Dahlberg diver

 

When bass are feeding on big insects like Cicadas and Hoppers that crash onto the water they also become susceptible to large noisy and obvious flies like Dahlberg Divers cast around their structure or twitched across the surface. At other times they just have a whack at these big flies because there intruding into their domain. In either case the strikes and hook ups can be spectacular.

Materials

Hook Thread Tail Head & body Eyes
Size 2 to 4 3/0 or stronger of colour to suit dressing Woolly bugger type tail + outer hackles Clipped deer hair Stick on rattle eyes (optional)

Process

A
  1. Tie in a Dahlberg Diver style tail at the bend of the hook.

B
  1. When you look at the fly from above the Woolly Bugger type tail with the hackles on each side should look symmetrical like this.

C
  1. The body of the fly is made of spun deer hair that will later be trimmed into shape.

D
  1. Tie, spin and stack successive bunches of spun deer hair along the hook shank.
  2. Each time you tie a bunch of deer hair in press it back toward the bend of the hook.
  3. The tighter the deer hair is stacked against the previous bunch of deer hair the more buoyant will be the finished fly.
  4. If you interpose deer hair of a different colour you can build a banded or patterned fly.

E
  1. On this fly I used two bunches of yellow followed by one bunch of brown repeated three times. A total of nine bunches of deer hair.
  2. When the tightly stacked deer hair reaches the eye of the hook tie your thread off.

F
  1. Trim the excess thread.
  2. Using a sharp blade or a sharp pair of scissors trim the deer hair to shape.
  3. On this fly I have trimmed the leading deer hair into a cone shape that finishes half way through the first bunch of contrasting deer hair that was tied in.

G
  1. The last third of the deer hair has been trimmed into a neat collar. The radius of the collar is the same as the gape of the hook.
  2. Apply head cement to the thread and to the tightly trimmed front section of the deer hair.



Last Updated: December 31, 2010
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Categories: Bass, EP's, perch and saratoga flies, Flies, Other species, Saltwater - tropical
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