As you may recall, the winter of 2013–14 produced precious little in the way of rain. The few storms that did manage to barge their way through the aptly named “ridiculously resilient ridge” of high pressure weren’t exactly gullywashers. As a result, many of the state’s lakes and reservoirs shrank to levels not seen in decades. That was certainly the case for the small Central Coast lake that I manage. By the end of 2014, we had lost almost 10 feet of depth. For a lake where the deepest, darkest abyss is just 27 feet down, that’s a lot of lost water. A number of the older anglers began to wonder if the lake would go dry and engaged in unsettling stories of sunken boats, violence, and decomposed bodies. Some of the accounts involved horrible, almost unspeakable acts. I guess macabre stories, like single-malt scotch and bat guano, ripen after a few decades in the dark.
Freshwater Fly Traps
Every day, the waterline slipped, inch by inch, down the muddy banks. As an immigrant from the frigid fifty-first parallel, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly things grow in the Golden State. Wetland habitats, in particular, seem to explode with life. In just a few days, the gooey, tan-colored mud was home to a perky layer of bright-green vegetation. As the year progressed, this soft carpet hardened into a tangle of stems, twigs, and leaves, creating a squat, almost impenetrable lakeside hedge. Insects, birds, and other critters moved in to exploit the new habitat. The water level kept dropping until December, when a couple of storms finally managed to plow their way through the high-pressure ridge. Watershed soils quickly saturated, and runoff pushed its way down the network of gulches and creeks. Water surged into the lake, raising the level almost a foot a day. By the start of 2015, the lake was full, and the lakeside hedge was hidden under several feet of water. A few weeks later, pennywort vines leapt out from bankside soils, forming a tangled thatched roof over the submarine hedge.
Largemouth bass moved in quickly to take advantage of this multilayered habitat. While the hardware guys were able to work their synthetic worms through the leaf, stem, and twig maze, my flies did not do so well. Weedless patterns with nylon hook guards, which had performed well among mangroves and lily pads, were having a hard time consistently getting through this snaggy labyrinth. If the fly did make it past the heavy stuff, it frequently picked up trailers of stringy algae, which didn’t help things. Nothing puts a fish off its lunch quite as much as having its home rearranged by a mammal in a boat. Bass aren’t vegetarians, and weeds don’t swim. While the worm guys were pulling out large bass, I was stuck playing around with the smaller fish hanging along the edge of the submerged vegetation. I found this a bit irritating.
Saltwater Fly Traps
As spring slid into summer, my attention shifted from the lake to Monterey Bay. I made a few trips out to the offshore reefs to give my 8-eight rods some extra abuse. These trips usually involve fishing over open-water reefs for schools of black and olive rockfish. The fish feed aggressively, and you lose flies only when a large fish gets its head down or a big lingcod “hitchhiker” clamps onto a hooked fish and drags it down to Davy Jones’s locker. This year, I found myself wondering about the inshore kelp beds. Just like their freshwater counterparts, the long, serpentine kelp fronds hold lots of fish. I had an overwhelming desire to throw flies into the twisting mess, just to see what kind of trouble I’d get into. Not surprisingly, I found myself faced with the same snagging problems I had dealt with at the lake, though now it was on a much larger scale and further complicated by waves and currents. The kelp took flies like they were going out of style. If I was going to make this work, it was clear that I needed something more than a weedless fly. I needed a snagless fly.
Bassmasters
I frequently talk and fish with conventional-tackle largemouth bass anglers. We not only use different gear, but more often than not have different political and musical tastes. Despite these differences, our fishing conversations are always interesting and frequently very informative. I truly believe that many of them feel sorry for me in the way any decent person feels compassion for someone who’s obviously a few bricks shy of a load. Why would anyone deliberately handicap themselves by fishing for bass with wimpy fly gear and then try to make things harder by avoiding the very best spots because they are too snaggy? I’m no genius (it’s true — I was tested at age 11), but that sounds stupid even to me. Being caring people, they often tossed multicolored silicone worms at me and told me how to rig them so they would slide over snags and into the mouths of hungry bass.
