Compliance with California’s stay-at-home orders gave me the opportunity to catch up on chores around the house, one of which was to organize my flies so that I would be ready for bass season. I have a sizeable collection in fly boxes, closets, display cases, and in various stages on my fly-tying desk, all accumulated over many years. Spread out across the dining room table, they couldn’t help but bring back memories…
Things Past
I started out as a youngster carving wooden crankbaits that cost nearly a dollar at the hardware store at a time when I got 25 to 50 cents for mowing a lawn. However, my first efforts at fly tying came in the Philippines during the Vietnam conflict. A rumor circulated around Clark Air Base that there was a “monster” fish in an auxiliary water supply that doubled as a kid’s fishing pond. “Something was seen eating ducklings,” it was said. For some, diversion was to be found in the notorious bars in Angeles City, but I decided to put together a fly-fishing outfit and tie a fly that would fool the monster. I found an early Heddon Pal fiberglass rod, a level enamel line, had my dad mail my Pflueger 1495-1/2 Medalist (7,800 miles), and made a vise out of a surgical hemostat. Aerodynamically crude by today’s standards, the fly line forced me to learn the double haul to generate enough line speed to cast a large fly. Hooks came from the base exchange sporting-goods annex. I borrowed dark, white, and in-between shades and lengths of hair from my neighbor’s German shepherd guard dog and hackle feathers and schlappen from his fighting cocks. I used black silk suture material. Thread and tinsel came from my Filipino tailor.
A streamer evolved gradually from these materials. I was winging it. My efforts were critiqued in morning coffee breaks and finally approved by hospital colleagues who, like me, were fishermen. USAF Hospital Clark received 65 percent of all war casualties. They arrived in medevac C-141 transports at our flight-line tarmac E.R. and triage point, direct from casualty collection points In Country across the South China Sea to the west. A break during the infamous A Shau Valley campaign sent me to the pond with the “monster.” I returned hooked even more on fly fishing and fly tying. Somehow, blessed with beginners luck, I landed the half-eel, half saber-toothed catfish that gave credence to the rumor. Native children jumped up and down, excitedly yelling dalaga, dalaga, which meant “devil fish,” over the eardrum-splitting din of screaming F-4 Phantoms turning upwind on their final approach.
One colleague used four bottles of black-market Johnny Walker Black scotch to trade his way to Kashmir and trout fishing and get his head back on straight. I and several others fished off Corregidor, an adventure in its own right. Many of us living in the blazing summer heat of Southeast Asia’s dry seasons fantasized about the Sierra, snow, backpacking, and fishing of any type as part of dealing with what was going on. Wounded Warrior fly-fishing programs know outdoor adventure is a proven healing tool far better than drugs or alcohol.
After discharge and settling in the East Bay, I was steered toward André Puyan’s Creative Sports shop and took fly-tying classes in the original Pacheco store, then the Walnut Creek and Oak Park Circle stores. Andy was known for his trout flies, but he also was a talented fly-rod bass fisherman and an artist when working with animal hair. I also discovered three master hair-bug tyers within the small Livermore Fly Fishermen club, the ancestor of the Tri-Valley Fly Fishers: Russ Kruger, a fishing partner of Jack Horner, whose Horner’s Deer Hair pattern is thought to have evolved into the Humpy) Carroll Kennedy, a bass-bug-slinging West Texas expatriate; and Dr. Don Ainsworth, who crafted his own bugs for fly-rod fishing for bass on the lower Colorado when stationed near Yuma.
Bass bugs became an obsession. I carved and tied bugs and poppers, was given bugs, traded bugs, and inherited bugs over the years, including historic poppers from Lucky Lloyd Eiseman at Clear Lake that came from Andy and contemporary articulated spun-hair divers from Steve Potter. More poppers came from Leo Gutiérrez, miscellaneous creations from Dan LeCount, Andy Burk, Jimmy Nix, unnamed tyers at shows, Mouse Rats from Jack Johnson, and poppers from Mexico partner Dave Draheim, who is similarly obsessed.
