Underrated Fly of the Month: Iron Lotus

The Underrated Fly of the Month is something new I am adding in order to draw attention to select fly patterns that have performed exceptionally well for me on the water, but have (for whatever reasons) not recieved as much hype or print as their counterparts.

First up is the Iron Lotus. This is a bead-head mayfly nymph pattern created by the same dude (Lance Egan) who gave us the much more popular Rainbow Warrior. Ya heard of that fly, right? This lesser-known fly is properly proportioned and weighted to be deadly effective as a dropper under a buoyant dry fly, or set up in any deep nymph rig you may care to fish.

Learn More About This Fly!

Big Bass On Small Flies

In the fly shop I preach every day during the summer about using stiff rods and heavy leaders for bass fishing. You can get away with 0x leaders if you tie the streamer on using a loop knot such as the Rapala knot. Because the fly has the ability to jerk or swing back and forth more erratically or naturally than if the fly were tied on with a much lighter leader and a tight clinch knot. You can set the hook proper with a stiff fly rod and have a chance of controlling a big fish with heavy line...even once it gets deep into the cattails. Now, having said all that...sometimes light tippet and small streamers can be the right combination to hook the largest and smartest beast in the lake. Today my sister, Eva took the best fish of the day on 5x and a tiny white Dead Drift Leech tied on a #10 C400BL mini-jig hook. Just to prove my preaching wrong. The fight was intense and in the end she had to dive into the cattails to lip the brute once it wrapped itself deep into cover. Once I arrived on the scene she was dripping wet, hands shaking...but with the wildest carnivore grin I have ever seen on a woman. Good on ya, Eve...

Introducing The Booby Frog (Top-Water Bass Fly)

The Booby Frog fly was designed to look, move and float the way a real frog does on a pond, but stay easy to cast with a lighter fly rod and remain completely snag free. Arguably the most common and enjoyable type of top-water bass fly is some sort of cork or spun deer hair popper tied with the general size, shape and color of a frog. These flies have the ability to fool many un-pressured fish, but lack the subtlety and movement to do well on every body of water and in all seasons. Like a real frog, the Booby Frog does not always float…and when it does, it sets in the surface film of the pond at a 45 degree angle with it’s legs splayed out and just the big foam eyes popping out of the water. And the fisherman need only touch the fly line to get the front-facing rubber legs to twitch back—often being just the right trigger for the big bass lurking nearby. This fly has so much great movement and action in the water because the natural materials are not bound to the entire length of the hook shank. The Booby Frog is tied on a large stinger-style hook, but all the materials are tied in at the same 3/16^th of an inch of the hook shank directly behind the eye of the hook—this allows the frog body no restrictions in movement. Also, this frog may be the first ever to offer the bass fisherman a top water fly that rides hook point up (almost out of the water!) completely eliminating the need for any cumbersome and distracting hard-mono weed guards that only partially work. The Booby Frog casts easily with a common trout-weight fly rod and crawls easily and seductively over even the thickest weed beds, logs and lily pads.

Booby Frog Recipe:

Hook: Gamakatsu B10S Size 2

Thread: Danville’s 3/0 Waxed Monocord (Dark Gray)

Body Bottom: Marabou (Cream) Wapsi (MB002)

Body Middle: Marabou (Golden Olive) Hareline Dubbin, Inc. (M8BQ159)

Body Sides: Mink (or Squirrel) Zonker Strips (Olive Brown) Wapsi (MKZ089)

Body Top: Grizzly Marabou (Olive) Hareline Dubbin, Inc. (GRIZM263)

Foam Eyes: Rainy’s Olive Foam Boobie Round Eyes X-Large (BE-09144)

Legs: Montana Fly Centipede Legs (Speckled Yellow Medium) (0-5-125-807-2)

Hard Eyes 1: Loon Outdoors UV Fly Paint (Yellow)

Hard Eyes 2: Black Sharpie Marker

Hard Eyes 3: Loon Outdoors UV Fly Finish (Clear) (Or UV Knot Sense)

Booby Frog Tying Instructions:

Step 1: Build a 3/16^th inch thread base directly behind the eye of a Gamakatsu B10S Size 2 hook using Danville’s 3/0 Waxed Monocord (Dark Gray).

Step 2: Tie in the Marabou (Cream) so that the tips just touch the inside bend of the hook. Apply some Zap-A-Gap to the trimmed butt sections and wrap the tread around the marabou cluster and force it up at a 45 degree angle from the hook shank—the glue should help hold it in place.

