoyancy, producing a jiglike action. This works well when fishing midwater with an intermediate line, but where it really shines is with a fast-sinking line. This setup enables you to skip the fly just above the bottom, much like a Clouser, but with less risk of getting snagged.
An upward-bent nose causes the fly to ride up, creating a swimming frog action when paired with a floating line and a simple three-to-six-inch-per-second retrieve. Add a few short, sharp pulls, and the fly will usually dig into the water, creating a splash and veering off to the side. Since the fly was based on a paper clip, I named it Clippy. I uploaded several underwater videos to YouTube so you can see the fly performing these motions in a river and in a swimming pool. Just open YouTube, type Robert Ketley @robertketley6152 into the search bar, and click on videos with “Clippy” in the title.
Lab Tests
The fly is such a blast to fish, it’s easy to get carried away making it do cool tricks. But whatever else a fly might do, it needs to catch fish. The acid test was conducted at a 20-acre pond I refer to as “The Lab.” This place gets a lot of fishing pressure, and the fish have seen pretty much everything that can be attached to monofilament. I’ve lost count of how many flies have been spurned by the pond’s super selective bass. Not this time. Several fish hammered the fly, including a couple of two-pounders, which are about as big as the bass grow there.
Chassis Options
When it comes to the wire chassis, you have a couple of choices. A paper clip stays fairly rigid during the tying process and works well with flies over two and a half inches long. An eye constructed of 10-to15-pound-test mono, with an opening of about one-sixteenth of an inch, is whipped onto the end of the paper clip and secured with superglue. Keep the threaded section short (about a quarter of an inch) so bending the wire doesn’t loosen the eye.
For flies less than two and a half inches long, the internal wire from grocery-store twist ties works well. The wire is doubled and then twisted, creating a tight spiral with a round eye. This is easy to do with a rotary vise. Just secure the tag ends of the wire in the jaws, place a suitable-size nail or debarbed hook inside the looped end, and rotate the jaws until the wire comes snug to the nail or hook. If you don’t have a rotary vise, place the loop end of the wire over a nail or hook clamped in your vise, secure the tag ends in a pair of forceps, and rotate them until the eye is formed.
The wire will start to rust if it stays wet for too long. To help avoid this, simply apply a coating of fabric paint or Flexament, or use prepainted paper clips. It’s easy to make a bunch of chassis, paint them, and leave them overnight to dry.
Fixing The Stuffing
If you have ever spun deer hair, working with cushion stuffing will be a piece of cake. Cushions and pillows, as well as stuffed toys, are full of the polyester fibers that form the body of the fly. The cushions I have eviscerated have had fibers about three-quarters to an inch which provides the right fiber density in the trimmed fly. Pet beds and stuffed toys often have slightly thicker fibers and produce a more porous fly that sinks more readily. Most of the time, the fibers will be white, though some pet-product fillers are colored. (You can also buy polyester fiber material, such as sold under the Poly-Fil brand, from craft stores and Amazon.)
Before you start tying, you need to remove any tangles from the fibers by running a comb or brush through them. The end result should look like a pile of loose dubbing. Pull a small bunch (about half the volume of a regular cotton ball) between your fingers so they form a mat of roughly aligned fibers. The mat should measure about an inch (along the fiber length) by one and a half inches and be nearly a quarter of an inch thick. You’ll need about eight mats for every inch of body length.
The fly is built from back to front. Clamp into the vise a quarter inch of the end of the wire opposite the eye that you whipped onto it, make a few wraps of thread (regular thread is fine) close to the jaws, and secure it with a drop of superglue. Smear a light coating of fabric paint or flexible cement onto the bare wire where the fibers will be attached. In addition to fighting rust, this helps lock them in place when the paint or cement dries. Place the middle of the fiber mat close to the wire with the fibers parallel to it, as if you were spinning deer hair. Make a couple of loose thread wraps so the mat curls around the wire. Slowly tighten the thread, and the fibers will spin around, creating a flared bunch. Push the bunch back toward the vise and ease the thread forward through the fibers. Make a couple of turns of thread around the wire, place a fresh smear of paint or cement on the wire, and tie in the next fiber mat.
Push each flared bunch back and massage it to even out any lumps or thin spots. When you are within a quarter of an inch of the eye, use slightly smaller mats. This will allow you to get to within about a sixteenth of an inch from the eye, leaving enough room for a whip finish. After doing that, secure the thread with glue, head cement, or paint.
Trimming
You should now have a long, fluffy cotton-ball-like cylinder. You can usually even out remaining lumps and thin spots by massaging the fly between your hands. Gently run a toothbrush down the fly to remove any loose fibers.