Sliders
Back at the dining room table, I snapped out of my reverie and began wondering what to do with the hundreds of bass bugs that had sent me daydreaming about all those years in the past. My wife gave me one day. I have favorite flies, but obsession makes me carry many more, “ just in case.” Some are so treasured that I rarely fish them. One is a hard-bodied frog popping bug given to me by legendary Texas fly-rod guru Jimmy Nix. When I really need a go-to fly, it gets tied on, but with 20-pound-test leader material.
After a few glasses of wine while admiring all those creations, I decided to arrange them by starting with what has worked best for me and for my methodical style of fishing, a style that has evolved over the years: hard-bodied sliders and divers, hair-bodied divers, and swimming hair frogs.
My favorite bass fly is the light chartreuse Gaines Sneaky Pete slider, a design created and named by Russell Garlick in 1947, just prior to founding the Gaines Company, which still sells them. The Sneaky Petes that I fish have evolved from one that was handed from a generous fishing partner’s float tube to mine on a sizeable foothill pond east of Oakdale. He was catching bass, and I wasn’t.
I tied it on, dialed in a retrieve, and started getting exciting, explosive takes. The fly cast easily, was quite weedless, and more accurate than my cup-faced popper — a great advantage when scaling down rod and line weight and casting to pockets. Size 8 and size 10 sliders can be cast well with a 5-weight or 6-weight rod for bass, panfish, and even trout. A larger slider casts like a dream with 7-weight and 8-weight rods and even more effortlessly when using a specialty bass fly rod or saltwater rod with larger stripping guides and rings and a stiffer butt section with a fighting butt for more lifting and head-turning power. Add an aggressive weight-forward floating line that will load your rod effortlessly at short, midrange, and longer distances, and you have a bug-casting machine. (See “Up-Lining Fly Rods,” California Fly Fisher, May/ June 2016). A bass on a rod appropriate for its size, caught using a floating bug, will make you think twice about where you want to be fishing on a crowded opening day of trout season next year.
Like a rifle bullet, a slider’s body tapers from narrow at the hook eye, widening toward the rear. Variations range from a straight line from hook eye to the widest point to more curved, concave, or convex shapes. A bulbous profile pushes water better. A narrow and longer bug yields more side-to-side movement when twitched. For these latter patterns, I use reversed pencil popper bodies and 4X-long or 5X-long hooks.
Sliders can be fished and animated in many ways. It’s all about the mood of the fish on a given day. Often, it is not the color or fly profile, but a subtle variation in retrieve technique that makes the difference in whether a fish will take the bug or not. Recently, I fished a private lake known for top-water action. I took a few fish, but watched in frustration as bass approached my bug, moved up to investigate, and then settled back down in the water column, like trout rejecting a fly. Those that took the fly did so when I switched to a slowed-down, varied twitch-and-pause after landing, then let the fly sit and wait a bit before starting my retrieve.

When cast to a target and allowed to sit, a slider’s tails, whether hackle material, synthetics, or a combination of synthetics and rubber or silicone leg material, will settle in the water. Retrieved slowly, they rise and ride fairly flat. Stripped in longer increments, whether with rod tip action or a hand-pull retrieve, sliders dive a bit, because of water pressure on the dorsal side, and make a disturbance. If you want more depth, make a longer strip. Use a Loop Knot, and you will get side-to-side action, too, more with a longer loop. (But not as much as with Charlie Bisharat’s Pole Dancer or similar patterns with a thin plastic cowling up front that, when worked properly, imparts a side-to-side “walking the dog” action that drives fish nuts and brings them up from the depths.) Practice giving your fly a sense of life. It’s possible to develop a twitch action imparted by the rod tip that is more than meets the eye at a distance. If you watch closely and have good vision, you also may see your f ly land off-keel and slowly flip back upright. It’s another enticing movement.
The popper-dropper technique is particularly effective with sliders, which cast well with a smaller trailer fly, often a minnow imitation, attached to a length of tippet material tied to the hook bend. A trailer can dampen primary fly action somewhat, but that doesn’t seem to be a factor with sliders. You can wait for your small minnow imitation to sink, or you can start your retrieve early. Experiment. Often a trailer as short as 18 inches in length does the trick. Work out from there and consider using your bug as an attractor/indicator for Float-N-Fly bass fishing with a Balance Minnow.