Step 3: Tie in two clumps of Marabou (Golden Olive) on top of the cream marabou. These should extend out well past the cream marabou and 5/8^th of an inch past the outside bend of the hook, making the overall length of the fly—without the legs—3 inches. Lick your fingers and slick back the marabou allowing you better control of the material.

Step 4: Tie in a Mink (or Squirrel) Zonker Strip (Olive Brown) to either side of the fly. Trim the leather part of the zonker strip to ½ inch. This should make the overall zonker about 2 inches long. 

Step 5: Tie in two Grizzly Marabou (Olive) feathers on the top of the fly.

Step 6: Mount the Olive X-Large Foam Boobie Round Eyes onto the head of the fly using cross wraps of thread just as you would when mounting a lead dumbbell eye.

Step 7: Flip the fly over and tie in two sets of Medium Speckled Yellow Centipede Legs. Tie them in so that they extend out well past the hook eye and the rear of the fly. Tie off the thread between the foam eyes and the rubber legs using an extended-reach whip finish tool. Trim the front four legs to 1 inch. Trim the rear four legs to 2 inches. Apply a small amount of head cement to the thread built up between the two sets of rubber legs. Be careful not to get any cement on the actual rubber legs, as this will “rot off” the legs over time.

Step 8: Exaggerate the hole that runs through the foam Boobie eye so that the UV Fly Paint can ooze down in and have a better, more durable hold on the foam once cured. I prefer the butt end of my whip finish tool because it is already handy.

Step 9: Apply a small drop of UV Fly Paint (Yellow) into the opening of the foam eye.

Step 10: Cure the UV Fly Paint with the Loon Outdoors UV Power lamp.

Step 11: Create pupils using a Black Sharpie Marker.

Step 12: Apply a small amount of UV Fly Finish (Clear) (Or UV Knot Sense) over top of the now hardened eye. This ensures the black Sharpie pupil remains permanent.

Step 13: Cure one last time with the Loon Outdoors UV Power lamp. Finish with a final coat of Hard-as-Hull head cement to get a glossy look to the eyes.

Now go take him fishing!

Finesse Worms for Aggressive Early Season Bass

The snow has been sun cleared from the flat lands here in Colorado and the warm-water lakes are turning on. Pack a fast six-weight and some streamers in the car or truck so you can hit a local bass pond on lunch break or after work. The problem with the local-pond reprieve is, unless you know a secret gem or have access to private water, you will have to share your bass with others. This sometimes means you have to approach the situation from a slightly different angle (pun most certainly intended) than every other dude on lunch break. Back in the day—when I was stationed in North Carolina—the conventional lure of choice was a small and straight soft plastic like a mini Slug-Go worm or Bass Assassin jerkbait. We would rig it with no weight and fish it with a series of hard jerks that gave the worm a lively “walk-the-dog” action triggering aggressive strikes from normally tentative and educated bass. The fly rod version of this is a dubbing Finesse Worm. My favorite color combination is a dark olive Simi-Seal dubbing with a hot yellow Ice Dub for the tip. Use a two strand dubbing loop if you are using a 3/0 waxed monocord, or a four strand dubbing loop if you are using a 6/0 thread. This will provide certain rigidity to the finished worm, minimizing fouling tendencies and aiding in the flies ability to stay straight and “glide” farther after every aggressive strip during the retrieve. Make the worm from 3 ¼ to 3 ½ inches long and tie it on a Tiemco 777SP #4 hook. This is the ideal hook because it has a large, straight eye protruding out of a long, straight shank—perfect for jerkbait-type action. Tie an exaggerated thread head on these worms and even go so far as to add some Loon UV fly paint (or Knot Sense) or epoxy to create a tapered cone at the front…also to aid in the darting action. Fish the Finesse Worm on a nine foot 0x leader and use a Rapala knot or some other loop knot that will allow the fly to dart erratically

Learn how to do a furled dubbing loop!

Tying The Curmudgeon Crumpler

The Curmudgeon Crumpler may be the best trout dry fly you have yet to hear about. The “Crumpler” was originally created in an attempt to mimic large, gangly crane flies hatching in the high lakes of Colorado’s Indian Peaks Wilderness Area…but soon morphed into a more compact, hardy fly resembling a cricket or small grasshopper. This fly is tied on an Umpqua C300BL barbless competition hook, so has a very organic curve and an extended spear to hold trout without damaging them. This is my personal favorite fly to fish small, wild trout streams.

Step 1: Create a thread abdomen with 6/0 UNI-Thread (Light Cahill) on an Umpqua C300BL hook. Build up the back end significantly more than the rest. Half hitch and cut thread.

Step 2: Switch thread to a Danville's 3/0 Brown and fill out rest of the tapered abdomin. Coat entire thread base with a heavy layer of Hard-as-Hull head cement and let dry thoroughly.