Looking at these simple rigs, two things caught my attention. Many of the guys use a special worm hook. This odd-looking design has a long, Frenchcurve shank that positions the point directly in line with the eye. This feature clearly helps reduce the possibility of the hook point snagging on wood, weeds, or corpses. But the critical element is the way they rig the lure so the hook point is buried in soft silicone. Countless times, I have watched these folks flip their worms, crawdads, lizards, and God-knows-whats into snag-filled areas where no sane fly fisher would ever cast a fly. I have seen them remove some very big bass from these spots. Nothing gets me ruminating quite like monster fish in impossible places.
While listening to an informative, if somewhat uninspired webinar on algae, my mind turned to the lake and its finned behemoths. Attention slipped further as a presenter began discussing sediment chemistry. There’s only so much information on redox reactions a guy can take after lunch. I decided this was as good a time as any to think about a fly pattern based on the silicone worm.
Use of a hook with the point directly in line with the eye was obvious. In the late 1970s, Mustad produced keel hooks, which positioned the point in line with the eye. Sadly, those hooks are no longer made. You can always try to bend long-shanked J hooks into a keel design, but most modern hooks won’t tolerate that much flexing. Derrick Filkins and Brian Hudspeth have developed innovative flies based on modern worm hooks. Both of these tyers’ patterns are almost totally weedless. Unfortunately, the Derrick Filkins HPU (hook point up) design doesn’t really lend itself to long, slinky materials such as rabbit strips. Brian Hudspeth’s Bushwacker handles rabbit strips if they are speared onto the hook and slid down the bend, but this somewhat reduces its weedless capabilities.
I flipped some materials-placement ideas around in my head, but nothing seemed workable. Then I recalled some silicone tubing (pony bead lacing) I had purchased from a craft store a few years back. The stuff is very flexible and just the right size to slide over the point of a hook. I figured it might just be the answer.
That evening, I tied up a few demo flies on worm hooks. The hook point was slipped into one end of the tubing, and the other end was whipped down behind the hook eye. The setup actually worked too well. The hook point remained stubbornly sheathed unless I pulled it off. Fish don’t have opposable thumbs and won’t voluntarily hook themselves. A bottle of beer helped solve the problem. Using a pair of sharp, fine-pointed scissors, I cut a quarter-inch slit along the top of the tubing so the point could slip out when subject to modest pressure.
Deliberately Casting Badly
The following weekend, I took some silicone-tube prototypes to the lake. I started by throwing them into the pennywort maze. As long as my retrieve was executed in a smooth manner, the fly slid its way back to the rod tip unimpeded.
OK, so the fly could handle pennywort. What about seriously gnarly structure? Sometimes you have to get a fly deep into cover to reach the fish. The bass guys do that by “pitchin’” or “f lippin’ ” their worms into small openings beneath the overhanging willows and brambles. I can’t cast as accurately as these guys pitch and flip, so my flies sometimes miss the mark and end up hanging from the branches like ugly Christmas tree decorations. If the fly snags, you either have to yank it out with a pull on the line or move the boat in to remove it by hand. Both of these actions scare the crap out of fish.
I decided it was time to go for broke. I wasn’t aiming for a particular fishy spot. Quite the contrary, I was deliberately aiming for a tree. I overpowered the cast and watched as the fly punched its way into the twigs and disappeared several feet above the waterline. I slowly pulled the line taut and watched closely. The fly appeared from behind some leaves and languidly climbed over a twig, dropped down a foot, and then slithered over another twig. I made one last gentle tug on the line, and the fly dropped beautifully into the water. Just to make sure this wasn’t a fluke, I repeated the tree-fishing approach for almost half an hour. No matter how deeply the fly got into the vegetation, it always came out when given smooth, steady pulls.
I have to say this was one of the most liberating fishing experiences I have had in a long time. I was now able to boldly place my fly where no one had (deliberately) placed a fly before. To seal the deal, a couple of bass nailed the fly, including one fatty that was lying under some submerged willow branches.
