South Africa's been gifted with some truly stunning Trout rivers, found draped against the backdrop of some amazing countryside..........One only has to read Peter Briggs
"Call of the stream" to get the gist of what I'm harping on about. Yet much of the lets say specimen trout caught over here generally hail from closed water systems like dams and water reservoirs.
Anyway since getting back to S.A last year after 10 yrs worth of guiding in Northern Europe, I've spent a fair amount of time flogging these waters with many of the traditional still water Trout patterns that are regularly fished with over here with moderate success. Sure I'm not as practiced on Trout still waters as I would like to be, and I do become easily frustrated when I'm not catching fish and my reluctance to try and learn all the technicalities and subtle nuances that still water trout fishing has to offer probably has gone a long way to me being not as successful as I could have been. The thing is right, I'm not much of a traditionalist when it comes to fly fishing, even more so with regards to fishing traditional patterns especially on still waters that have been flogged to death year in and year out with the same old same old flies. Call me the spawn of Satan, but I'd rather watch paint dry than spend my day dry fly fishing on still water. Sure it has its merits and can be very effective given the right time of year, weather conditions blah blah blah, but I need to be active and in my eyes that means being able to strip a line through my fingers regardless of the speed I retrieve my fly back. Hence why I'm partial to fishing with streamer styled flies over all others.
Any South African fly fisherman who has fished these water has at some time in a days fishing, opened up their box and thought about using a tried and trusted Black(Speed cop)/Brown or Olive wooly bugger, which lets be honest, generally gets the job done,but as I mentioned earlier, the majority of trout in our still waters over here have seen that same styled fly literally hundreds of times in their short lives. So it got me wondering, why not take certain elements from the design and add my own flavour to an already existing tried and trusted pattern. One of the first of these patterns that has been a game changer for me I called "The Daft Punk". Super easy to tie and dressed with minimal materials.
Take a decent clump of either Dark Brown Marabou or from some grizzly cock saddle the same length as the hook shank and tie on to the back of the hook near the bend. I don't bother with a single strand of krinkle flash on either side of the tail, which most tiers like to add purely because the Ice dub I add in the next step has enough in it not to warrant any more bling!
Twist Slab Slayer "Cookies & Cream" ice dub blend along your thread and then wrap evenly down along the hook shank until 3mm from the eye. (Will talk more in depth about the use of Dubbing in my next post)
Tie on some peacock body braid, snip away tag end and then wrap around the hook shank until a decent head butts up against the eye. Whip finish and add a generous blob of head cement over the body braid.
Take some velcro or your dubbing needle and brush the dubbing until you get some decent lengthed strands of the ice dub and dubbing and comb back along the body toward the tail.
Materials
Hook - size 8 or 10
Thread - Semperfli Nanosilk 12/0
Slab Slayer Ice dub blend - Cookies & Cream
Body Braid - Peacock
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