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Blake’s crawfish fly

January 5, 2022
Coldwater, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Freshwater, Gear Review, Saltwater, Warmwater
2 Comments

I mentioned in a previous post that I’d try to get Blake to send me a SBS of the crawfish pattern that I’ve had success with and wouldn’t you know the man came through. See his instructions below if you want to tie up a really effective crawfish fly that various species of bass and sunfish love:

This fly is a variant of the Crayfish X tied by Dron Lee. There wasn’t an SBS on his site and I liked how it looked so I tied it how I assumed it was tied. You can find more patterns by Mr. Lee here: https://flytyingnation.com/

Materials:

  • Eagle Claw 410 Jig size 2
  • Lead Dumbbell Eyes sized to match hook and sink rate
  • Spanflex
  • Sow Bug Dubbing
  • Fox Squirrel Zonkers
  • Mono Eyes
  • Furry Foam

Tie dumbbell eyes in at the front of the hook right at the bend. This helps to ensure that the fly falls hook point up and will allow space to whip finish later in the process.

Tie in the antennae and wrap to a point around the bend.

Make a small ball of dubbing right behind the antennae. This is to help splay out the claws and eyes.

Cut two zonker strips to length. These were 1” of hide that ended up being 1.5” in total length. Wrap them all the way up to the dubbing ball.

Pull each zonker strip out and hit the base with some UV resin (or super glue). Probably not a necessary step but I think it reduces fouling and also makes the claws spread out when the fly is sitting on the bottom.

Tie in some mono eyes on either side of the hook. I like to tie them so that they lay right above the claws to further reduce fouling. I make my own by heating up some 50 pound mono and then dipping it in some powder paint. I will then run it through the lighter again to smooth out the powder if needed. The final step is to use a cauterizing tool to bend them how you want them. You don’t have to actually touch the mono with the tool. Just get it close and the mono will bend towards the heat. Takes some practice to not melt other materials but makes setting the eyes in position pretty easy.

Dub the body to the hook point, tie in a leg on either side, then finish the area off by using figure 8 wraps to set the legs in a position you like. I prefer to add some dubbing before tying in the legs so that I’m not trying to build bulk in the area while having to deal with the legs. Build the bulk, tie in the legs, cover the tie-in.

Bring thread to the hook eye and dub back to the hook point.

Cut a piece of furry foam that is the size of the hook gap, cut a point on one end, and put it on the hook.

Place the hook back into the vise and tie the foam in somewhere near the point. Dub the tie in point to show some segmentation in the body, then dub your way to a point in the middle between the hook eye and first body segment. Repeat the process to right behind the hook eye.

Finish dubbing the final tie-in and whip finish between the hook eye and the furry foam. Trim the foam to form the tail.

I like to brush out the bottom of the fly with a dubbing brush.

Finished Fly

Arkansas Smallmouth Bass – Day 1

August 13, 2019
Adventure, Bucket List, Camping, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing, Warmwater
1 Comment

With the itch to take a trip and a weekend set aside, Blake and I set out for Arkansas after work one Thursday earlier this month.  We drove 7 hours to a campground in the Ouachita National Forest and set up our hammocks as fast as we could to maximize the time we’d have to sleep.  Just like everywhere else in the South, western Arkansas is hot in the summer, even at midnight.  Despite the heat I slept pretty well and woke up to a sweet lakeside campsite.

We aren’t much on fishing lakes so we headed on over to a nearby river where we met Jason who drove over from Little Rock to fish with us for the day.  This trip was all about smallmouth bass, a fish Blake has never caught before.  We were hoping to catch both the Ouachita strain and the Neosho strain on this trip – two unique forms of smallmouth found in Arkansas.  First up was the Ouachita, which are found on a few different rivers that run south off the Ouachita Mountains.

The river was beautiful.  I feel like I say that about every river, but this one seemed special.  It was a classic freestone river, with water as clear as any you’ll find in the South.  There was a riffle at our point of access that was too appealing to pass up so that’s where we started fishing.  The riffle was chock full of boulders and loads of bait darted around as we moved upstream.  Upstream of the riffle was a long pool and as we continued further it was clear this was the set up – riffle, long deep pool, riffle.  We caught a few sunfish (some were massive green sunfish), but it took a while before we figured out the smallmouth.

