Deer Hair Divers

LMB are feeding shallow. Time for Deer Hair Divers. I like tying these more and more almost as much as fishing them.

Nice work! Great looking flies and great looking bass. Do you use a razor blade for the deer hair or just scissors?

Scissors

Caught a crazy number of fish on the divers this morning. Color didn't seem to matter. No big fish, though.

Those look great. What is the tail material? Saddle hackle and marabou?

Yes, it’s a whiting streamer Cape I think, I’ll have to look at the package. I can’t remember from which vendor I ordered it. It’s tan grizzly. One tip on each side is what I’ve been putting in. On one diver, I forgot to tie in the grizzly tips, but it seemed to fish just as good.

I’m not very picky on these with the marabou and just tie in a decent clump that looks about right. I put a bit of crystal flash in the tail on top after tying in the marabou. Just a few strands of something dark.

There’s definitely a little variation on mine from copy to copy on how high they float and dive. But that seems pretty true on the ones that I bought from the big y that I patterned the ones I tie after. I think mine fish better than the commercial ones, but I might be biased. The stinger hooks I use are much stronger than the very fine wire hooks on the commercial ties. Their hooks are very apt to bend. They put on a mono weed guard. I haven’t been mainly because the lake I fish has very limited vegetarian like lily pads. The weed guards definitely cause missed hook ups so I don’t like to have them unless I have to for heavy weeds.

The water was pretty clear yesterday and I stand in the boat when I fish so I could watch some of the bass follow the divers. A few followed and never committed. Some would come from below and hit the diver as it rested on the surface of the water. Sometimes, I’d leave the diver resting for a time well off the lake shoreline while fiddled with the loose fly line and get a surprise take.

I like these divers as they are pretty easy to cast even after getting soaked. There’s no rabbit Zonker to get soggy and heavy and then tough to cast. I was using my 7/8 CGR, but my 5/6 CGR casts them pretty well too. The marabou gives plenty of lifelike movement in the water and doesn’t get heavier after getting wet to the degree that rabbit does. The diver shape is pretty aerodynamic so they cast well from that standpoint. I have some big deer hair poppers that I got as a gift that aren’t fun to cast because they don’t cut through the air well at all.

The drill in the lake I live on is to cast whatever you have on, plastic worm, lure, jig, fly, as close to the shoreline as possible and bring it over or around the many submerged logs, cypress knees, and trees. Almost all the structure is within 30 feet of the shoreline and these old oxbow lakes are basically river channels that got cut off in some prehistoric flood. The deepest area we’ve found by depth finder is 11 feet and most of the about 100 yard wide, 77 acre lake is about 10 feet deep and it drops to about 8 feet within about 30 feet of the shoreline. The ends of the lake are shallower. The divers work well as they can be brought over barely submerged logs without getting hung up.

The tail is rooster saddle hackle, tan grizzly. I bought a whole whiting cape. It’s very long.

8 pounds on a olive diver. I'm pretty pumped.

Great fish! Thanks for all the info. I've tied muddlers and deer hair poppers but never tried tying divers. I'll have to give them a shot this week.

Talk about a surprise. Got home from work today and had a package in the mail from karstopo. I assumed it was the Redfish Crack flies he offered to send me. While they were in there, also included were some balanced leaches and some of his deer hair divers. Decided that must be a sign so I tied on one of the divers and headed out to Bethany Lakes to give them a shot. The wind made casting a bit difficult at times but three bass decided they liked the flies as much as I did. I also missed a few more hookups so it could have easily been 5-6 fish in a little less than an hour. Karstopo ties great flies and I am glad I was able to try them out.

That’s great, I’m glad they worked. I think the divers kind of hit the frog idea when they swim, but maybe to the bass they just look like dinner.

I could definitely see them imitating a frog. Two of the fish I caught and the ones I missed hit it on a steadily stripped retrieve right under the surface. The other fish hit it when it was stationary on top of the water after I had stopped stripping to shoo bugs away from my head. The fish nearly came out of the water hitting it when it was stationary. Somewhat surprised I managed to keep my cool and not rip the fly out of there before he had it.

Some light wire 1/0 hooks came in today and I did a couple of divers on them. They are a daiichi hook and said to be designed for divers. The hook shanks are longer than the stinger hooks and they have a upturned hook point. I’m supposed to go out and fish in the morning and I’ll see how they work.

