Carrot Nymph
This is an old-time Pacific Northwest fly. I found it in Enos Bradner’s book Northwest Angling, when I was in my teens. Bradner describes it as a “taker
on cutthroats and brook trout in small lakes, beaver ponds, or sloughs.” Bradner
gives no suggestion of what trout take it to be. He says only that “the ‘live’ action
of the hackle fibers as the fly is stripped through the water usually produces a strike.”
Fair enough.
That live action produces strikes from pan fish as well. The Carrot Nymph is likely the
first fly I every caught a bluegill on, and I’ve caught plenty on it since. On a heavily fished
little gravel-pit pond in the dust and sagebrush of eastern Washington State, a size 12
Carrot Nymph put me into a largemouth bass of at least three pound. The bass took it
quietly, panicked at the hook’s sting, and then towed me and my tiny boat around for
a minute or two before the hook came free. It must have seen hundreds of flies and
lures, perhaps thousands, before it fell for my unassuming little orange nymph. Under
conditions such as these, largemouth bass often become remarkably canny feeders,
especially, big largemouth bass.
And I’ve hooked other bass on the Carrot Nymph, but I think of it not as a bass fly
but as a pan-fish fly.
There is, of course, nothing magical about this particular mix of colors and materials.
Add wings, change the body to tan, add a tail and omit the gold tag — it will still catch
pan fish. It will catch them because they take it simply as something alive and edible,
not at all in the precise way a trout takes an imitation of a mayfly during a mayfly hatch.
So play with the Carrot Nymph if you wish, change, or use some other nymph or wet
fly. You can even tie it on a long-shank hook so that you can use that shank as a sort
of lever or handle to free the fly. But I’ll keep it pretty much as it was in Bradner’s day,
because it’s delectably plump with a touch of eye-catching sparkle, because it has
orange, which for some reason I think bluegills are especially fond of; and because, like
Bradner, I like the "live action"of its hackle.
But just because I keep a fly pattern pretty much as it was does not
mean I keep it exactly as it was. Like most fly tiers, I usually throw
a few personal twists into a standard fly pattern, and so it is with the Carrot. To flatten
the body and give it life I use bright synthetic dubbing in a budding-loop, in place of the
original wool year. I use a hackle that is slightly shorter than Bradner’s — he says it
should be “tied spider.” And if I’m in a hurry I skip the tag, though I usually include it.
Materials
Hooks: Heavy wire, regular shank to 1X long,
sizes 14 to 8. (The hook shown is a Gamakatsu F-15.)
Thread: Black 8/0 or 6/0 (orange looks good too).
Tag: Fine flat gold tinsel.
Body: Bright, orange synthetic dubbing (the original
pattern calls for wool yarn.)
Hackle: A gray or brown partridge flank feather (I prefer
the gray).
Originally published July 31, 2000 on Fly Anglers Online by Skip Morris.