for:
20-pound tippet 9 pounds, 5 oz., Dennis Ditmars, Lake Poway, Calif., April 22, 1992
I have been corresponding with my new BD friend, Steve M. regarding fishing trout flies (as in big trout imitating flies) for largemouth bass at some of the waters we both like to fish. He informed me of the above 20 lb. tippet record.
Not a big bass expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have caught several dozen bass over ten pounds on giant swimbaits on conventional bass tackle. I have also caught quite a few bass over five pounds on fly tackle, my biggest being 7.75 lbs.
I used a twelve inch wood swimbait (in the fish's mouth) to trick this nice Perris fish during a photo shoot for a Japanese bass fishing magazine.
This obese fish came from DVL. While we did not get a ten pound fish that day, we did catch 29 fish, 21 of those were over five pounds, all on an 8 inch Polywood swimbait. I think that DVL would be the place to catch a 20 lb. class tippet record, as there are so many fish in the 9 to 11 pound range in that lake.
Getting to the point, I am not interested in this record, but I do like catching bass on trout imitations. I usually bring a 9, and a 12 wt. rod, but casting large flies, even on the 12 wt. is tiring at best. I have made flies out of everything, hackle, bucktail, rabbit fur with the skin on (swims great but is HEAVY when wet). I started making 8 inch flies out of this material, which I use for making custom rods.
Two things separate this fly/material from the 'norm'.
First is the material is hollow, and can be made into almost any shape.
Second it is extremely light. My 8 inch 'Flex-Trout' tied on a Gamakatsu 6/0 hook (a Worm 36), even with the over size 3D eyes weight only four grams. For comparison, a normal 4 inch epoxy head fly that I tie for dorado (pictured below) weight the same, four grams.
Simply pinch the 'tail' and wrap with regular nylon thread, whip finish, and hit with a dab of superglue, and you have the tail.
insert the hook, and pinch the nose tight, and wrap with green thread, whip finish, and super glue the head and they eyes on. I like big gold 10 mm eyes. The body can be colored before, or after tying. I just use Sharpees. Here I used on the silver material, Blue for the extreme top of the back, green for the overall body color, red for the parr marks and lateral line, and black for the tail and for the spots.
I am sure you could make it look much better with some airbrushing, but I do not even own one, and the bass pictured above didn't seem to mind the fact that the swimbaits were colored/tuned with Sharpees.
Finally, since I make custom rods for a living, and have leftover Flex Coat each day, I coat just the first half of the fly, to the nose. This holds the eyes on, and gives it a hard shape to knife / dart through the water.
Sometimes I garnish with single hackle pectoral fins and even a dorsal fin once and a while. Adding fins makes the fly harder to cast in the wind.
Since the material is like loose netting, with the exception of the forward part that you Flex-Trouted (flex-coated), you can insert things like pieces of foam to make it float, or glass rattles (pictured on the wood table), which I really like to use in the winter on staging pre-spawn fish.
Total time to make the above fly-12 minutes.
No, I am not claiming to have 'invented' this fly; I am sure someone has done it before. It is easy to tie, and is cool, so I though I would share it with ya'll. It works well in saltwater too, and I just give it a blue back, and a lateral line of black spots, and you have a 'Flex-Dine'.
Although I did not invent this fly, I did invent live sardines.
Linear Mode