Using sharp scissors, make shallow cuts to trim the fibers into a fishy shape.
Rotating the fly a quarter turn per cut helps keep things symmetrical. You may find it easier to trim the fly while you hold it in your other hand.
Coloring and Coating
You can color the f ly with fabric paints or marker pens, though pens will require a final coat of clear fabric paint. Paints and pens come in a variety of colors, including neon and glow in the dark. This gives you the ability to make something that closely mimics a baitfish or something that really stands out in stained or murky waters.
Fabric paints can be applied with a brush, but the best results come from finger painting. Start with the lightest color (usually on the belly), and use gentle strokes going from the eye to the tail. Repeat with darker-colored paints until you have the look you are after. Don’t try to force paint deep into the fibers. Small irregularities in the fiber surface will create paint-free pockets that allow the fibers to breathe air and water. This ensures the fly doesn’t float like a bobber or cast like a spud.
Marker pens can be easier to use than paints, but the colors aren’t as vibrant, and you’ll still need to coat the fly with a layer of clear fabric paint, which you can do before or after applying the marker pens. Clear paints with pearlescent glitter produce the most lifelike finish. Start with the lightest-colored marker and run it from the eye to the tail. Repeat with darker-colored pens until you have the gradations of color you want. If anything goes wrong, rubbing alcohol will usually remove most of the ink.
Hook Mount
Since the Clippy is built on wire, you’ll need a way to attach the hook. The original Fluke Fly used a stretchy silicone cord eye to secure the hook, but this approach limited the action of the Clippy. The solution was to use two strips of double-sided Velcro, one glued to the fly’s belly and the other to the hook’s shank. You may recall this concept was originally used with the Livebait pattern I featured in the January/February 2022 “Catchy Ideas” column.
The belly strip should be about half the body width and half the body length, plus one-half inch. Apply a layer of fabric paint to the hooky side of the Velcro, leaving a half inch free of paint. Press it into the body with the unpainted half inch extending beyond the fly’s tail end. Make a few spirals of thread around the body and Velcro and leave overnight for a good bond (then remove the thread). Marker pens can be used to color the Velcro to match the body colors.
Attaching Velcro to the hook is easy — just superglue the fluffy side of a piece of double-sided Velcro to the shank. The Velcro should be the same width as the body piece and as long as the hook shank. Press firmly to ensure a good bond. Fine-wire hooks may need an additional layer of fabric paint or head cement to stay affixed.
The long belly strip allows you to place the hook anywhere from midbody to behind the tail. This changes the weight distribution and can help with tuning the fly when fishing.
Add-Ons
That extra bit of Velcro behind the side can be used as a mounting point for a variety of interchangeable tails and action modifiers. Just cut a piece of Velcro that’s the same size as the tail piece and glue whatever you like to the hooky side. Feathers, rabbit strips, Flashabou, and rubber legs all work well. You can also attach rattles or small spinner blades, providing extra noise and vibration. A piece of foam or a flattened BB shot can be used to alter the buoyancy and action of the fly even more.
Rigging
The method for attaching the fly is unique, but not complicated. Start by knotting a length of tippet material to the Velcroed hook. Next, thread a bobber stop onto the tippet and slide it down to just above the hook. The stop acts as a load-bearing element, ensuring that the force of casting doesn’t pull the Velcroed hook from the fly. Thread the tippet through the eye of the fly’s chassis and slide it down to the stop. Attach the hook Velcro to the belly strip Velcro, bend the nose, and adjust the stop so it is snug to the eye of the fly. The final step is to knot the tippet to your leader. You can knot the two directly together, but I find using a microswivel is easier. You can get them from Scientific Anglers, Orvis, RIO, or Spro.
For tippets of 10-pound-test or less, extrasmall bobber stops work best, while small size bobber stops are better with heavier tippets. You may need to use two bobber stops with bulkier flies. You can also add a small plastic bead, if the eye on the fly is wider than your bobber stops.
Unless you are going to change the hook, it’s much easier to swap f lies by snipping the tippet-to-leader knot. Simply slide the old fly up the tippet, remove it, slide the new one down, and retie the tippet to the leader.
Lines
If you tie two-inch versions to mimic pond smelt or minnows, a regular 6-weight or 7-weight weight-forward line will do just fine. However, anything over three inches long will be easier to cast with an 8-weight or 9-weight line designed for big flies. If you want to fish these flies deep, choose a fast-sinking line with a head section between 25 and 30 feet long.The next time you sit down to tie a fly, why not try a completely different material or tying technique? If you are feeling particularly adventurous, look for inspiration in your home, office, or garage. You never know, you just might get very lucky.
