What Are You Tying 2017 Edition

[toolman]

Wicked ties Doc, as always. Them fishies in big trouble next time you visit.

[SilverDoctor]

[keet]

Curious SD, for the above dry fly is the shell style necessay? Or does it catch more fishermen? Great tie as usual (must get boring reading all these compliments )

[SilverDoctor]

Curious SD, for the above dry fly is the shell style necessay? Or does it catch more fishermen? Great tie as usual (must get boring reading all these compliments )

 

Yep, I like the shell style for certain situations and so do the Trout. I tie my flies to reflect insects I see on the water. Try to intemperate those into a visual stye. I am constantly testing and refining styles to fool fish. Some fail miserably and get assigned to an x-acto knife to reclaim the hook, others do well, those I post.

[keet]

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Appreciate all the info and help

[Sparkplug]

As we're approaching fall, I'd like to get some thoughts from my fellow tiers about backswimmers and water boatmen.

 

Last season I did well on a boatman pattern in size 14, mottled rubber legs, body of gold/silver crystal chenille, back of tan foam (marked with black marker), and an amber glass bead head. Fished with a 2-3" rapid strip, as soon as it was plopped into the water on a floating line, it got hit hard.

 

I recently read about backswimmers, as the larger and less numerous cousins of the water boatmen, and how your odds are improved by fishing a tandem train of a backswimmer (in the size 10-12 range) in front, and water boatman trailing behind.

 

Anyone have some recommendations as to backswimmer pattern ideas? I understand that they swim on their backs (hence the name), so patterns should be tied such that the back runs like a keel.

 

Any thoughts as to whether backswimmers (or WB) are better tied as buoyant patterns, and fished on a sinking or sink-tip line, so as to give a bob upwards on the pauses in the retrieves?

 

Thanks

Sparkplug

[BadAndy]

My understanding is the backswimmers have a trapped air bubble on the underside, and they must periodically return to the surface to replenish. As such they travel in an almost sinusoidal pattern to surface and down.

 

You could mimick the downward travel path with a sinking line, not so sure how you could handle the bottom up presentation?

 

This idea has been on my to tackle list, but was saving it for winter and to try in early season lake fishing. I know Phil Rowley has both the BS and WB pattern, but haven't tried them yet...

 

Don't know if that helps much off at all, but I'll be following this...

 

Cheers!

[ppb]

I usually have a backswimmer as the first fly followed by a ultimate boatman pattern about 18" behind bringing up the rear. I find that the backswimmer sinks between strips then rises up during the stripping action. Most fish I've gotten into will attack it on the rise.

This has work well for me on the lakes.

[fishfreak]

I bought some size 18 hooks last week and surprisingly, they aren't too bad to work with.  I've been banging out tons of flies lately, but I thought I'd share a modified copper john that has been working well this fall on the Bow.  The sparkle flash for the tail instead of biots was taken from the Reece's Fusion nymph pattern, and is much quicker to tie on.  This was tied on a Umpqua Tiemco Nymph hook (TMC2488H), size 18, which is a nice strong hook for reeling in those 20+ inchers.  The red thread seems to work better than black, while the rubber legs give it some life.  The body is made with peacock black ice dub, and the head is a 3/32" beadhead.  This should also be a good pattern for the small mountain streams.  I'll test them out next summer. 

Let's call this guy the Fishfreak CJ:

[Sparkplug]

 

Further to the BS/WB question above, this season I fished a tandem rig, with a large (#10) backswimmer pattern up front, tied to run back-down through the water, and a #16 water boatman pattern (swimming back-up) on the dropper.  Both patterns had foam in them, to give relatively neutral buoyancy/very moderate sink.  The whole mess was fished on a floating line, with the rapid short pull retrieve started as soon as the flies hit the water.

Somewhat surprisingly, the results were about even, in terms of number of fish that took the backswimmer versus the water boatman.  There seemed to be far more WB in the water than backswimmers, but given that the hookup results were about even, I'm glad I fished the tandem rig.