The weed seed

This pattern was stolen from Mike Schultz, resident sage, fly tyer, guide, and employee/manager of our local fly shop: Colton Bay outfitters on the west side of Ann Arbor. Mike is a brilliant fly tyer, and like all brilliant fly tyers does not realize how brilliant he is. If you can steal one of his patterns, you should. I first came across the weed seed as he was tying a bunch of them for a guide trip. I was looking at them, and he explained that he needed a fly that floated well but was simple and inexpensive to tie. He guides a lot of beginning anglers, and they tend to lose a lot of flies. I liked the look of it, and bummed one from him. It had no name, so I christened it the weed seed because it did look a bit frumpy. The weed seed is also a term used by A.K. Best to describe poorly tied dry flies. I did not know Mike then as well as I do now, and I thought that he may have been pranking me by giving me a pattern that was an "A Number 1 Hat Decorator", so I pranked him back by giving his creation a derogatory name coined by one of the most influential tyers of our generation. As is per usual with these things, I was paid back in spades.

I am still ashamed, and this is why. Fast forward to the following weekend on the Ausable River. I was fishing, and waded past a cabin where breakfast was being prepared. A bunch of guys boiled out and refused to let me pass their dock unless I showed them what I was using. One comment: you have released more fish in the past few minutes than we have caught all week. And what, pray tell, was I using? The weed seed. I had tied it on first thing, and it was catching every riser that saw it.

The weed seed is brilliant because it is easy to tie, and it looks like everything under the sun. It could be a mayfly, a caddis, a stone, or even a small hopper. I have messed with different colors, but natural seems to work 90% of the time. There have been times when it doesn't work, but those are pretty rare. It floats so well that it is a good searching pattern, which is the way I use it. It is a great pattern for those days when nothing is really rising, but you feel like fishing dry flies anyway even though subsurface might produce more fish.

The recipe:
Tail: two strands of krystal flash.
body: a clump of deer hair. Lay the clump around the hook shank, spiral back, then spiral forward.
Wing: a clump of deer hair. Leave the butts stick up like an elk hair caddis to form a small head.
Hackle: non, but you can leave some of the body or wing longer to make a few legs.

Takes 30 seconds, lasts and floats forever. And it catches fish. It has got to be the ultimate in impressionistic patterns. It is now one of my go-to flies, especially on new water. And the truth is that I asked Mike if it would be OK to write about it. He is very gracious about sharing his knowledge, and gave permission.


Update: I now tie the pattern with an antelope hair wing. It really flairs out and makes it float better and longer.

The night I could do no wrong

I went fishing with my friend Jim J. . This is generally an intimidating experience, because no one outfishes him. Ever. He is one of the most observant guys I know, has the patience to work a pool until he catches the largest fish, and has a knack for figuring out what they are doing and when they are likely to do it. And he can work flies so the fish come rocketing out of their lairs to strike.
So I was prepared for complete and abject humiliation.

We were on Michigan's Pine River, and I had decided to go for broke. The night before the Brown Drakes were hatching. I saw four risers all night, and got all four on a Robert's yellow drake. The next night had to be the big night, so I took only a small box of dries and a 7 foot four weight cane rod that I had made myself. And of course, there were no rises. I poked around in the one fly box I had, and discovered a small muddler. It was a double error- I usually keep all the dries in one box, and the pattern was a bastard muddle that I had tied from memory. It had a black chenille body, a ragged deer hair head, and a couple of strands of crystal flash. Since it was an hour until the brown drakes, I greased it up and presented it as an early season grasshopper. This produced nothing.

The strange part came when the fly got waterlogged. Toward the end of a cast it finally gave up the ghost and sank. There was an immediate strike and I landed and released a nice brook trout. Next cast, the now-slimed fly sank again, and a nice rainbow was hooked and released. I thought, OK, if that is the way they want it ..., and pulled the fly under water and did some short strips. This time it was one of those browns that make you wish you had brought the net.

Thereafter, it was a glorious and inexplicable insanity. Toss out the fly, strip or twitch it once or twice, and a fish would be on it. Nothing huge, but an honest 10 - 12 inch fish on nearly every cast, and every once in a while a 13 incher. Mostly rainbows, but a few browns. It went on and on. I came to long deep pool and put the fly in a log on the opposite bank. Way too deep to wade to it. I did a roll cast, it popped out and landed in the water where a respectable fish ate it. A few minutes later I sent my lone precious emissary way up into a poplar. It looked like a cat's cradle about 25 feet up. I pulled, the fly popped free, and the entire mess slithered out of the branches and down into the stream where, you guessed it, a fish hit it.

I began to wonder if the fish were crazy, and tried other patterns, including a black stone that I had overlooked in a corner of the fly box (the only other subsurface fly with me). Nothing. Dry flies. Nothing. Back to the weirdo muddler and there would be a strike. Before I knew it, it was dark and we met back at the canoe launch. Jim had been throwing everything in his box with nary a strike. He had even dropped his favorite mouse pattern while tying it on and had to watch it drift out of sight. And although it was hot, still, and humid, neither of us saw a single brown drake.

