Thanks. Spun up some new ties this past week. These are copies of Chase Smith's (FishChaseFlies) articulated damsel fly. It is tied on a size 8 barbless carp hook, but I imagine it will work great for bass and medium to large sunfish as well. Chase has a video on how to tie it on his YouTube channel, but it is pretty simple to explain. I tied the back of the fly on a 15mm fish spine. The tail is rabbit fur. You then wrap the spine in 2mm black foam and then palmer an ostrich hurl over it. You connect the tail (which is basically a woolly bugger) to the hook using wire and then tie in bead chain eyes and a long strip of foam at the rear of the hook. After wrapping the shank with a soft hackle feather you fold the foam over and tie off. Haven't fished them yet, but they have really nice wiggle in the water.

I tied it in olive since it is supposed to mimic a damselfly nymph, but I imagine tying it in crawfish orange would produce a fly that would catch fish as well.

Those look doggone good. I know that creek bass and just about any sunfish in the world would take them. If there were black crappie in any good numbers here that would also be a great target species and as far as trout wish I had some when I was fishing Spinney reservoir in Colorado.

Tied up a few more flies tonight. The top flies are Creek Leeches, a pattern designed and sold through Living Waters in Round Rock. Tied on a size 8 B10S it uses rubber legs, SLF dubbing, Whiting Farms spey hackle and a zonker strip. Haven't fished them yet but they look great in the water. There is a video showing how to tie them on Living Waters' Vimeo page.



The second fly is just something I messed around with for fun. I was going to tie up some small size 8 shrimp patterns to fish off lighted docks for trout, so I figured why not use some glow in the dark material? Best case scenario the glow in the dark stuff helps me catch more fish. Most likely scenario, it has no impact. Materials are white marabou, glow in the dark orange and white Flashabou Accent, non-glow black Flashabou Accent, shrimp pink rubber legs, glow in the dark pink and white ET Glow dubbing from Fly Tyers Dungeon, mono eyes using orange glow in the dark nail polish and a white synthetic fox brush. Probably a gimmick, but we won't know until we see what the fish think.

The Creek Leech is very similar to the Marsh Mohawk pattern I copied from Sight Cast fishing minus the spey hackle. I tied these on #4 Mustad 34007s and did them in olive, barred brown, barred tan, and purple. Creek bass seem to be suckers for purple.

That Marsh Mohawk looks like a nice fly, as do a lot of the other patterns on the Sight Cast website. Thanks for sharing.

There were a few guys pitching heavy purple bass jigs with a crawfish trailer in purple that day. I reached in my boxes and pulled that Marsh Mohawk out. The slower decent rate given by the rabbit strip proved to be killer. I think the same will be true of the Creek Leech. Right now my local creek is mossing up pretty bad since we haven't had any real rain in over two months other than one gully washer that I'm sure was all runoff so its been an early morning popper bite. Anything fished mid column or below gets matted with green goop. Here's to hoping for some rain and cooler temps.

I am heading down to the Hill Country the first full week of October to fish the Frio, Nueces, Sabinal, Llano, etc... Hopefully the water levels are at fishable levels. Don't have any set in stone plans but should be able to fish 5-6 different bodies of water the week I am there. Taking my tying kit as well. Not much more relaxing than spending a day on the river and then going back to camp and tying flies while enjoying a few cold beers.

Tied up some of Matt Bennett's Carp-It Bombs in blue crab colors for saltwater. Tied on Allen Fly Fishing's size 4 short shanked saltwater hooks.

Those look really good. Just been piddling at the bench. Trying to get ready for my last Pronghorn hunt in Colorado. Dreading the drive but looking forward to sunrises on the prairie, and visiting friends; maybe even squeeze in a prairie chicken hunt.