Bead Head Flies

By Richard Zieger, Iowa

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I have used some bead head flies but I tied several more up this year to use. I did this so that I could get them down in the water column faster. The fish have been hitting about two to three feet deeper than they did last year. Sunday evening was my first chance to get out over the weekend. Bringing kids home from college wrecks havoc with wetting a line. Wind was blowing about 40 mph but I had the time to go. That is always the best time to go fishing. There was no way that I would be casting into the wind. My casting is not that great and into a stiff wind it is even worse. Went to the side of the pond where the wind was behind me and tried to cast. Still did not work because of the back cast falling on the ground. Time to change so I put a strike indicator on and flipped it out a few feet and let the wind carry it out into the pond. When I got out about thirty feet I stated to retrieve the fly slowly. On my second cast I had a strike and brought in a nice eight inch bluegill. Cast into the same general area and nothing happened. Moved about 10 feet and did the same thing. This time I had a ten inch crappie. Turned out that if I kept moving around the pond I would catch a fish here and there but never more than one at a place. This may be due to the fact that the water was up six inches and fairly turbid from the rains we have been getting. My trouble came when I was removing the fly from the fish. They were taking it fairly deep. When I used the forceps to get a hold of it and remove it I was tearing up the flies. It turns out that I was not getting enough thread behind the bead and it could move. This let it cut the thread and you can guess the rest. I used 22 flies while I was out at the pond. All of them had started to come apart. I thought that I might be able to fix them if I did not damage them to badly. I was starting to fix the first fly when I had a brain storm. (Yeah, I know it is dangerous). I took a little strip of foam and shoved it into the hole in the bead around the shank. In the dim dark recesses of my mind, I remember hearing about something like this. It takes a storm to loosen things in my head to use them. After the foam was shoved in the bead did not move as much and it was easier to wrap the thread around the hook. I was able to fix all the flies and I am going to try a few of them when I go out over my lunch hour tomorrow. This is one time that I should not be cheap with thread. I know that none of the rest of the folks who tie flies ever do anything like this. My problem is that I had me as a teacher. A fool on both sides of the equation, as I am reminded at various times. Hope you can get out on the water. ~ Rick ziegeria@grm.net

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