Effective Patterns Made with Inexpensive Craft-Store Materials
Large flies for bass and saltwater fish are quite expensive, four to seven dollars apiece, whereas versatile and effective patterns can be made from craft-store materials for less than 20 cents per fly, exclusive of the cost of the hook. I presented two inexpensive and effective patterns in the November/December 2016 issue of California Fly Fisher. Here are two more crafty patterns that have been quite effective for largemouth bass and for saltwater fish such as stripers and corvinas, and even for fish such as tarpon and permit.
The first pattern, the Crafty FrogBouncer, is made from craft fur and sheet foam plus some beads. It floats with the hook point slightly out of the water to avoid snagging on weeds and lily pads. The second pattern, the Crafty ShrimpBouncer, is made from craft fur, Velcro, and Mylar crafting cord. The patterns can be easily scaled up or down two hook sizes. The patterns both use craft fur instead of rabbit or expensive artificial hair. Craft fur can be found in Michaels or Jo-Ann stores, and the fur for one of these craft-fur flies costs only two or three cents. Buy materials with a strong and tight backing or “hide.” An advantage of the craft fur over rabbit is that the “hide” soaks up a lot less water and does not stretch or become weak when wet.
Craft-store foam, 2 millimeters thick, comes in many colors in 9-by-12-inch sheets for about a dollar, or about three cents each for the foam used in the FrogBouncer. Although the foam is relatively nonabsorbent on the flat surface, its edges will slowly wick a little water. Coating the edges with glue or adhesive will prevent this from occurring.
Velcro, used for the backs of shrimp, crayfish, and crab flies, costs about four bucks at Jo-Ann for a 30-inch roll, but will make nearly a hundred flies. Creatology’s knotting cord is handy for ribbing and can also be unraveled with one’s thumbnail into eight strands of twisted Mylar (like Krystal Flash) to form antennae and tails. Two-millimeter-diameter vinyl tubing called Pony Bead Lacing (PBL) is extremely useful for many fly-tying applications.
These patterns, especially the foam-based frog pattern, benefit from superglue to prevent twisting on the hook shank. This glue is usually relatively expensive
and prone to clog or harden. I use the so-called single-use tubes, which come five tubes to a package at many dollar stores. If you carefully plug up the nozzle with a pushpin after each use, one of these little tubes will last for a number of tying sessions, making at least a dozen flies per tube at two cents per fly. Very durable eyes can be made with squeeze bottles of Scribbles — about a buck and a half a bottle at a Jo-Ann or Michaels.
The Crafty FrogBouncer
This fly floats, making a kicking wake in the water. Because the hook point is out of the water due to the weighted keel, the fly can be retrieved across the tops of lily pads or other surface vegetation without snagging. A Loop Knot should be used to ensure that the frog lands hook-point up if you are fishing a stiff leader. It is quite remarkable to see
this frog land unerringly hook-point up, and bass will make exciting blow-ups as it is skipped over weeds and lily pads.
The foam is cut in a tadpole shape, with a head about the diameter of a quarter, and with a tail about 1.5 inches long that is slit so it can straddle the hook bend and be folded back to splay the legs for froglike action. When binding foam to the hook shank, for best floatation, don’t compress the foam everywhere, but bind in segments: torque down hard at one spot, then advance the thread around the shank a few tenths of an inch, then bind down hard again and repeat along the shank.
Inexpensive hematite beads can be found at some craft stores, but the least expensive source for metal beads is online at http://www.allseason.com. Other examples of these Bead-Belly Bouncer flies were featured in the September/October 2004 issue of California Fly Fisher and are described in detail in my Web site, Bouncerflies.com.
Materials
Hook: TMC 8089, size 4 or 6, or Gamakatsu B10S (stinger), size 1
Thread: Green or yellow 3/0, or Big Fly, or Uni-Stretch
Belly: Yellow or glitter white two-millimeter craft foam
“Spine” and head: Green or chartreuse two-millimeter craft foam
Body and legs: Green or chartreuse craft fur, or white, colored with a Sharpie
Bouncer keel: Four-millimeter brass or hematite beads, 25-to-40-pound-test monofilament
Other: Superglue, Scribbles or a Sharpie, or glue-on eyes, floatant
Tying Instructions
Step 1. Mount the hook in the vise with the hook point down. Cover the shank with thread wraps and superglue. Starting at the beginning of the bend, bind on a two-and-one-half-inch piece of heavy mono along the shank opposite the hook point so that about an inch and a half extends beyond the eye. Reinforce the wraps at the hook eye and apply superglue.
Step 2. Cut a piece of yellow or glitter white belly foam an inch long and three-eights of an inch wide, apply superglue to the hook shank, and bind the foam in segments along the top of the shank, covering the mono and ending up at the bend. Apply more superglue.
Step 3. Cut out a piece of green or chartreuse foam an inch wide and two and a half inches long. Trim to tadpole shape with a head about one inch by one inch and a tail about an inch and a half long by three-eighths of an inch wide. (Make a template for the tadpole shape.)
Step 4. Turn the fly hook-point up. Slit the tail of the tadpole-shaped foam and bind it along shank so a half inch of the tadpole tail sticks out beyond the start of the bend and about three-quarters of the head of the foam tadpole sticks out over the hook eye. The thread should end about an eighth on an inch behind the eye of the hook. Superglue and let dry.
