The Strike-Indicator Booby

Ed Herbst

FOSAF held its first national AGM outside Gauteng in April 2016 and Alan Hobson was their host in Somerset East.

The delegates took some time off to fish Mountain Dam above the town.

Alan takes up the story: “Peter Arderne dead-drifted a bloodworm imitation below a DDD. He took six trout in ten casts and later told me that this is a very effective tactic on his home water, Middelpunt Dam in Gauteng.”

I wanted to create a buoyant, easily-visible fly to anchor a blood worm which had a more realistic silhouette than the DDD.

Catching trout on the dead-drift. Alan Hobson on Mountain Dam in Somerset East

The thought process which led to the StrikeIndicator Booby began in 2013 when Basie Vosloo and I visited the dam above his home on the farm Birkhall in Barkly East.

The veld around the dam literally shimmered with hundreds of dragonflies and I realised there must have been a mass emergence overnight.

Australian fly anglers have long fished this hatch and have developed patterns such as the Cordulid which relies heavily on the silhouette which trout see of the nymph against the night sky as it moves to the shallows to emerge.

The GISS (General Impression of Size and Shape) concept used by birders has always seemed logical to me in fly design terms and what I was looking for was a highly-visible foam rubber version of the Cordulid which could, like the DDD, be used to anchor a bloodworm pattern.

The Veniard Floozy Eyes - developed for booby patterns - tied on a short shank hook like the # 10 Hanak 550BL or the Tiemco 2499SP-BL is one half of the equation. The other half is a strip of Larva Lace foam doubled over to mimic the abdomen of a dragonfly nymph.

There is nothing else on the market as good as this foam. It is soft and has a subtle sheen. I wish local fly fishing shops would stock it.

In-between these two segments, I tied some speckled rubber legs which provide the movement which the DDD lacks.

Some forty years ago Dave Whitlock started putting red nail varnish on the top of his deer hair beetles to make them easier to track during the drift.

Since then we have seen the advent of UV light-cured resins such as Solarez Copper Shimmer which contains orange glitter dust and I coated the top of the foam abdomen to create a sighter.

To make it even easier to see I used a mixture of Solarez red resin mixed with red glitter dust which costs about R7.50 at local craft shops such as P ‘n A.

The author’s Strike Indicator Booby – buoyant and easy to see

Tom Sutcliffe has been using a wind-drifted DDD plus bloodworm for years but warns that, if a barbless hook is used for the bloodworm, you invariably lose the fish on the strike.

Daiichi makes a micro-barbed red hook which it calls the Chironomid 1273 which Frontier in Johannesburg stocks. Alan has found that they were straightening the conventional hooks and 1273's on his blood worm patterns and he now uses the red Daiichi 1153 for this fly, especially on Thrift dam.

Here’s my pattern on this hook.

Step 1 – Coat the hook with superglue and wind on extra-small Semperfli or UTC red wire in spaced turns. Further anchor the wire with a coat of Loon Fluorescing UV Clear Fly Finish which gives the fly a blue glow.

Step 2 – Apply a mixture of Solarez red UV resin mixed with red glitter dust.

We are indebted to Alan Hobson for discovering the important role that predacious diving beetles play in the diet of trout and yellowfish and he recently accompanied Stream-X proprietor Craig Thom and author Duncan Brown to that renowned big trout venue, Thrift Dam near Tarkastad in the Eastern Cape.

The author's bloodworm pattern tied on the Daiichi 1273 hook under UV

The trout were feeding on snails and blood worm but Alan found that they were straightening conven8onal hooks on his blood worm pa;erns and he now uses the heavy wire red Daiichi 1153 for this fly.

To make his foam rubber diving beetle imitations easier to see, Alan has coated the back of the fly with a lurid combination of UV resins and you can see why he calls it the ‘Fried Egg”.

Alan said the combination of the Fried Egg with his version of the time-proven San Juan worm proved as effective on Thrift as it usually does on Mountain Dam at Somerset East.

I was delighted to hear from Alan that Craig Thom now has the agency for the salt water Ahrex hooks which are made in Finland because the NS150 Shrimp Hook is my choice when tying dragon fly nymphs

While GISS-type flies provide new avenues to explore, there is comfort in using a DDD knowing that you are continuing a tradition which started decades ago in the foothills of the KZN Drakensberg.