OK, so the silicone-tubed fly had proven itself in a small lake. How would it fare in the Pacific? I invited Jim, my up-for-anything fly-fishing friend, to a local surfing spot where the kelp beds were exposed by a low tide. Anyone who has seen a kelp bed at low tide will understand this is definitely not a fly-friendly place. If the swirling mats of kelp don’t steal your fly, the nearby rocks and mussels surely will. We cast along the edges of the kelp, into small pockets of water, and finally straight into areas that were more algal than liquid. No matter where we placed our flies, they always came back unscathed. Finally, I got silly, turned around, and threw the fly over the dry coastal armoring at the bottom of the cliff. The fly did OK until it finally wedged between two boulders. Intrigued, I clambered over the riprap and saw that the fly had dropped into a very narrow cleft and was hung up at the knot. I had finally figured out the practical limit of the fly. It was OK until you hit something narrower than the tippet knot. I haven’t solved that problem yet.
Tying The Fearless Fly
At up to a buck apiece, worm hooks may seem a bit pricey. But when you figure they allow you to fish almost virgin fly-fishing spots, the cost seems much more reasonable. Besides, you’d probably lose several normal hooks just thinking about casting into those areas. The design can be tied on cheaper jig-style hooks, but they force a slight bend in the silicone tubing, because the tie-in point (below the eye) isn’t directly in line with the hook point. This makes the fly somewhat less than “fearless,” because the tubing is more likely to pop off and expose the point to snags.
To mount the tubing on the hook, simply insert the hook point into the tube and spear it out to reach and cover the section of straight shank behind the eye. Then just push it down on the shank, with the end snug to the eye. Once in place, make a few wraps of thread and add a drop of superglue to lock it in place. As for the length of tubing, you want it to cover the hook point almost to the barb, which I always flatten. This keeps the point safely covered until something crushes the fly — like a pair of jaws. If you want the tubing to expose the point with less pressure (for more finicky feeders), convert the single scissor split into a very narrow V with another snip from the scissors. Don’t overdo this, or you’ll end up with tubing that pops off at the slightest provocation.
My most successful pattern has been a simple craft-fur and rabbit-strip combo. Most worm hooks have only a short section of straight shank behind the eye, so your tying has to be efficient and tight. The rabbit strip is lashed down with a few wraps of thread and moves in the water like something squishy and readily digestible. The craft fur head and veil goes over the rabbit strip and extends down to the hook point. The head and veil gives the fly a little more bulk and helps cushion the silicone tubing when the fly smacks a twig or branch at the end of an extra hard cast. This tying style also lends itself to slender baitfish and shrimp patterns. Just substitute bucktail for the rabbit strip. You can make a great-looking anchovy/ sardine imitation by using long, webby saddle hackles and craft fur.
To add weight, you have a couple of options. If you need to get down only a foot or so, simply slide a small section of silicone tubing up the shank and push an inch or so of lead-free 0.035-inch wire into the tubing. If you need to punch down through thicker weeds, pop a tungsten conehead onto the tippet and secure it in front of the hook eye with a bobber stopper, toothpick, or a sliver of silicone tubing. If you are feeling brave, you can use a bullet-shaped tungsten head specifically designed for plastic worms, but I find that any fly that weighs over an eighth of an ounce can be a challenge to cast cleanly with anything less than a 9-weight fly rod.
Fearless Fishing
Like most weedless patterns, these flies fish well on floating lines if the water depth isn’t much over three feet. Once you start to prospect deeper water, I suggest you ditch the floating line and go with something impregnated with tungsten. Nothing allows the fly to crawl seductively over every twig, branch, stump, or rock quite like a quick-sinking line and a short (3-to-4-foot) leader. After a couple of casts, your fingers will be able to feel every underwater obstacle the fly contacts. I find this tactile dimension adds a whole new experience to fly fishing. Of course, the very best tactile sensation is “the grab.” Last April, I was fishing a lake when I got a grab that I felt all the way down to the soles of my feet. I had no idea that bass could produce that much force. I’d like to say I landed the fish, but I was totally unprepared for it. However, I know exactly where it hangs out, and I will be back next spring.
