Flymen Blog
The Body Tubing Baitfish Is a Great All-around Baitfish Pattern
This fly can be sized up to chase peacock bass in the Amazon, or sized down to target small-stream smallmouth — any fish that eats baitfish will eat this fly!
The extended portion of the Body Tubing Baitfish has 2 main benefits for fly performance:
- Keeping the flash well behind the hook point makes it impossible for the flash to "foul" around the hook like is so common with flash tails.
- The Body Tubing acts as a rudder, giving the fly great movement in cross-current situations.
Fly Recipe
- Hook: Kona Big Game Hunter hook, size 2/0
- Tail: Flashabou
- Tail Extender: Fish-Skull Body Tubing
- Underbody: UV Polar Chenille
- Body: Craft Fur
- Underwing: Bucktail
- Wing: Craft Fur & Ripple Ice Fiber
- Eyes: Surface Seducer Dragon Eyes
- Head Sealer: UV Resin
3 years ago, we visited a remote mountain location in Northern Sweden for the first time to target pike on the fly.
The plan was to make a really cool pike film with meter-long fish slamming mice and lemming patterns on the surface. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the water was already too warm by that time and most of the fish had moved out of the shallow coves.
So, fast forward and we decided to try again later on during the first week of the open season. During spring I had developed a pattern based on the new Surface Seducer Howitzer baitfish popper heads that was more of a subsurface pattern with 2 hooks, a Fish-Skull Articulated Shank, and a big Dragon Tail at the end. I wanted a pattern that would work well both when fished roly poly as well as with strong pulls.
The helicopter brought us out the Tjuonajokk fishing camp, located way above the Arctic Circle.
The plan this time was to drive with the river boats through the rapids upstream to a big cove were the pike had spawned a few weeks before and were still hanging around waiting for whitefish and grayling to come in and feed in these shallow areas.
We took turns poling the boat forward and with only one of us fishing at a time so our cameraman could catch every single take in slow motion. How did it turn out? See for yourself.
The Devo Diver Is a "Best of Both Worlds" Sculpin Fly.
Most sculpin flies that we see are designed to do one thing — get deep in the water column.
While these flies certainly are useful in many fishing situations, a lot of flies tied in this style of fly do not have much swimming action. The Devo Diver, with its multiple articulation points of the Articulated Fish-Spine, is a fly that will get deep but also have lifelike movement in the water.
Learn to tie this next-generation stonefly.
Being known as a pretty major streamer lover, I often get lumped into the crowd that only ties big, gnarly streamers. But I'm also a fly fishing guide, and not everyone enjoys throwing streamers on 8-weight rods with sinking line all day, so nymphing is a huge part of my guiding.
The Wiggle Stone is my standard when nymphing deep in a stream where stoneflies live. As with any Stonefly pattern, the most important question is "How quick does it get to the bottom" and with the Nymph-Head Evolution Stonefly tungsten beadhead, this pattern goes straight to the bottom and into the strike zone.
Fly Recipe
- Hook: Kona Nymph Streamer 2XL (NS2), size #6
- Antennae: Sili-Legs
- Bead Head: Nymph-Head Evolution Stonefly tungsten beadhead, brown, size large
- Underbody: .025 Lead Wire
- Tail: Sili-Legs
- Ribbing: Mono Thread
- Case: U.V. Chewee Skin
- Wax: Loon High Tack Swax
- Body: Wiggle Dubbing (in a dubbing loop)
Learn to Tie This Next-Generation Squid Fly Pattern
Giovanni mostly targets dorado with his Squid fly pattern, but says that most small- to medium-size pelagic fish are going to gravitate toward this fly. He recommends fishing it on an intermediate line.
I discovered this fly pattern on the Flymen Fishing Co. Instagram feed while looking to see what fly tyers all over the world have done to use Flymen fly tying materials in creative ways. One of the first (and coolest) flies I saw was Giovanni De Pace's (@giannidepace) Squid. This is a slightly modified Flymen version of Giovanni's Squid, I think you'll like it!
Fly Recipe
- Hook: Kona Xtra Strong Stinger (XSS) 1/0
- Laser Dub (to help spread the materials)
- Underbody: Senyo's Aqua Veil Chenille
- Body: Ostrich Herl
- Body: Fish-Skull Faux Bucktail
- Body: Polar Flash
- Tentacles: Loco Legs
- Body: Rhea Feathers
- Tentacles: Saddle Hackle
- Head: Fish-Skull Fish-Mask, #7
- Eyes: Surface Seducer Dragon Eyes, 7 mm
- Loon Thick
- Loon Phosphorescent Powder
- Mantle: Fish-Skull Chocklett's Body Tubing, 1/4"
- Fins: X-Select Marabou