Step 5. Carefully cut a piece of craft fur an inch and three-quarters long and three-eighths of an inch wide, measured on the “hide” side. Slit about three-quarters of an inch of the strip and crew-cut the fur that is forward of the slit to about half the length of the hook gap. Tie in the head of the fur strip just short of where the eye of the hook is. Superglue the tie-in wraps.
Step 6. Fold the head of the foam back over the front end of the fur strip and make three or four more wraps.
Step 7. Turn the hook point down. Push the rear of the fur strip out of the way. Advance the thread to the bend of the hook and load the mono keel with three four-millimeter brass beads (or four hematite or jade beads, which are lighter). Bend back the mono to form a shallow loop, cut it to length (where the thread is), ball the end of the mono with a lighter, tie it in, and superglue it.
Step 8. Turn the hook point up. Spread superglue on the foam body, lay the fur strip down with the “legs” straddling the bend, and tie it in at the bend with three wraps, then fold back the foam extensions (to splay the legs) and tie them in. Step 9. Tie off and superglue the wraps. Trim the legs and the edge of the body foam if it is too close to the hook point. Apply floatant to the body — not the legs. Draw eyes with a Sharpie or Scribbles or make foam glue-on eyes with a paper hole punch.
The Crafty ShrimpBouncer
This fly, which imitates a shrimp or crayfish, can bounce along the bottom with little fear of snagging due to the beaded keel, which keeps the hook point up. Because the beads are offset from the center of the fly, they can be much lighter
than the lead eyes commonly bound to the hook shank on other patterns to keep the hook point up. The craft-fur claws and the elastic feelers give a lot of action and help keep the fly upright, as well.
The Velcro back is very tough, so one end of the strip can simply be impaled on the hook to keep it secure without the need to bind it with thread. The Mylar knotting cord does double duty: in the cord form, it makes iridescent segmentation, and frayed, it becomes antennae and tail. PBL is used as an underbody to hold the keel mono in place; it also make good eyestalks, but here we use simple eyes. Feelers can be made from an inexpensive vinyl crafting cord called Stretch Magic or from Spandex material from a fly shop (or even from the Spandex recycled from an old pair of socks). The feelers look great banded in colors appropriate to the local crustaceans. Of course, if you find the banding too tedious, just buy some of the more expensive commercial stuff.
Materials
Hook: Gamakatsu SL12S, size 2, or Gamakatsu SL45, size 4
Thread: Olive or tan
Claws: Craft fur, tan or colored to match local crustaceans
Body: Velcro, three-quarter-inch (20millimeter) sew-on ribbon, beige or colored with a Sharpie
Eyes: Small dots of black Scribbles
Keel: 30-pound mono partly inside a section of PBL, plus one 3-millimeter and two 4-millimeter brass beads.
Antenna, tail and segmentation: Mylar knotting cord, frayed out at ends to make it similar to Krystal Flash
Feelers: Clear 0.5-millimeter StretchMagic or cream Sexi-floss, banded with a Sharpie.
Other: Superglue, black Scribbles, Sharpies, floatant (optional)
Tying Instructions
Step 1. Cut out a piece of furry Velcro, 8 by 20 millimeters. Taper one end to 4 millimeters. Color with Sharpies, clip the corners of the big end, and make a hole with a pushpin or bodkin in the center of the big end about 3 millimeters from the edge, where the fuzzy stuff starts. Insert the hook in the hole from the backing side and let the strip dangle in the bend of hook. Optional: coat the fuzz with floatant to make a more shiny, bubbly surface when the fly is underwater.
Step 2. Cut a 15-millimeter length of PBL and insert a 50-millimeter piece of the 30-pound mono.
Step 3. Mount the hook in the vise with the hook point down. Cover the hook shank with thread wraps, ending opposite the barb of hook. Tie in a length of Mylar knotting cord that projects an inch and a half beyond the bend of the hook, then fray the cord and glue the entire shank.
Step 4. To make a support for the back, cut an 8-millimeter length of mono and tie it in crosswise on top of the shank opposite the barb. Use crisscross wraps and superglue them.
Step 5. Advance the thread to just behind the eye of the hook and tie in the end of the mono and the end of the PBL. Lash the PBL (with the mono inside) to the shank in segments from the eye to the start of the bend. The mono should stick out about an inch and a quarter behind the bend of the hook.
Step 6. Take two StretchMagic filaments about four inches long that have been banded with a Sharpie and pull the pair under the shank and over the mono crosspiece, doubling them evenly on each side of the beginning of the hook bend. Tie in.
Step 7. Cut two 8-by-4-millimeter patches of craft fur, measured on the backing, reinforce the backing with glue, and tie in on each side of the hook behind the eye, then wrap a little beyond the start of the bend. Glue the wraps and trim the fur to about three-quarters of an inch.
Step 8. Tie in the end of a three-inch piece of knotting cord at the hook-point position on the shank. Glue well, advance thread to the eye of hook, then turn the hook point-up.
Step 9. Work the Velcro strip around the bend of the hook, pulling hard until the narrow end of the strip is just behind the eye of the hook.
Step 10. Make segments by winding the Mylar knotting cord over the Velcro back and the shank to the hook eye, then tie in the cord and the end of the Velcro, leaving three-eighths-inch of and inch of the cord projecting out over the hook eye. Invert hook to the point-down position.
Step 11. Sharply pull the end of the keel mono toward the eye of the hook, then load it with two 4-millimeter beads and a 3-millimeter bead. Cut the mono a few millimeters longer than the length needed to make shallow keel, ball the end with a lighter, and tie in. Fray the cord projecting over the eye and glue the keel tie-in.