Sliders are commercially available without legs, but I feel that legs are a major trigger and give another dimension to lifelike animation. The classic chartreuseand-black Sneaky Pete has unique, moderately stiff, light-gray flat leg material that has a rectangular cross section, as opposed to round or square. This behaves differently than silicone Sili Leg material, which pulls back quickly on the retrieve and lies parallel to the body, gradually hanging straight down and bouncing in wave action when stopped. Stiffer Sneaky Pete legs fold back slowly when pulled, then slowly move forward when the bug slows into a resting position, perhaps like frog legs on the real thing. Four strands of identical rectangular material extend rearward as part of the ventral tail behind a classic black popper hackle and a whitish synthetic dorsal puff. I’ve experimented with many variations in color, body design, and leg material, but I’ve narrowed my color choices to the original, most popular, pale chartreuse body with black hackle, and the all-black model, ranging in size from 4 to 8. Still, obsessiveness makes me include a few in yellow, yellow and fire-tiger orange, and all pearl with a sparkle underbelly for fishing threadfin shad bait concentrations and boils. If you don’t tie and wish to buy this bug, look for the original Gaines product. Knockoffs often have narrower hook gapes and inferior hooks.
Divers
Diver-type bugs add a vertical dimension to your retrieve. Larry Dahlberg’s Dahlberg Diver is the prototype of this class of fly. Its tapered, bullet-shaped head is made of trimmed, tightly spun deer hair. Toward the rear of the body, the hair flairs into a slanted collar that pushes water and helps the diver dive. Dahlberg Divers land softly, but can be cast to land hard, and you can elicit a reaction strike by shortening the leader and throwing a firm snubbed cast. Longer leaders allow the bug to float down in to a soft landing. If you are lucky, you may see a hungry bass leap explosively to take a fluttering bug in the air.
When stripped using longer pulls, divers dig deeper below the surface, disturb water, and make noise that will produce strikes that won’t come with a surface bug. Start your attempt at enticing fish using surface animation and finish with a subsurface, water-disturbing retrieve. Depending on fly buoyancy, the diver will rise in the water column when your retrieve is slowed — another trigger. Divers can be fabricated with varying degrees of dive in their nose configuration, but shank proximity to the narrow head limits how much dive can be built in. I rarely see a reason to use an intermediate line when fishing bass bugs, but for divers it can be a tool to gain depth. Even better, fish divers on an integrated shooting sink-tip line (I like a sink rate of 4-1/2 to 7 inches per second). One of the best flies for this approach is a slope-faced Crease Fly, because of its buoyancy, flash, and innate wobble.
As with the Gaines Sneaky Pete and the Dahlberg Diver, a lot of great top-water bass bugs are associated with their designers, which means that if you’re looking for effective patterns, seek out the tyers who have gained fame for their bass flies. Steve Potter is a master tyer who creates large articulated divers using bold colors, flash, and a variety of animal hair. Videos are available on YouTube, and you can often find him tying at fly-fishing shows. I’ve talked him out of a few flies. They are in my display cases. My cruder versions are the ones I fish.
Charlie Bisharat, another legendary fly designer, came up with the Pole Dancer, which allows a fly angler to walk the dog on the retrieve, as with the old Zara Spook plug. Bisharat’s Pole Dancers “walk” best in medium and large sizes. They need a heavy rod, 8-weight and beyond, and heavy lines to be cast effectively, and they should be fished on strong, stiff tippets to turn over and protect these expensive, big-fish flies. Bisharat also created the Bubblicious: instead of a f lared hair collar, he attaches a thin plastic collar pierced with bubble holes, a feature that increases surface disturbance and noise.
Hair Frogs
Dave Whitlock is a master of deerhair bugs, an artist who is credited with the Swimming Frog, a slider of sorts that can be pulled under, as well. It’s a proven classic, casts well, has a soft landing, can be animated nicely, works its way through vegetative cover on top, and is often tied with monofilament weed guards. Although I remove the weed guard to enhance hooking ability, it still moves well through cover without fouling . . . great for pocket fishing.
Why have Sneaky Petes and other classic sliders, divers, and hair frogs been such good flies? They are fly designs that allow for a variety of color choices, presentation styles, retrieves, rod and line choices, and leader length. Their versatility lets the stillwater angler meet and match any situation where bass may be tempted to feed on the surface — and they provoke strikes that nearly stop your heart.