I did some research on a stocker lake the other day on a mini leach I tied. It landed 3 to 1 over a single bead fly in the same colors. The thing I changed was the bead-I went with a bead chain head which sank quicker and got way more takes. can't wait to fish it on some wild fish! View attachment 48815 View attachment 48816 View attachment 48817 View attachment 48818 View attachment 48819 The red tail is rabbit fur - the one black tail is long black dubbing with red tint. the ribbing is flat small holographic red tape which gives the fly "POP" hook was a #10 2x strong-2x short scud. The first day I used it - well it worked ;-)~
View attachment 48824 View attachment 48825 View attachment 48826 Just tied up a couple of my own of the version. There is a guy on the forum named MrCoachman that ties a very similar pattern in black with brown hackle that I've found to be a very effective pattern. This pattern look deadly. Ira..
These worked for me over the weekend. Beadhead Rickard's stillwater nymphs in olive/rust and olive/orange. View attachment 49062 View attachment 49063 The last one is an experiment inspired by Mark's beadchain eye leeches. View attachment 49061
I used a similar pattern in black red as the last fly that as trout knows did fairly well. Only problem is, now I need to tie more.
Mark after catching many fish on the barrel eyed fly with red tail and balck body with red ribbing, troutpocket and I decided it or at least the style needed a name. We decided on "Barrel Bug". It is unique enough of a pattern that we felt that calling it a leech really didn't describe it well enough. Now all we need to do is start throwing up U-Tube videos on how to tie it and we need to constantly refer to it and before you know it, it will be as famous as a bugger and we will have to deal with debates as to who the originator was.
That reminds me... I need to go dig that thing out of my box and figure out how to copy it. I think it might work.....a little bit.
Am I the only one who can't see any of the attachement pics? I have tried it in both explorer and mozilla and I am logged in....is it just me?
Mike, I will give you two choices for why we (me too) can't see those attachment pics. 1) we are not members of the irafly illuminati 2) they were posted before the board conversion to new format
Mike I'm sure its cause these attachments were from before the forum upgrade so I believe they got lost in the process.
Barrel Bug is a good name for it. Otherwise the basin boys (err..geezers) would call it the bug eyed sprite.
How do you come up with "barrel bug" does it fish like catching fish in a barrel or what? reminds me of a steelhead caddis pattern I developed in the early 80's this guy at the local fly shop kept following me around and sure enough, there was my fly in his shop as the steelhead caddis with his name on it! to say the least it pissed me off. How do you come up with "barrel bug" I would think something like "bloody-dragon" or "bloody mary bug" "bloody holo bug" (for the holograph ribbing!) "deep holo bug" we need more names to pick from and maybe a vote! but I cant call this fly mine, I'm sure someone - like your buddy - has done this before! I too was going through the pics of these threads and couldn't pull up any pics -BUMMER- This is the one your talking about isn't it?
Yes! That is the one. I tied mine with both bead chain eyes and I also tied mine with small silver barrel eyes. I love the catching fish in a barrel idea. I guess bead bug could work. We mostly wanted to give the design a name versus the specific color combination. As for flies showing up in fly shops, there is a certain fly shop in West Yellowstone that one year after I put on a chironomid clinic in front of one of the workers at Hebgen, started selling two patterns identical to the patterns I shared with the worker. They were not named after the worker, and I was not pissed, in fact I was ecstatic.
hey ira, gotta say i love that fly, been knockin the hell out of em with it! no matter what you end up callin it ill make sure anyone who inquires about it knows the true origin
