I suddenly thought about this yesterday when i was going to bed…
how do you know if the fly that you tied is going to swim the way you want them to swim? (baitfish for instance. Dark color up & light belly down)
is it the process of putting on the materials?.. wont they still spin underwater?
thanks!
Tie the fly to length of tippet material and drag the fly around in your kitchen sink.
Streamers can be designed to swim what ever side up you want, either by just the weight of the bend and point of the hook, added weight, a bouyant wing, or some combination
A fly like a Clouser Minnow has the weight tied on top of the shank and the buoyant wing tied underneath, this counteracts the weight of the hook point so the fly swims up-side down.
A bucktail or a streamer with hackle wings swims upright because the buoyant wing and the weigth of the hookpoint holds it that way
With experience you will be able to know how a fly will swim. How it behaves will be determine by the placement, buoyancy, and density of the materials, position and amount of added weight, as well as whether the materials absorb or repel water. With experience you will learn how to control these parameters to make a fly behave like you want - sink fast, slow, or be neutrally buoyant, dip headfirst like a jig, or tail first, wiggle fast or slow, track straight or jerk to the side, etc.
With each new pattern and variant you will learn a little more. I have learned just as much from the flies that didn’t work as expected as the ones that did.
The suggestion of testing in the sink is a good one. However I have found that for many patterns a body of water larger than a bathtub is needed to really see how a pattern will behave with different retrieves, on the sink, or on the rise for floating patterns fished on sinking lines.
If you test it in the tub, be sure to hold your tippet (at least 24 inches) near or at the water surface. I didn’t think about it at first and held it up in the air. Had impact on how the fly swam - much different angle than your normal retrieve.
You can make your fly swim upside-down by tying on a short piece of wire weight to the top of the hook shank, also. Or, bead-chain eyes work, too.
Without some kind of weight on the top of the hook shank, a fly will always swim hook-point-down, due to the weight of the hook’s curve and point. It acts like a keel.
If you are going to test your fly, be sure to do it in the bathtub, or the sink, and not your fish tank. My Oscars had holes in their lips for a while… They have almost forgiven me, after several months. Even now, when I put shrimp pellets in the tank for them, they examine them very closely, and with great suspicion, before they will gulp them.