Step 3: Stack a healthy clump of natural elk hair so tips are even, then tie in on top of hook shank.

Step 4: Tie a knot in two pieces of turkey tail feather so the knot is just above the color change in the natural feather fibers. Tie in and trim to proper length. Coat trimmed tips with head cement to keep them durable.

Step 5: Cut out two tapered oval wings from a sheet of MFC Wing Material (Plain Web) and tie them in on top of elk hair.

Step 6: Tie in a piece of badger hackle, then dub the thorax using black Hare-Tron dubbing.

Step 7: Wind hackle forward and tie off. Whip finish knot. Pow. Done.

Now tie up a half dozen of these in preparation for the season!

Pattern Created by

Erin Block

Mysteries Internal

Heavy JuJu (Oooo Weeee Ooooo!)

My favorite small mayfly nymph just got better. The Juju Baetis has always been one of my Big Thompson go-to flies (as well as many other local rivers thick with the BWO) but rarely use it on smaller water like South and Middle Boulder Creeks...mainly because I am fishing a two-fly dry/dropper rig and I need the nymph to sink fast...on its own. This is important when fishing smaller pocket water, you don't have that much time for the dropper nymph to sink if the TOT (Time On Target) is a mere three seconds! So thanks, Charlie...even bigger fan now.  

Banjowood Seeds

I would make a very poor father. I know this. Not true, some may say…you’re so good with kids! Sure. And I love dogs too. But they both annoy me to no end. Kids and dogs. They are both loud, eat things they shouldn’t and shit everywhere. But, so do I…so I can’t help but feel an odd sort of kinship. Kinship in chaos and crap. So it is ironic, I guess, that those who like me the most are years younger than I, and I am now living with a dog. I guess I am left with—with some comfort—the teachings of my older and wiser sister: kids are better than adults because at least kids still have the chance not to be idiots…and if you fuck with a dog it will eat your face. Simple. And I appreciate simple.

 So now I live with a dog named Banjo. Love him. Have no idea what sort of dog he is. People always feel the need to ask what is he? At work…at the fly shop, I get asked that on the hour it seems. Not about Banjo (I leave him up the mountain) but about coworkers dogs hanging around the shop. Still alive, I usually answer. Until I get too hungry. Yes. I just made a joke about eating a friends dog. Pales in comparison to the things I have said about friends children. Find a way to deal. OK…moving forward. Banjo has long, shaggy white hair that ends up stuck to everything. The couch is now uninhabitable by humans in dark clothing. The door jams have fringe. And it sticks to my facial stubble like a fake Santa beard when we wrestle in the living room.

 His hair gets saved, though…in a big plastic freezer bag in a random cupboard. Clumps get coveted from the carpet, picked from the couch and my chin. Saved in a bag. Looks too much like fly tying dubbing to be discarded. Gotta be a use for it…gotta be! There have been vague plans to do some dye lots. You know…black, olive and brown. The trifecta. The triple threat—the three best colors of good, course dubbing. His hair is naturally white (well, just perfectly off-white) so that base is already covered. But he also has this really awesome, long tail hair. It just begs to be made into a pike fly! Add a little flashabou…amazing!

 But it did not take long. See enough clumps of shed hair on the floor and sooner or later any serious carp-head is going to see the possibilities. Clumps of off-white hair on the un-swept floor. Carp lazily cruising the muddy flats. Springtime. Cottonwood seeds. The cruising carp zeroing in on particular scraggly, white clumps on the surface…

Yes…it all becomes clear…

Have YOU considered a mouse lately?

Let's face it...the reason we all fly fish is because it is much more fun to cast a fly line and feathered bug than lobbing bait. So, if we derive so much satisfaction from the "lures" we cast and the act of fishing itself...then why not occasionally choose a fly not based on a shop recommendation or hatch guide, but on the flies coolness factor alone?

This is your assignment...go try to catch a bass on a top water frog, a crappie on a grasshopper or a big brown trout on a mouse!

Carp on top...with cottonwood seeds!

This is the time of year for the cottonwood drop. The white, fluffy seed pods have been floating around for a couple of weeks now. They can clump together on your leader and be a serious hassle to remove. In fact, they are the main reason I stopped building my own leaders...the more knots, the more aggravating white balls of cotton!The one bright side to all this as been the great opportunity to match the hatch and take carp on dry flies! Yes. You just read that. Matching the hatch. Carp on dries. Take some time to adjust...


Read a story about the best material for cottonwood seeds...ever!

What WON'T eat a crayfish?

