The Dunkeld is certainly one of my top 5 middle dropper flies for lock style fly fishing. Until 18 months ago I was using a version of the Dunkeld that had a hackle Palmered along the body as in the original. At that time I was experimenting with “fuzzeled” bodies an an alternative to bodies with a Palmered hackle and applied that technique to this fly with immediate success.
The MK 2 woolly buggers evolved from standard black and olive woolly buggers as a fly that would imitate an American frog that had bright red between its hind legs. The red is a great trigger point and I find the MK2 as a great generalist search pattern. In southern climes the hot spot is tied in any of the ‘roe’ colours and is widely accepted as one of the best early season search pattens.
Whilst not tied to imitate any natural food source it’s a very buggy looking fly with heaps of trigger points including the marabou tail, the soft body and front hackles as well a the skit itself. In particular I like to incorporate blood red or orange skirts which are suggestive in the case of a red skirt as bleeding from around the base of the tail or the claws depending on what the fly is taken as or in the case of an orange skirt as a fish roe.
This is a good alternative to the zonker rattler particularly for estuary species. It lends itself to fishing on a fast sink line and a jerky active retrieve with plenty of stops. It’s also a good idea to count the fly down so that you can identify what depth they are holding at.
The fly is particularly useful in larger water and can be fished quite deep. For inactive fish John recommends a slow retrieve and even pauses of up to 15 seconds. If fish are active a range of faster stripping actions will yield success. Whilst the black and purple Vampire gets the most press its worth following John’s lead and experimenting with different colours for different fisheries.
. When bass are feeding on big insects like Cicadas and Hoppers that crash onto the water they also become susceptible to flies like poppers, and yes guppies, cast around their structure. At other times they just have a whack at them because there intruding into their domain. In either case the strikes and hook ups can be spectacular. They may be big in overall size but they do account for many a big bass.
For a long time I simply sized up my trout stimulator and used them on bass unfortunately they just didn’t offer bass a big enough morsel and even though they were bigger than anything I would use for trout they still landed too softly … not announcing their presence to the bass. A while back I got round to addressing the problems and after a reasonable amount of experimentation came up with this version of a stimulator which ticks all the boxes.
When I converted my trout foam hopper for use as a bass and tropical fly fishing I added a sparkle chenille under-body and grossed it up dramatically so that it would withstand the aggressive nature of fish like Australian bass and tropical species such as mangrove jack.
If you fish fast water and need a very buoyant hopper or a buoyant fly to support a nymph try this one.
Over the years I have experimented with various Yabby patterns and whilst some have looked great unfortunately they have all been “dogs” to fish or more correctly to cast. Generally rather than using them I have reverted to fishing a weighted woolly bugger instead. Well all that has now changed and I now have a Yabby in my fly box, in both a floating and sinking version, that I have confidence in.
