Early Planning For Success
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UNI Products Fly Tiers Corner
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August 2024
By Craig Riendeau
I know a lot of fly tyers who before a fishing trip try to rattle off a few flies just to fill the box. Often time they use whatever material just happens to be on the bench at the time. There is absolutely no thought put into what material they are using or why. Then after the trip, I hear about the excuses of why they didn’t catch many or any fish and of how the biggest one, of course, got away.
There’s always I didn’t have the size fly I needed, or the color was wrong. Sometimes it’s, I couldn’t get the fly deep enough or the opposite, it kept hanging up on the bottom. Then there’s the hook was too small, and it pulled out, or even worse, the light wire hook bent open under pressure.
I’ve been told that I don’t tie flies, but rather, I engineer them. I put thought into everything I tie. Nothing is ever just lashed on a hook to create bulk. No material is put onto the hook without a reason for it being there. Pretty is a bonus, functional is the purpose.
Let’s take a typical bass streamer for an example. It starts with the type of baitfish am I trying to imitate. Well, where am I going to fish and what is the predominate baitfish at this time of year? Let’s say I’ll be on a reservoir where threadfin shad are prevalent, and most are 3 to 4 inches in length.
Having a plan and the right materials assembled is a key for successful fly tying. Photo by Craig Riendeau.
OK, what am I trying to catch? I’ll be pursuing bass, largemouth and some spots. These fish tend to hang around cover near deeper water. They could be chasing bait and busting on the surface, but most of the time they’ll be deeper below light penetration. They’re strong fish with boney mouths. This tells me that I’d want a strong hook that won’t bend out when you have to lean on a fish to get them out of cover. If I was fishing for crappie, I may lean towards a light wire hook in that cover because I could bend the hook out of snags better. With their soft mouths, you really can’t lean on a crappie and expect to land many. This all tells me that I’d want a hook with a shank that is 1/3 to 1/2 the total length of the fly to keep from tail fowling. I’d also want a fairly strong wired hook.
Then, how fast do I want the fly to sink? Do I want a jigging action or a straight-line strip? This will ask the question; do I use an inverted jig hook with dumbbell eyes to produce an up and down jigging action or do I wrap wire around the shank before tying the fly to keep a straight-line pull yet get the fly deeper? Or will I be using sinking line, and extra weight may not be necessary? While you’re at it, you might ask yourself are you going to need a weed guard to get through the cover without hanging up every other cast? All this and we haven’t even gotten to the body of the fly.
Will you be fishing the pattern slowly? A softer body material may be better because it will pulsate in the water giving fish attracting wiggles to the fly. Are you fishing the fly quickly? Then a stiffer material would keep the baitfish profile and not slim down to a pencil when stripped. Also, making a softer material fly that has any length to it would require some sort of support or articulation to keep it from tail fouling all the time.
You also have to consider the density property of the material. Does it float, sink or remain neutrally buoyant? Does it shed or hold water? Does it expand in size and hold a shape when wet or does it mat down? Materials like bucktail change shape little when exposed to water. This is probably one of the most important choices when tying a fly. Decide what you want the fly to do, then look at which materials will help rather than hinder in accomplishing that.
Then there’s flash. Do you use a little, a lot or none at all? Well then, how clear is the water you are fishing? Flash can help attract fish from a distance, but sometimes you have to balance that against the clarity of the water and even with the amount of sunlight. For me, the clearer the water, the less flash. The exception is if I’m going to fish the fly very quickly, then I may add more flash in clear water. In low light situation adding flash can increase your odds of a strike.
Lastly you have got color. Do you try and match the hatch using baitfish colors, such as white with some olive, tan or gray. Or do you try to stand out from the thousands of real baitfish and use an attractor color like chartreuse, black or pink? My theory is the more bait in the water, the more I want my fly to stand out from the crowd, with at least an accent color somewhere on it. Throw 20 nickels and one penny on the floor, which one do you see first?
There’s a lot of thought that goes into tying an effective fly pattern. Sure, you can just randomly tie stuff onto the hook and hope to get lucky or you can think about it awhile and image just what it is that you want the fly to do before you start. Then consider what materials or combination of that will make the fly pattern behave the way you see it in your mind.
