The Fluff
Fish are stupid - they must be to take this simple and efficient pattern
By Per Gade
How simple can you tie a fly – and still catch fish? History has shown us lots of examples – even a “bare hook nymph”. And for seatrout we have the Copperbully here in Denmark. And you can find many other patterns with few or only one material.
The Fluff is also rather simple, and actually started out as a kind of joke about the stupidity of fish.
You can catch fish on a hook with a little dubbing. Why make simple things complicated, when fish are more stupid than we can even imagine?
Lots of flies take a long time to tie, because the patterns are far too detailed. Fish won’t notice, and the time can be used better at the water, fishing. So why not make a “Fluff” fly, the name referring to the piece of yarn often used for casting practice.
The fly we tied that day (and have tied in the same way since then), is made with a blend of SLF (Synthetic Living Fiber) and a little flash – making the fly dusty greenish – just like a little baitfish, the sand eel, that is one of the favorite “meals” of the Danish seatrout as well as many other predatory fish around the world.
The material is dubbed on the tread or wound in a dubbing loop. Tie in and whipfinish – and that’s it.
And best of all is, that the fly is very efficient. In the springtime it is on my leader most of the time – and when I retrieve it quickly, I’m sure, that the fish will bite hard and almost swallow the fly.
Fish are stupid…
Submitted February 23rd 2010
I agree that our fly's have become overboard. I think there are flies for fishing and flies for hobby (consuming time, like that Canadian winter.) I enjoy taking my time at the vise, never wanted to be a production tyer. The average tier like myself, I cannot tie elaborate patterns anywho, so I enjoy keeping things simple.