It’s SO easy
Posted By Joel on March 21, 2011
Pink and chartreuse? Why NOT?!?!?
As promised, here’s the recipe for a great sand bass/hybrid fly. I have to preface this with the fact that these fish ARE NOT picky. Just about any pattern/color combination that sinks and is in front of their faces will get a strike. A wooly bugger or Clouser will get the job done just as well as this fly (and, I believe, that’s a statement you can make about 95% of the “new” patterns out there – there are bloody few fish in the world you can’t catch with some version of those two flies). And, hey, this is basically a hackle-less bugger. So, purist fly-tiers should turn away now – what follows isn’t pretty.
The reasons I tie and fish this pattern are 1) they’re CHEAP, and 2) they work. Every fly tier ends up with bags of material they just don’t use like gobs of pink marabou from that one steelhead trip when you tied 4 boxes of flies and ended up using the guide’s (I still have issues). This pattern makes use of that material and the fact that I have yet to find a color sand bass WON’T hit.
All you need is marabou (or some other left over “tail” material like flash-a-bou or craft fur), chenille, and lead eyes. Tie in the eyes and wrap the thread back about halfway down the shank. Tie in a pinch of marabou about 1X – 1.5X the length of the shank. Tie in chenille (regular or “ice” chenille – again, whatever you want to use up). Wrap it to the eye, tie off, and whip finish. You can tie two dozen in an hour and it’s not as painful when you lose a half dozen in a few hours of fishing. Let your “cheapness” and artistic whims dictate color combos – I like combos of white, yellow, chart., and pink.
If I seem a little flippant about color, your results willbe better if you stick to the axioms of fly choice – lighter colors for clearer/shallow water and darker for night/stained water. We KILLED sand bass down at Bend State Park several years ago fishing this pattern at night in a purple/black combo. (again, because I had a shitload of purple material for steelhead flies).
A word about hook choice . . . I have found a GREAT general purpose hook for fresh and saltwater tying. The Fly Shop’s TFS 7423 is a tin hook that comes in sizes 2 – 8 with a slightly down-turned eye. A pack of 25 is just over three bucks. I use the 6 and 8′s for many of my carp patterns and the 4′s and 2′s for almost everything else in warm fresh and saltwater – a GREAT hook for the price. I tie the sand bass fly in a #4 with small lead eyes for normal/low water conditions (like we have this year). A #2 with medium eyes is used for deeper water or when hybrids are mixed in to the fray.
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