how to put more life in your fly???

[grenadier]

okay,okay, i give in, have been trying and pondering over how to put more life into a fly by adding little extra bits such as flat rings infront of the eye to trying to creat a good wiggle tail of my own with silican or latex mould but this is very fumbly and i'm not an injection moulding block engineer, there have been a few things on the market but i find there size is and adds, too much bulkiness to your fly, a detatched body works only if you have sufficient speed when moveing the fly but i find only the fitest and fastest of fish can catch up with them, most of the problem lies in how small can you go and still achieve a wiggle movement, the person who comes up with a proven and effective method of creating wiggle (side to side motion)whilst the fly is in a forward motion and not the duck and dive will be a hero, so, what if any ideas are out there???

[flyinghigh]

Seen an Idea in a fly book of using a hook shank attached to the back of another via a mono loop to create movement for a damsel fly.

Will post a picture or drawing ain a moment.

[steve collyer]

Originally Posted by flyinghigh

Seen an Idea in a fly book of using a hook shank attached to the back of another via a mono loop to create movement for a damsel fly.

Will post a picture or drawing ain a moment.

The Damsel Wiggle Nymph is a quite early example of this, dating back to at least the early 1980's.
Here's a brown nymph I found googling with the same idea:

[Scratch]

Originally Posted by grenadier

a detatched body works only if you have sufficient speed when moveing the fly but i find only the fitest and fastest of fish can catch up with them...

Nonsense! Even the fattest, laziest trout wouldn't have the slightest problem keeping up with your fastest retrieve.

Anyway, back on topic.... I'm happy with a bit of hen hackle and some hopper legs. Lips, cones, detached bodies???? It's cheating isn't it?

[syphogenic]

Originally Posted by Scratch

Nonsense! Even the fattest, laziest trout wouldn't have the slightest problem keeping up with your fastest retrieve.

Scratch is right, you will never pull your flies too fast for a trout that wants the pattern when they are in a chasing mode. Regarding movement, and ignoring spinning propellers, rubber tails, marabou etc...its been thought about in depth by many an angler. What you are trying to achieve is -in human terms- the perfect artificial limb with all the associated movement. If you could actually crack it with a lifelike artificial nymph then you would probably ruin fly fishing overnight! Im not too worried you will get there.

[arkle]

Have you tried fitting a sequin behind a beadhead to create extra turbulence ?

[grenadier]

i have tried sequins at front and rear and in the middle but not getting as good as effect as would like.

[grenadier]

i do agree with you scratch but since giving up my river fishing i am limited to still waters and boats so i now look to improve and perfect the so called flies (blobs, boobies) and the like as it seems the norm in a lot of cases. but where ever poss i love to fish as natural as poss.

[arkle]

Ideally, the sequins you need are the dished variety, with the pan of the dish against the bead & need to be at least a couple of mm larger than the bead you are using on each edge so a 3mm bead would need a 7mm sequin if that makes any sense. They will obviously work best when used in conjunction with very mobile natural materials such as rabbit, marabou etc.

[syphogenic]

tip, try adding 2-3 strands of marabou to a shuttlecock. As the fish approaches you get life. The down side is....you will lose the life as you catch the fish! so tie plenty! Life costs!