A Nose Full of Rabbit Hair

Clif has been bugging me for some time about instructions for the double weed guard I use on my bass flies. Last night I tied a few so now I've got some photos and I'm ready to post. The nice thing about weed guards is they don't interfere with the tying method of most flies. It's simply an added step in the recipe. I'll use an eyeless modified Mad Tom pattern on a Mustad #2 streamer during this instruction.

Begin the tying session normally. Start with wrapping the hook shank with thread and tie on the zonker for the tail. Then build up the body as shown here.



There's no need to build up the body to the eye, just go forward enough to place the weed guard. The guard will be sloped back but still in front of the hook tip by 1/4 to 3/8 inch. The goal is to allow the fly to glide over an obstacle as you strip your line slowly but deflect enough to set the hook.

Let's attach the guard.



In case your wondering where the hook point is, when I tie I place the hook in the vise so the point is just inside the jaws. I do this to allow the thread to slip over the jaws, instead of getting caught up on the point as I wrap, and also to avoid getting poked. Now, back to the guard.

Cut off about 4 inches of 40 lb mono, straighten it with your fingernail, fold it in half with a crease, and place it over the hook. Then wrap it with 5 or 6 turns of thread as shown above.

Add a couple of over and under wraps, similar to the second step of tying on weighted eyes, to spread the mono to a "V". Add a drop of your favorite glue to the turns to set it. As the glue dries hold each end of the mono in position so it looks like this.



After the glue sets push the guards to the hook tip and trim the ends about 1/4 inch past the hook tip. Finish your fly as you normally would. Here's how mine turned out.



I'll call it a Mad Bugger. The body is made with an
anemic black zonker so it ended up looking more
like a woolly bugger.


Here's a couple more.


No name yet, it's a zonker tail with a maribo body and Flashaboo. Maybe I'll call it Dave's Clam Shouter. Think about it for a while, it'll make sense. ;)


The Red Green Show (In honor of our fearless leader of the Possum Lodge)

I'm going to tie more Red Greens because of this...

A Weed Guard for Brownliners?

While wandering the streets of Boca Grande three weeks ago I ducked into, what else, Boca Grande Outfitters on Park Ave. I was looking for a wide brimmed hat for the coming summer days on the water when I happened upon their stock of saltwater flies. They had the standard fair of home spun goodies (from Singapore no doubt). What interested me most was their offerings from Enrico Puglisi. I've never heard of this guy before, but they carried a wide variety of his streamers in just about every color combination I've seen. So, I perused the rack for what I'm sure seemed like eternity to the local help. Oooo, a blue over white, neato! There's an olive over yellow with red gills, nice. And this one with vertical stripes, looks like a baby bass or crappie. That's a winner!.

"That'll be seven dollars and fifty six cents. Cash or credit?" (not including a hat.) Regardless, it's a pretty cool fly. Enrico calls it an Oscar. My older brother had one in his aquarium for about 4 years until it out grew it's 20 gallons and became fertilizer for the bushes outside his college apartment window... probably not the same breed.

"So, how is all this related to weed guards?". Well, if you're a regular Enrico customer you know that some of his flies have a double drop weed guard made of heavy gauge mono. I was particularly interested in this because according to Mr. Barton over at Singlebarbed, I'm a brownliner (well... almost), and I need weed guards on my flies because of where I cast. I also, like most fly fishers, tie my own from time to time and I'm not convinced the single loop guard is as reliable as the fly manufacturers seem to think. So I decided to incorporate the double drop into my own creations. It's actually a pretty easy technique, and you can add it to just about any design.

Still on board? Read on...

Enrico Puglisi Oscar (length: 4 inches)

If you look closely (above) you can see how the guard is draped over the hook near the eye. It's tied in with over-and-under figure eights to hold it down. I'm guessing the mono is pre-stressed at the bend to keep it's shape and speed up the production process. I was able to tie mine (below) with four or five loops around the drops under the shank, followed a few over-and-under figure eights to hold them tight to the shank.

John Graham over at at Prairie State Outdoors featured a Holschlag Hackle Fly a few posts ago that caught my eye. It seemed to me a good candidate for a weedless. Here's my version.

Weedless Holschlag Hackle Fly

The guard is tied in before the chenille and hackle are brought forward. It's no trouble at all to thread both between the two sides of mono on the way to the eye. I'm fairly happy with my first attempt. Next time I'll try to get the guard to lean back a few degrees so it slides over obstructions easier.

Instructions Here