I can not think of a single freshwater game fish that won't eat a crayfish. The biggest brown trout in Boulder Creek, both large and small mouth bass, northern pike, wiper and carp. Often an injured, or startled crayfish is the biggest and easiest meal a fish can get. Two great fly patterns are Dave Whitlock's "Near Nuff" and Patrick Knackendoffel's "Mud Slider".

Both of these flies are tied heavy and with weight properly adjusted to keep the hook point riding up. This allows the fly to be fished slow and on the bottom without snagging easily.

Blossoms, Bass & Bellyaches

Mid May…it has not been a long winter here in Colorado, but it sure has been a drawn-out and suppressed spring. Driving to work in the mornings you can look along the road and almost feel summer trying to burst out of the flora like highly compressed acetylene. It is a cool and overcast Sunday…and everything is ready to pop!

The water temperature in most of the old gravel pits is hovering right about 57 degrees. It is cool and the sun is covered in a light grey frosting. The clarity is vodka in an ill-light bar. Baby bluegill scurry at any movement. The bass are lurking…and feeding!

A Bellyache Minnow swims by—wide eyed and scared! Darting, trying so hard to get back to the sanctuary of the newly formed beds of algae. TOO LATE! Ambushed by the hungry bass! Swallowed whole. Devoured. POW! But it was a trick! Straining hard on 3x tippet and limber fly rod…GOTCHA!

Two Bit Hookers (Hard To Hide From Family?)

This is the letter written to Fly Fisherman Magazine...in full.

"Yesterday, I was reading the Feb.-March issue, and on page 54 saw some good-looking flies. The name Two Bit Hooker bugged me, but it really hit home when my 10-year-old daughter asked me “Daddy, what’s a hooker?” I wasn’t ready to have this conversation, but I told her. She said, “That’s scary. Why did they name a fly after a hooker?”  I had no answer, except to say that someone thought it was funny. This is poor taste; and reflects something very ugly. It is not funny. I ask the editors, and the fly’s creator Charlie Craven, to do a bit of reflection. Are you married? Do you have daughters? Students? I do. Do you go around telling dirty jokes? I don’t. I entered adulthood years ago. Please clean up your thoughts, deeds, and actions, from the inside. Jokes like this make us look like boorish idiots." ~ Todd Harper, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Dirty Little Whore: See Nude Photos! Click Here!

Windknots asks: "My question to readers is this. Was this a breach of good taste?  Should a fly tier or fly fishing magazine be held to someone's standards to make up for a parent's lack of common sense and responsibility?" Follow the discussion.

Pegged Beads (And My Turmoil About Them)

This is a sensitive subject—the fly-fishing version of bringing up politics at a mixed family barbecue, or religion at the pub. The pegged egg. If you have no idea what I am talking about (congratulations!) you need not read any farther. Go about your day…and the rest of your enjoyable fishing life. But, if you know exactly what I am talking about, well…you most likely have an opinion on the subject. Probably a fairly strong, well-entrenched opinion. For those not in the know and not following my advise to look away…here is the low down. “Pegging an egg” is taking a plastic bead the size and color of a trout or salmon egg, threading it onto your leader and pegging it into place with a sliver of wooden toothpick—then tying on a bare hook. The idea is that the fish eats the “egg” and the act of setting the hook dislodges the pegged bead and slides the bare hook into the mouth of the fish…or at least the vicinity of the mouth. Spawning trout and salmon have a wicked desire to eat eggs, so this method is unbelievably effective. Although, it could be argued (and is by many) that this is just a creative way to “floss” spawning fish…or is just a thinly veiled form of snagging—often in the face and eye of the fish. Is it not snagging? Let me ask this: if you are drifting a two-fly dry/dropper rig and a trout rises to the dry, but misses it…and you hook the trout in the belly with the dropper nymph (this happens all the time)…is this not an accidentally snagged fish? Is this not the same thing? Or is the bare hook hanging menacingly behind the bead a very deliberate attempt to snag a fish? If so, should it be legal?