I did 10 more redfish crack in the olive and Black and Tan. I realized I was about out. I Can’t be going out into the marsh without any.

https://pacificflyfishers.com/collections/tying-hooks/products/daiichi-2720-specialty-hook

Interesting hook, I’ve never tied on them until today.

The new hook was great. Went out on the lake this morning and used a yellow and olive diver tied on the 2720 1/0 daiichi hook. Caught a lot of bass to just over 4 pounds on the new hook and the hook seemed to set better than the stinger hook.

Still on divers. Fishing in the boat yesterday was great. No photos, but I caught fish to a little over 4 pounds on a yellow and olive one.

Walked the shoreline today and caught some good ones on a chartreuse and olive one using the 2 weight. The short 2 weight works great in tight conditions and casts the diver well enough. Tied a few more while watching March madness.

These are so much fun to fish and tie.

It surprises me when these crappie hit a topwater pattern. But it's happened a few times now.

This bass has been hanging out around my dock. Hardest fighting 4 pound bass around! The white diver is my favorite color to fish. It's easy for me to see and the fish like it.

I keep experimenting and tying and fishing these. One thing I’ve noticed is that on some days, the smaller loosely packed and low floating olive divers way out fish the tightly packed more elaborate ones. Most of the olive ones are one size 2 stinger hooks. The others are mostly on 1/0 hooks.

The olive ones aren’t layer on layer of deer hair or packed much. They barely float and barely rise after the strip. The layered ones with several colors are mostly very tightly packed and float high and rise quickly after the strip. They pop and make more noise than the loose ones.

It’s really like it’s two separate patterns rather than one on different sized hooks. I think I’ll do some on size one hooks and moderately packed with maybe a couple of layers. Sort of an intermediate step.

I ordered some of the double sided razor blades off Amazon. They do make trimming the divers easier than scissors alone.

Finally got around to tying some deer hair divers of my own. Haven't got a chance to fish them yet but might get out tonight. The ones Karstopo sent me work great, and I basically just copied his pattern, so I am hoping these work as well. These are tied on a size 1 B10S.

Looking good! I haven’t been tying or tossing them much lately. I’ve done a bunch of different colors and combinations, but olive outperforms the others. White with Chartreuse might be a close second.

Where I fish olive seems to be the best color for pretty much all flies, so that is the color I went with first. Since I took this picture this morning I have tied up a few in all white, plus one that is all white with the final deer hair bundle being red. I'll give the white/chartreuse a try. Like you said, these are fun to tie. I have been tying a lot of Lunch Moneys lately, another pattern I really enjoy tying.

https://vimeo.com/214226939

I’ve never tied or fished a Lunch Money. I found a video of one. Do you have a favorite recipe/video?

Here is one from the creator himself. Fairly simple pattern using only a zonker strip, rubber legs, dumbbell eyes and laser dub. Here is a link to Matt's website that has the recipes for a lot of the color variations he sells. I have tied them in olive/yellow, craw and tan, and all three look like fish catchers. One of the things I like about the Lunch Money is it fishes equally well hopped/drug along the bottom as it does swam through the middle or upper portions of the water column. There really doesn't seem to be a bad way to fish it. https://www.flygeek.net/shop/lunch-money

The good news is the divers I tied up swam beautifully. The bad news is I didn't catch any fish. But with them having a nice action, the fish will come.

So much truth to this. I don't think there is a fly that looks sexier in the water. The way it moves really isn't comparable by any other pattern I've seen. A close second is a craft fur bait fish, but the combination of zonker strip and laser dubbing really can't be matched. The versatility of this pattern is extremely underrated IMHO. It's a fantastic searching pattern for the fly rod because of it's crazy movement, you can strip it fast and find fish in large bodies of water. Once you find them, working it slow can produce some huge fish because it's so realistic in movement and appearance. I love the muted bluegill pattern in the warmer months. Crawfish pattern worked slowly on the bottom as McKinney said in cooler months. Oddly enough, a brown trout brunch money produced my PB Guadalupe bass when I packed the wrong flies in my fly box one dark morning.



I honestly can't say enough good things about Matt Bennett's fly patterns. There's really no reason to stock your freshwater box with anything other than a riogetter, carp-it-bomb, and lunch/brunch money. It covers any prey species from the tiniest nymphs to damsels, to the biggest baitfish.