toad fly...

[kyle-J]

Stephen, i tied up something very similar towards the end of last year. I was just messing around at the time. Used marrabou for the tail and wool for the head. Done in olive, looked great, BUT the problem was it literally sat ontop of the water (fished it a few times at spot X) so i didnt think it would work too well. Maybe a few minor mods and a little more weight should do the trick.

I must say i really do like the idea of Marrabou for tail material, awsome movement!!!

[swsmith]

any chance of doing a copy for me...hint hint wink wink

Im sorry my friend....i dont partake in those illegal acts....

[swsmith]

Tied up a couple of these this afternoon....couple of problems....

1)dont think my marabou was long enough for the tails..
2)Dont think i had the correct material for the body....

Either way it didnt come out to bad....tied unweighted...weighted with lead wire wraps and weighed with dumbell eyes....

On all occasions it swam better when stripped on a relatively fast single hand strip.......

I also think you need a sh*t load of marabou to get that movement in the tail....or maybe im useing the wrong marabou....i dont know

conclusion:an ok fly but wouldnt be my first choice to tye on....

[deewy]

then you must come join us at the next fly tying and bring the dvd along, then we can all sit and drool while we try to tie a fly.

we get crap marrabou here in SA and as far as I know, they tie in the whole feather as some off those toads can be about 4" long or 100mm for the guys with the maths problem. I have seen this patern tied with zonker tails and palmered zonker collars and then the merkin boddy. And according to the experts the fly works the best with a zonker tail and marrabou collar.

I still think this fly can produce the results, and I think the cob will love then.

[swsmith]

i tied in whole lenghts of about 3inches for the tail.......still on the feather ...i dont know how they get that pulsating action out of the marabou ?

[deewy]

they also recommend to wiggle the rod tip when the fly is static in the water column to give it more life, try one with zo nker and see what happens.

I was also thinking of beadchain eyes, not heavy at all.

steven, how did you do the Body, I sukkel to tie that merkin style.

[LeRoy]

Steve,

I don't wanna tell you what you already know, but if I understand you correctly, this could help :

Look at the marabou in the picture, that's what you're looking for if you want to tie marabou tails. You don't really want to tie in whole feathers for your tails. Strip the plumes off the stem of the feather, bunch them up and tie that in (like a wooly bugger tail, I'm sure I don't have to explain). That can help with the undulating action. You'll be lucky if you find marabou with long enough plumes to make a three inch tail, though.
As Deewy said, try a zonker strip tail. Then you can tie in a whole marabou feather, and form a collar around the zonker by palmering it forward one or two turns. Then build your merkin body. I also stole a pic from another site in which it looks like the body could have been made from something like SF Blend.. could have a nice effect on larger toads?

Only thing about zonker tails (as you saw when you were here, Steve..) is that short striking fishies love ripping them off. So you'll have to look for strips with a pretty thick hide, and cut a little wider than usual, which will help keep it secure at the tie-in point.

That's just my 2c, don't know if it will buy the bread..

[swsmith]

.

steven, how did you do the Body, I sukkel to tie that merkin style.[/QUOTE]

i used some material i got from sean quite a while ago....i dont think its the right stuff but it worked ok.its difficult to tie cos you end up trying to avoid wrapping the section you just did.maybe clip[ that part back with a peg....

leroy....i tried both ways but as you say i dont think our marabou is long enough.all i know is you must have to tie in a k*k house full to get that action.......

[Scythe]

Not to hijack the thread, but:

i personaaly am sold on the sempler for kob...im going as far as saying that it has the best action of any fly i have seen so far....

Me too ! I tried experimenting with a grey/chinchilla & grizzly semper in the EC on my last outing, but the Kob simply weren't where they were in previous year and the baities confirmed this by blanking along with me, so I couldn't really test this theory.

Have you picked up any on the semper ?

[swsmith]

Ive only caught kob on clousers.....and the reason for that is that i didnt fish any semplers.its only recently that ive tied up a few and i can honestly say that it has the best action ive seen so far.it will be my first choice fly when i target them later this year again.......