A close friend of mine claims there is no difference between a plastic bead threaded onto fishing line and a more conventional “fly” tied with some synthetic materials. I badly want to disagree with him…but I honestly don’t know the answer. I once won an argument in a fly shop with none other than legendary fly tier AK Best about a similar topic. He put forth the notion that something tied using anything other than natural fur and feather was not a true “fly”. My reply was simple—you tie on nothing but bone hooks, then…right? Nope? Metal hooks? OK, then… So, what is the definition of a fly? Does it have to be tied by hand? Does it have to have thread? When does it cross realms into the world of “lures”? Again…I honestly do not have the answer. There is a sea of grey and many animated opinions on the subject. But, one thing I do know for sure…if a classically-tied Jock Scott is on one end of the argument, the pegged egg is certainly on the exact opposite. And, if you peg beads on the river and feel you are still fly fishing…you have made a very clear personal statement declaring that the act of fly fishing has absolutely nothing to do with what you have tied to the end of your leader. The only remaining question is; if you skewer a night crawler onto a treble hook and heave it into a trout stream…with a fly rod…is that still considered fly fishing? Or is it actually bait fishing? Is it the rod in your hand or the object at the end of your line that defines you as a fly fisherman? Is a man fly fishing if he is using a spinning rod with a clear casting bubble and a fly? No, right? Again…is it the rod in your hand or the object at the end of your line that defines you as a fly fisherman? Or is it both?

Post Publish Analysis

As I predicted, this story has generated a lot of discussion. Perfect. I wanted all of us (as fishermen) to think about this topic and have an intelligent conversation about it. It is important and very topical. There are several states intending to ban the practice very soon. The argument has gone on here in blog form as well as Facebook, and in the fly shop and at home... I have spoken to many hard-core bead peggers, as well as some of the more respected fly designers in the world...and some of the Old Guard fly fishermen. The conversations seemed to gravitate to three different topics, the first two being: What constitutes a fly? And, what constitutes a fly rod? It became apparent early that most fishermen considered fly fishing something that must be done with a fly rod at one end and a fly at the other—but then, semantics entered the ring! The argument about what a fly rod is, well, that one was fairly easy. Most fishermen are willing to agree on a fairly broad description of what a fly rod is. The difference between a fly and a lure? Now that generated some debate. The general consensus was that if it is tied, it is a fly…molded or formed (i.e. glue gun egg) then it was considered a lure. Half of each? Generally accepted as a fly—benefit of the doubt, I guess? But, the ONLY fishermen who thought a plastic bead was a fly was…well, no one. The retort I got from the Bead Fishermen was sort of defensive. Some attempted to put a plastic bead into the same category as a fly that incorporates a touch of foam or synthetic flash—a logic I have a hard time following, even in my open-minded state. This logic kind of insinuates that an eight-inch jointed Rapala could be called a fly—WTF? So, the conclusion (for now) is that bead pegging is not fly fishing! OK. Not that big of deal. Most of us have spent a portion of our fishing life as a “conventional gear” fisherman already anyway. Most state fishing regulations are exactly the same for both styles. No Bait—Flies & Artificial Lures Only. Artificial lures…I guess that’s you guys, Beaders. Again, no big deal!

Then the conversation got heated. The third question everyone migrated to was: Is it snagging? This one sort of makes the fist two questions a bit moot, don’t ya think? The self-proclaimed Beaders in the room did some very odd, but creative mental gymnastics to separate what they were doing from the illegal act of “snagging”—frantic semantic scrambling is a better way to put it. The argument degenerated/evolved into one party offering up hypothetical scenarios and the other party attempting to categorize it as Snagging, Foul Hooking (apparently the accidental form of the deliberate act of Snagging) and Fair Practice. If you are fishing a two-fly dry/dropper rig and a trout rises to the dry, but misses it…and you hook the trout in the belly with the dropper nymph? Unanimously…Foul Hooked. Now, let us say you are fishing Gunnison Canyon during the big stonefly hatch. Your rig is a big #6 Soffa Pillow dry…with the hook clipped off! Presumably to make it look more natural on the surface of the water. And you have somehow rigged a bare treble hook a foot or so behind it. When a 20 inch brown trout takes the dry fly the fisherman yanks back…. OK, ya getting the point?

My own conclusion is logical and unarguably simple. If you fool a fish into willingly taking your disguised hook into its mouth…you are “angling”. If you force a hook into a fish…you are “snagging”. If you purposely distance the hook away from the “lure” object in which you are fishing (be it two feet or two inches)…and then pull the hook into the fish once it has taken the “lure’…then you are still snagging fish. I guess most laws have just not caught up with our conniving technology…

Flies for Cannibals

Once the water begins to warm up on your favorite pike lake the aggressive tendencies of northern pike will become intense! Pike feed on a lot of different things, but most of us fly fishermen use large streamer flies to emulate the resident forage fish. Often this is bluegill, suckers, young bass and perch...but in a lake that has a thick population of these toothy carnivores they will greatly decimate the forage fish populations. Sometimes this will get so bad that the local pike will eagerly turn to cannibalism! Some areas I have fished in the past there were no other species in the lake besides pike...they were eating their young just as fast as they were procreating! Guess it saves a ton of money on diapers...and groceries!

I have a fly in my pike box I call the Hammer Handle (the popular term for a young pike).