Several months ago I chatted with Ken over at Pike adventures about his weedless flies he was tying using Bass worming hooks having the hook facing upwards then tying his materials onto the hook shaft...thus covering the hook point allowing him to drag the fly over thick weed beds.Then Ulf at 700 teeth gave a tutorial on the bend back hook fly which made a lot of sense. His only complaint was that at 1st he was missing a lot of hook up due to there being to many materials covering the hook. The last 4 months I have been testing this method here on Replot quite a lot due to the amount of rocks we have here,and I have to say Its quickly becoming my favourite way to rig my bottom patroling flies.
I've changed a few things with the design, like bend the hook eye down slightly which has improved the presentation of the hook. I've also discarded the filler material between the feathers around the hook point and have added bucktail at the front to generally hold the materials a little more compact. I only caught 4 pike with this rigged set up before the season finished here, but have been out testing this fly the last couple of weeks and not once have I had any unwanted snags on weeds or rocks. More testing will be done in the spring but You will be seeing more of this method from me in the coming months.
I was just thinking about something similar last night to keep hooks attached to poppers. Do you have any trouble breaking the hooks?
ReplyDeleteSuppose it depends on the hooks Clif,but I haven't had one break on me and the four pike I caught did no damage to the hooks either.
ReplyDeleteI messed around a bit this year with a similar concept only using the worm rig hooks (Gamakatsu)for bass fishing and added dumb bell eyes between the bend and hook eye to roll the hook over so it faces up.
ReplyDeleteIt works pretty well but doesn't have the upward angle on the hook like this technique.
"added dumb bell eyes between the bend and hook eye"
ReplyDeleteAs good ol' Bob Clouser did long before ;-)
Ody