The Almighty Sex Dungeon

This weeks tying segment will be dedicated to what is quickly becoming one of my favorite big fish flies. The Sex Dungeon (originally tied by Kelly Galloup) is one of the best articulated streamer patterns. Kelly originally got the idea for this fly from a classic gear plug known as the broke-back Rapala. The sex dungeon's undulating action and movement in the water are what make this fly deadly. Based on what Kelly describes as "predator theory," this fly will instinctively get the hogs to slam it. In the short time period I've been fishing this fly, I've managed to get some of my largest fish of the season. Daniel bagged his biggest rainbow to date, a nice 22-23" thick rainbow, on an olive sex dungeon (see photo above). Although, that being said, the little guys still sometimes don't realize what they chase down and this fly will get quite a few average sized fish too. Anyway, let's get to tying!

Materials
Hook: Tiemco 5263 #2 (Front) & #4 (Rear)
Thread: Danville 210 Denier, Olive
Tail: Olive Marabou & Olive Krystal Flash
Body: Medium Olive Ice Chenille
Hackle: Barred Olive Schlappen
Legs: Barred Crazy Legs, Olive/Green Flake
Articulated Connection: Berkeley Fireline 30lb test, Small red glass bead
Head: Deer Hair, Olive
Eyes: Large Pseudo Eyes, Yellow
Special Tools: Double edged razor blade

1. Put the rear hook in the vice and tie in a tuff of marabou for the tail.


2. Tie in some strands of krystal flash on each side of the tail. Tie in the schlappen feather and ice chenille at the tie in point.


3. Wrap the chenille forward. Leave some room to tie in the legs.


4. Palmer the schlappen forward. Tie in the legs at the head of the fly.


5. Remove the rear hook and put the front hook in the vice. Loop the rear hook and bead with the Fireline and tie in. Make sure to double back the Fireline to prevent it from coming loose. Also, leave about 40% of shank up by the eye free to make the head.


6. Repeat the steps from the rear hook except for the tail, but make sure to still leave that room for the head. Tie in the the eyes under the hook shank as well.


7. With 3 wraps of thread, spin in the deer hair collar.


8. Still with the thread behind the eyes, tie in another clump of deer hair. This clump shouldn't spin and remain mostly on top of the hook shank. Advance the thread in front of the eyes and spin in one last clump of deer hair. Next, just whip finish at the hook eye.


9. With a double edged razor blade shave a rounded head with a flat underside.


10. Closer view from the front of the head.


11. The finished Sex Dungeon!


Charlie Craven (of Charlie's Fly Box) also has a variation of this fly. Not liking the gap between the hooks, Charlie ties a variation of this fly with rabbit strips to close that gap. Here's my tie of Charlie's variation in orange.


Stay fly,
T

Tying the Ska-opper (Steelhead Popper)

*First off, special thanks to everyone who checked out and viewed our video, Central Valley Bass'n on the Fly! We recently just hit 1,000 views and as of this post, we are at 1,012! This is our first video to break the 1,000 views mark and we're hoping to have many more in the future!

Next in the GSF tying segments, I'll be twisting up a Ska-opper. Developed for summer-run steelhead on the North Umpqua by Scott Howell, the Ska-opper is one of those patterns that is kind of a cross between a few flies. It's basically a little bit of a muddler, gurgler, and a bass popper. Made famous in Skagit Master 2, this fly can definitely elicit some aggressive takes from some pissed off steelhead! As a side note, when I first was going through the process of tying this pattern myself, I noticed that the commercialized versions are tied slightly differently than how Scott ties them in Skagit Master 2. That being said, I follow the pattern tied in the movie.

Materials
Hook: Tiemco 300 Size 6
Thread: Danville 210 Denier, Tan
Tail: Root Beer Krystal Flash
Tag: Gold Tinsel
Body: Polypro Yarn, Orange
Legs: Grizzly barred Medium Round, Neon Orange
Throat: Guinea, Orange
Head: Deer Hair
Overbody: 2mm Foam, Brown
Special tools: Double edged razor blade (found at any small drug store)

1. Tie in the tinsel tag. Start wrapping the tag where the hook point begins. Next, tie in the krystal flash at about the 60% mark. Clip it so it extends just a bit past the bend of the hook.


