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 I really don't think that there's anything too special about my tie of this fly but here's the pattern: Hook: Any streamer hook (or anything kind of like a streamer hook) Thread: Whatever Tail: Marabou and a few strands of crystal flash (I use 4) Body: Mohair Head: Thread Weight the forward part of the hook with lead wire. I believe in getting this fly down there. I personally weight the hook shank down a lot. This is for two reasons. First, I am lazy about switching to sinking lines or sinking tips and I don't like casting them all that much. The result is a jerky little jig that I think makes the fly look like food (I think) when you retrieve it. Second, I HATE using split shot! It's a pain in the butt to cast, ruins you leaders where you pinch them on, and is inelegent and unbecoming of the sport. Alright, that last part is a little harsh. There isn't much that I wouldn't pinch onto my leader if I thought it would catch fish, but still I carry NO splitshot with me ever. I have a buddy who has been swearing by leeches since I met him. He is a bonafide streamer freak. As it turns out, I didn't tie this pattern anything like he described but I had high hopes for it. So I got out, tied it on and caught nothing with it five or six times and left them to rot away in my fly box. That is until one day with my cousin on the Truckee right in the middle of town. We waded our way downstream toward a hole that he said never misses. Sure enough, he started getting bumped and eventually hooked up on about a #16 black hair's ear. Hmm. So, I tied that on and did about as well. Then my cell phone rang. So, I'm standing there about knee-deep on the edge of a much deeper run with my black hair's ear skimming the surface at the end of about 12 feet of line... talking on my cell phone. Suddenly it dawned on my that my fly was getting strikes right on the surface. Hmm again... Then it came to me. Try the leech. It probably should've come to me to try the chernobyl but oh well. By now, my cousin was standing right next to me so I went into great fanfare as to how I would proceed to dazzle him with the effectiveness of the mystic fly that I'd tied for just such conditions. Basically, I was spouting off. So, I pulled my leader past the nail knot and threw the leech into the current while I planned to pull enough line off of the reel to cast. BAM!! The instant the thing hit the water, a sixteen inch rainbow NAILED it! That's pretty much how it went until we left. It was a joke. We'd throw the mohair leech (black) into the current and let a pant-load of line drift downstream until the line pulled tight. If it made it that far, we'd just strip it in straight upstream. More often than not something would clobber it on the way in. That was it--not so much as a glimmer of skill or finesse. Since then, I have become a big believer in "the leech" as we know it and fish it whenever possible. So, tie some up and tie them on. It might not work all the time but when it does, hold on... You can also tie it with a bead or a cone and in any color you want. Black seems to work best for me. |
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