This fly swims well and the propeller at the front adds an element of action that fish find enticing. You can tie this fly in any colour combination to mimic the colour of some of the more popular lure colours that your mates that fish the “dark side” use so successfully.
This fly has turned out to be a fantastic point fly for bass in Lake Maroon. I have fished it for two years in a row in the Variety Club competition with a MKII olive or black woolly bugger on a dropper and achieved two podium finishes.
My variant does not include the shroud of mara wool tips around the zonker tail. I have left that off because for me the currents around the body of the fly produce more movement in the tail when it is not shrouded. I like hot spots on flies and accordingly have added a hot spot of red Wapsi palmer chenille under the tail. For my deeper water flies, as many other users have done, I use bead chain eyes rather than the unweighted plastic chain eyes as on the original.
This fly is a variation to my original yabby pattern and has been designed to be fish on a sinking line. I like to fish them, in water from 1 to 4 meters deep, either as a single fly or in a team of two flies as a point fly. If fishing them in a team I like the dropper with the second fly to be 25cm long and 1.2 meters above the point fly.
Cormorant flies have plenty of movement generated through the wispy marabou wing that extends the full length of the fly and has, as a hot spot, a very visible chartreuse tag.
If you make the hook light enough and the wing long enough this fly swims hook point up making it quite snag resistant. It swims well and when fished with a twitching movement on either dry or sinking lines it has plenty of movement and of course being relatively compact it’s not a fly that will result in a lot of short takes.
My bass jig has been designed to be fished on a variety of lines with the determining factor for the choice of line being determined by the depth the target bass are holding at. With a 4mm for weight it sinks well and when retrieved with a stripping action with a few protracted pauses provides plenty of movement to get the bass interested.
This is a Peter Morse fly and a great variation on a Wooly Bugger that is making its mark in fresh water fly fishing. It’s dressed on a wide gape hook that creates an effective “keel” effect and sports a relatively long marabou tail and a dense collar which together create plenty of currents around the fly that really get the marabou moving. It is adaptable for a range of species and situations.
This fly is one of just 4 flies that I carry in my native fish fly box that will take fish sub-surface when surface flies are just not working. Not surprisingly it’s got elements of a woolly bugger but importantly it has the bit of bling and movement that is so important to our predatory native species.
Bead head spiders fish very well in conjunction with traditional spider flies and give you the opportunity of adding a bit of flash to your team and more importantly get your team down a little. The benefit of that of course is that the added depth gives a little more vertical travel to your team of flies as they swing round at the end of the drift and start to lift, which as we all know is when the majority of hits occur when swinging spiders.