We got to a point where a tributary emptied into the river and it was there that Blake caught the first smallmouth on a RLD.  

Blake explored the trib a bit further and caught a few more fish, while Jason and I focused on the main stem of the river.

It was in the bubbles to the left of the run above that I finally caught my first Ouachita of the trip.  It hit a streamer almost as soon as it hit the water.

Blake met up with Jason and I soon after and we continued our way upstream.  As we got further from our access point the river got prettier and the fishing got better.  This is nearly always the case, but we tend to get caught up fishing a new river right where start wading because it just looks too good to pass up.

I tried several different flies out early to try and establish a pattern, covering the water from top to bottom.  What I ended up using most was a crawfish pattern tied on a jig style hook that Blake had tied for me prior to heading to West Virginia last year.  Blake had good success on a RLD, the crawfish loved it too.

Not wanting to set up camp again in the dark we parted ways with Jason and left the river some time in the mid-afternoon.  I really wish I had budgeted more time for that river, it was an awesome one, definitely somewhere you could spend a whole weekend.  We only saw a few other people when we were leaving too.  I’ll be back at some point.  Right now though we had to drive north to the Ozark Mountains and Ozark National Forest to make it into a watershed that held Neosho smallmouth.

Alabama Redeye Bass Trip – Coosa Bass

May 17, 2018
Adventure, Beer, Bucket List, Camping, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Travel, Wade Fishing, Warmwater
2 Comments

The first night in a hammock is always tough.  I’ve said that in the past and on this trip it was no different.  The hammock is comfortable and it beats sleeping on the ground, but it takes a bit of adjustment coming from a king bed.  Throw in an overzealous whip-poor-will, who was vocal for nearly the entire night, and sleep for me on night one was sporadic at best.

We were up at dawn, ate some breakfast, got packed up, and rolled out of the campground to make our way a few miles up the road to Cheaha Mountain and visit the highest point in the state.

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It was tough to get an unobstructed view of the surrounding area at the top of the tower, there was lots of communication and radio equipment up there.  A better view was had at the restaurant deck a little further down the mountain.  It’s neat what a little bit of elevation can do though.  At 2,400 feet the trees were still leafing out, whereas nearly everything just 1,000 foot down in elevation was pretty much done and making that transition out of Spring.

We came down off the mountain after checking out the view and headed down the road a way to where we planned to fish that morning for Coosa bass in the Talladega National Forest.  I had been told this was as close as I was going to get to a bonafide southern Appalachian blue line trout stream in Alabama and it held our target species so I figured it was worth a visit.

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It didn’t take long for me to get on the board with my second redeye species of the trip, the Coosa bass.  I let Blake play through after that and took time to explore my surroundings.

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It’s always a good idea to stop what you’re doing and take it all in sometimes, it’s amazing how much more you notice when you’re a little more observant.  I found loads of crawfish in the little feeder creeks and a handful of snakes like the one above, which made me a little more cautious while I was doing a bunch of rock hopping knowing they were out and about.

It took a little longer than expected, but Blake got on board with a Coosa bass of his own.  It was about this time that the creek picked up some elevation, entered into a bit of a canyon, and took on a whole new character.

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It was a beautiful stretch of water to wade.  We caught a few more Coosa bass through that section, but I knew it was time to turn around and hike out once I caught a chub in a big pool below a falls, especially when that was the only action we saw in that pool.  It was pretty good timing too because the locals were just making it up the trail to their swimming hole as we were heading out.

We left the creek and headed into nearby Anniston and Cheaha Brewing Company and met up with our friend Mark Miller for lunch and a flight.  No fishing trip is complete without a brewery stop and Cheaha fit the bill.  The food was good and the beer was acceptable.

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We left full and happy and drove through Birmingham en route to the Bankhead National Forest.  For Day 3 we’d target the Warrior bass on a creek that I fished a few times when I lived in Madison, the only place where I’d previously caught redeye before.  It was a much more memorable place for its beautiful scenery than anything else, it seemed only appropriate to head that way.