I spent Friday afternoon fishing a new pond with my father in law. He had found it behind the mall here when his wife was tanning and decided to give it a shot. His first trip there he caught 11 LM’s that were in the 2 to 3lb range. I didn’t beleive him so I asked him to show me. Friday produced similar results for him including 4 in a row and one 5 to 6lber that got off. I put a measly three fish to his 15 or 20 in about 2 hours of fishing. Two of mine were sunfish (that were personal best sunfish for me which was exciting) and one was a decent 2 lb LM. I caught both sunfish on a Halloween bugger (first fly I tied this season!) and the bass came on a blue gill imitation-clouser style. My father in law was fishing with a black and chart. rubber (or is it plastic) worm. He was absolutley killing them. I tried similar colors in clousers and buggers but they just weren’t going for it. What a disappointing day for me! Plus I’m trying to convert him to the celestial-style of fishing (aka fly fishing) and this day did not help.
My question is this: Have any of you ever seen or tied a fly that matches a rubber worm? I’m especially concerned about size here. Even my 1/0 flies aren’t as long as those worms. I think that size it what really made the difference here, b/c I had the colors right on. Thanks for your help!!
Many times a long zonker strip of rabbit fur attached to the hook looks a lot like a plastic (rubber?) worm. Also chenille or long saddle hackle feathers. The real problem may be depth, or lack of it with a fly. I seldom fish anything but floating line in a pond and even weighted with a long leader the fly many times won’t get down as deep as spinning or bait casting equipment.
Joe
The eyes are plastic christmas tree garland, but you can subtitute metal bead eyes if you want. I never weight my HHWs; preferring the slow sinking effect. If I was going to weight them, I would use a metal beadhead slid down the tippet, if I wanted them to be nose heavy. Otherwise, I would wrap some wire on the hook shank.
I have made them as long as 8 inches or so on a 2/0 hook. Just depends on how long the saddle feathers are. You can also add a mono weedguard if you will be doing a lot of lily pad fishing. The HHW is so light that you can just drop it softly on top of the lily pads (with a weedguard of course) and then slowly drag it off the pads and let it slip into the water. Works for me.
Most effective colors: black, red, brown and purple (the best).
Hope this helps in ypur quest for the “perfect” worm fly.
Richard, that is perfect! I must have just overlooked it when I was searching yesterday. I’ve had another thought too. The worm my father in law was fishing had a black body and chartruese tail. I’m trying to think of a way to add another color onto the end of the tail. I suppose I could die it, but I don’t want to wait a week while it dyes. Any other ideas for a two-colored tail?
Not too long ago, I had a worm fisherman kick my butt and I was using flies that matched exactly what he was using. If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn?t have used worm flies that day, I would have stuck with small Clousers in baitfish and crayfish patterns, on a fast sink tip line. In fact, on subsequent outings, I have done much better.
A wise ole? warm water fly fisherman once told me that when a fish takes a fly, he is expecting shrimp cocktail, but ends up with something that tastes like the ash end of a cigar and will spit it out immediately in disgust. Let’s face it: Unlike flies, bass find rubber worms tasty and will frequently swim away with a worm in its mouth making the even the gentlest take detectable. You can make a cigar look like a fish, but the burnt end will still taste like an ashtray. You have to be alert, rubber worms are far more forgiving than fly rod worms.
My recommendation is to play to the strengths of a fly rod: land worm flies on the pads and glide them off and catch that fish that would spook with the splash of a lead weight, take advantage neutrally buoyant flies (you know, the flies that just sit there and drive a fish batty and will get pounced with a small twitch), use floating flies on sinking lines, etc. Every time I try to make a fly rod into something its not, I don?t enjoy it as much. If I am sharing a boat with a worm fisherman and he is having success, I am definately using a sink tip line.
If you want to add a chartruese tip to my Hard Hackle Worm, I suggest ou tie the saddle feather tips together and then tye n a tuft of chartruese poly yarn. Add a little liquid glue to cement the deal.
You could also try using one black saddle feather and one chartruese feather?
Not sure if this will work, but, in my bass tournament days, I use to use a product called “Spike-It” that was a liquid you dipped your worms, tubes and grubs in to change the color or add color on the ends. It came in several colors and chartruese was my favorite. I feel this will dye the feather tips for you and dries very quickly. It has been about 14 years since those days, but, I know they still make something very similiar to it.
Besides using different flies you may want to play with presentation a bit. Using a longer finer/ thinner leader would let your fly drop differently than a shorter thicker one. The longer thinner leader isn’t so much for invisibility as letting the fly drop at a faster and more verticle drop. A heavier shorter leader will cause a fly to swing torward the bottom more than drop.
Leaving some slack in the leader at the point the fly hits the water, like with a dry fly on a drift, would also give the fly a faster verticle drop instead of a swing.
Seeing as bass usually hit a rubber on the drop it may be interesting to play with this concept.
Decades ago the same pattern was profiled in a Sports Afield article under the name “Serpent Fly” (I was a teenager when I read it and I’m 52 now, so it was awhile ago!). I have used it ever since for pike, sm bass and the occasional walleye. It has taken my biggest fish of each of those species. Bright yellow has been my best colour and I’ll add a bit of flashabou on the tail for sparkle, especially for pike. All-black has also worked well, especially for bass. Variations tied with sparkle dubbing and marabou have also been killers…TIM
I thought about attaching some marabou to the end for some great action. I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes when I get to tying some (hopefully tonight)
As usual, great advice. Like many others, I’m a big fan of your “Bass Tidbits”. I expect that much of your lm bass observations and wisdom will be transferrable to sm bass. As I read your stuff, it really helped to confirm my “cast-and-strip” limited view of the world. Come May, I look forward to some fruitful experimentation. …TIM
I have to agree with Jack Ellis on this one. There is no fly which offers the appeal of a plastic worm. A worm’s action may be duplicated by a fly but the taste and the life-like texture just aren’t there. Ellis’ solution is to use flies when they work and then switch to small plastic worms, grubs and lizards when fishing slows down. He also recommends using a spinning rod with a plastic worm to locate fish and then switching to your fly rod. I’m sure many will disagree but it is something to think about. A plastic worm is going to outfish a fly in big, deep, heavily-fished lakes most of the time. 8T
Something that might work without having to dye anything … if you have some zonker strips in black and some in chartreuse you should be able to tie up a good worm imitation using the same procedure as an articulating leech. For the back portion of the fly it can be chatreuse (just a small piece) and the upper portion can be tied with a black piece of zonker strip.
I loved reading this because I remember an article by AJ McClane in the 60s about the systematic use of worm and fly to catch bass. The angler was advised to find the productive deep structure with a Texas rigged worm and follow this up casting a sinking fly line to the same place. It is not a purist’s approach though it seems to put one in good company.
