Jolly Roger -- take two

[pittendrigh]

I posted this once before, about a week ago. So you might wonder "why again?"

This fly deserves a second look. This is an amazingly effective fly or flure or lure, whatever you feel compelled to call it. There are not many artificials that attract more strikes than this guy. It continues to surprise me.

And I've learned a little more about making them. To work with plastic worm resin you have to apply heat. I started out working with a $30 pawn shop microwave. But microwaves are hard to control and they tend to supply uneven heat. I bought a thermostatically controlled "toaster oven" at the goodwill store a few days ago, for 15 bucks. It works like a charm. You set the temperature. Set the cooking time. Turn it on and walk away. 5 minutes later (when it's all cooled down) you have a dinner plate-sized circle of thin nylon-mesh reinforced, soft gooey and ultra-flexible semi-transparent plastic to work with.

Put spawn sack on a ceramic plate.
Pour on slightly colored plastic worm resin (Barlow's Tackle, Lakeland, Janns Netcraft or many others).
The resin comes in a quart bottle. Colors come in tiny eye-dropper like bottles. Root-beer, green and yellow are the most useful.
Cook the resin for 5 minutes at 460 degrees or so.

Let it cool. Snip out a minnow body shape.
Cut a split shot in two halves. Flatten each half with smooth face needle nose.
Snell a hook to a #12 swivel.
Thread the hook through the body of the minnow.
Wrap flat nylon around the front end of the body and the back end of the swivel LOOSELY.
Put a drop of thin CA glue on the thread wraps.

Use thin CA glue to fasten a flattened split shot to either side of the minnow body at the eye position.
Use thin CA glue to fasten an adhesive backed molded plastic eye to the flat surface of the flattened split shot.

Surround the head with thick UV glue (Clear-Cure-Goo, Loon, etc).
Kick the UV glue off with an ultra-violet flashlight.

Sew in a few flashy adornments (tail and pectorals, for instance).
Lock the tail in place with thin CA glue.
Lock the pectorals in place with water-based fabric cement (Tear Mender, etc).

Fish with confidence. This is a hot-as-a-pistol flure. Depending on the size of the split shot you use--to make the eye sockets with--you can vary the weight from next to nothing to too heavy to cast. It sinks like a stone. Has good action in the water. And the fish really do seem to like its semi-transparent look. The swivel is important because this fly will curl ripple and flutter in the water, and occasionally zoom off sharply left or right. Without the swivel you'd twist up the tippet. In Montana 'fly fishing only' is a concept that does not have any legal standing. There is no such thing here, at least not on public waters. I fish it with a fly rod because that's my way. You could--I suppose--make these heavy enough to throw with a spinning rod. But the ones I make are too light to cast with spinning equipment. If they aren't flies they're fly rod something-or-others. And they sure do catch fish.

[Byron haugh]

In a large size, it looks like it would work in the flats?

[pittendrigh]

On the flats? Good thought. Gosh I'd like to try. I haven't been down to the Bahamas in over 5 years now.
I tried fishing with long-large flies in Honolulu Bay two years back, and on the flat next to the Marine base on the other side of Oahu. I caught 3 fish over 8lbs in two days (fishing with Mike Hennesy). But not on the big flies for some reason. Those were the biggest bonefish I ever caught. But all still wanted shrimp-like flies tied on #4 stainless hooks. If I was going to use these over shallow water bonefish I'd make them barely heavy enough to sink (12" to the bottom?) and smaller than I would for brown trout. (Some) bonefish guides will suggest fishing big Mr Twister tails on gale-force days, when it's impossible to cast a fly rod. In those situations they'll motor out to deeper water and cruise around searching for a mud. Then they'll toss big'ol lures into the sand cloud. That does work (I've been told). But in clear shallow water on calmer days, smaller and shrimpy still seems to work best. What's your thought?

How'd that song go? .....Good golly miss molly. Sure like da flats.

=========== epilog =============
Extra-thin sheets of soft-gooey sheet material made in light tan brown, with a sprinkling of dark brown chips added onto the surface of the wet resin just prior to cooking, makes an incredibly realistic "back" for golden stonefly nymphs. If you make the stonefly body out of light yellow dubbing or open-cell mattress foam, the darker sheet material back makes a nicely two-tone nymph. Much like the natural.

In his copyright 1960 classic--Fishing the Nymph--Jim Quick rails against molded plastic flies. He claims they don't work:

"The plastic replicas of nymphs, either formed in
a mold or woven are in this class. To our eyes, they are perfection
itself, but from a consensus of trout results reports, at this
writing, the desirable keepers look upon this lure, under most
conditions, as if it were tinged with arsenic. The reader may get the
impression that the author, in asking that the fly fisherman or fly
tier observe and study the natural nymph, is a bit off his rocker when
he states that perfect lures are not too effective. It is true, and
why it is that way nobody knows."

But there were no molded realistic flies in those days. The fly bins at Abercrombie and Fitch in downtown Manhattan were as complete as any in those days. There were a few oddball molded minnows and insect-like creatures back then--latex molded onto a hook with opaquely-dark and over-saturated colors. But those early molded bugs weren't realistic at all and imitated nothing real. I remember those flies. They were more like Walt Disney cartoon caricatures of imaginary aquatic creatures than anything real.

The flies I've been making recently, for going on 5 or 6 years now, are not molded. But I do make them with molding materials. My worm resin Golden Stonefly nymphs and the Jolly Roger minnows are among the most productive flies I've ever fished with.