I have no idea what happened. There were no rises, and the fly did not imitate anything that I could imagine. Caddis swimming to the surface? No caddis hatch. Sculpins migrating? It was black, and being being dead drifted at the surface with an occasional twitch or strip. All fish in the entire watershed concentrated at the canoe launch? Hard to imagine. I came to the conclusion that I will never know.

And flushed with success, that little black muddler was used on many following trips. It never caught a thing again.

The flat bodied nymph

This fly is largely about hypocrisy. With the exception of the Hex and white fly hatches, most of the dry fly patterns in my fly box could best be described as impressionistic at best, and more honestly, freakish parodies. Tangerine hackle sulfurs? Hendricksons with bad case of morbid obesity? Yep. But when it comes to nymphs I go for exact.

The flat bodied nymph is not completely original- I am sure that there are other patterns like it out there. But it works, and I can't recall seeing anything exactly like it. This one started when I was reading "Chauncy Lively's Flybox". The dude was brilliant. He tied with natural materials exclusively, and used technique and creativity to make very close imitations of natural insects. He had a Hendrickson nymph I was trying to imitate, with no success. The first problem, of course, was that the pattern required condor quills. Jeez, I thought I had some somewhere. The other thing was that I just could not make my bugs look like his bugs. Probably a hand-eye issue but that is my problem, not yours. I also had recently seen an internet web page about a fly called "the muncher" which looked like a Hex nymph. I sort of combined attributes of the two patterns to come up with this thing. It also takes a page from A.K. Best, who emphasizes different colors between the top and bottom of a nymph, or the abdomen and thorax.

I have a love-hate relationship with this fly. Useful patterns should not be a pain, and no fly should require so much time to tie that you become emotionally involved with it. This one fails on both counts. But it is so productive that every year I tie a dozen and use every one. It is "the fly most often stolen or begged from my fly box by skunked fishing buddies" so that is worth something.

The pain:

Use a size 10 or 12 Mustad 9671 nymph hook, or any hook that is 2x long, and 1x heavy.

Begin by lashing two strips of lead wire along side the hook shank. Lash them on about 3/4 of the way back. Then carefully bevel them with a double-edged razor blade. This gives you a fat, flat abdomen that tapers to the rear.

Tail: Three wood duck fibers, or mallard if you failed to shoot a wood duck.
Abdomen: Turkey tail fibers reverse ribbed with copper wire.
Thorax: peacock herl.
Legs: out to each side, a small partridge hackle. You will have to root through the pack to find a small mottled one.
Wing case: grey duck primary, or something similar.

Do the wire, tails, abdomen.
Tie in the wingcase, then the partridge hackle by the tip so that both are pointing backwards over the top of the fly. Tie in the herl and wind it, tie off. Then pull/bend the partridge feather forward so that it creates legs that stick out on both sides. The pull the wingcase over the top of the whole works.

This pattern is opposite that of many patterns in that it has a distinct top and bottom. It's very unlike the western patterns tied by Charles Brooks- he believed that the fly should look the same at no matter what angle the fish saw it. I think that fish get a much better look at nymphs than dry flies, so that is my justification. Tie up a few and try them. I also use a lighter version with a light mottled turkey wing feather and grey-brown dubbing instead of herl. Tied in size 14 it seems to be a good sulfur nymph.

The Smiling Minnow

This is not a trout pattern, although I am tempted.

The smiling minnow is the glorious result of bad memory. It's a miniature version of the clouser floating minnow. We had a stretch of very dry weather on a local smallmouth river, and I had a day when my usual topwater flies sent them flying in abject fear. I wanted to try something smaller and less intrusive, so I thought I would tie up some clouser floating minnows. I did not have the recipe, so I came up with a bastardized version that was way too small, and probably substituted some materials.

1. Use a size 8 Tiemco 5212 hopper hook.
2. Cover the hook shank with white tying thread and whip finish.
3. Coat the flat side of two foam bluegill spider bodies with zap a gap and press them together over the hook shank to form the body. There is a trick to this. Put the far side on first, and position it so most of the body is above the hook shank. If you don't do this you end up with a narrow gap between the hook and body that will not hook fish. Do not ask how I learned this. Then put the second half on matching it to the first.
4. Tie on a sparse tail of bucktail or calftail, and tie in a few strands of pearl flashabou. Make it sparse.
5. Use a sharpie to make eyes and a little smiling mouth. If you do not add a smile the fly will not catch a thing.

This is my go-to low water smallmouth fly. It is insane that something so small and insignificant catches fish, but it does. I use it in late summer, or anywhere I am bass fishing under clearwater conditions. I do a dead drift with the occasional short twitch. The surprising thing is how fish take the fly. If you don't watch it constantly, you will miss a slight disturbance that means a bass has sipped it. I had a night last summer where smallmouth were acting like browns on Pennsylvania limestone stream during a trico hatch. One minute the fly would be there, then a gone in a little dimple. I missed several fish before I caught on.

I have tried other color combinations, and no longer tie it in any other color. White on white for this one. And rock bass and large bluegills love it as well as the smallmouth do...

UPDATE: I found a version of this fly that is more effective than white on white. Use light blue bucktail and blue holographic tinsel/flashabou. Pick colors that make it look like an adult blue damselfly. Works even better. I took 70 fish one day last summer until the one I had in my box had the hook break off. Still waiting for Orvis to call me with licensing information, but all my friends have started to use it so it must be good.