2. Cut out a v-shaped piece of foam like this.


3. At about the 25% mark, tie in the foam and continue back to the tie in point at the 60% mark. Do the same for the yarn as well.


4. Tie in the legs with figure 8 wraps. Have one just ahead of the tie in point and one at about the 30% mark.


5. Wrap the yarn forward and tie it off at the 25% mark.


6. Tie in a guinea feather and wrap it in to create the throat.


7. These next steps are the trickiest part of the fly to get right. Stack a clump of deer hair and make two wraps around the hair as if you were spinning it in, but instead of letting go and letting it spin, just hold on to the hair. From there, pull the butt ends of the hair downward, leaving the pointed tips up. Pack the hair and get ready for another clump.


8. Tie in 2 more clumps the same way.


9. Invert the vise and take one last clump and clip the tips off. Tie it in the same way as before but on the bottom of the hook shank.


10. Return the vise to the upright position and cut a small path down the middle of the fly for the foam to rest on.


11. Pull the foam over and tie off.


12. Next is the tedious part. Take the fly out of the vise and start shaving it. The easiest way to get the cleanest looking head is to use a double-edged razor blade. Bend the blade to get that nice curved head. Then just use scissors to cut the stubborn butt ends out of the way. The goal is to create the round head with a little bit of the deer hair pointing out the back of the fly like wings. Be careful also with the razor not to cut off the guinea or the legs!


13. When the hair is all cut and shaved the underside of the fly should look like this.


14. The finished Ska-opper!


For more info on this fly and how to fish it, check out Skagit Master 2!

Stay fly
T

Tying the Morrish Medusa

I've been bitten by the steelhead bug and I have a feeling there is no cure. I managed to hook and land my first one a few months ago and on the swing no less! 2012 has been pretty dry so far but there is a decent sized storm looming on the horizon. Hopefully this will push some large adults into the coastal river systems! Anyways, I've been stocking my fly box with some steelhead patterns and here is one I've added tonight.

The Morrish Medush (Originally tied by Ken Morrish)
Hook: 25mm Waddington Shank with a size 1 octopus trailer (joined with 30lb Berkeley Fireline)
Thread: 6/0 Black
Tail: Red Krystal Flash
Body: Black ice chenille
Wing: Black rabbit strip and three strands on each side of black ostrich
Overwing: Grizzly saddle hackles
Collar: Red Marabou
Eyes: Large lead eyes
Head: Black rabbit strip fibers spun in a dubbing loop

1. Tie in a clump of krystal flash at the rear of the shank. The flash should extend to the end of the trailer hook.


2. This step I just added to cover the shank. Tie in and wrap some black ice chenille and wrap to the 50% point on the shank.


3. Tie in a black rabbit strip directly on top of the shank. Make sure the rabbit strip extends slightly past the trailer hook. Also I forgot to tie in the lead eyes at the beginning. Just tie those in as well in a figure 8 pattern under the hook shank.


4. Then add 3 black ostrich hurls to each side of the shank.


5. Next, tie in the grizzly hackle overwing. One hackle goes on each side. Make sure the hackles extend to about the length of the rabbit strip.


6. The marabou is next. You can either wrap the marabou collar in or just tie in a clump on top and one on bottom like I did here.


7. The hardest part of this fly is next. Create a dubbing loop and insert a black rabbit strip with the leather still on it. Then carefully cut off the leather and spin just the rabbit hair in the dubbing loop.


8. Finally just palmer the rabbit hair in with some turns in back, figure 8 through the lead eyes, and make a few turns at the head. Whip finish and voila! The finished fly! (Note: The original pattern uses hen saddle hackles as fins on the both sides of the fly but I chose to just leave those out)


As always.....stay fly

Opening Day on the Lower Valley Rivers!

My dad and I jump started 2012 on the Merced River by floating from the Crocker Huffman dam all the way to Snelling Road. Daniel and I had done this float a few years back and I was anxious to see some of the spots not accessible from the road again. Within 5 minutes of wetting the line, Dad was into a fish, and that fish set the tempo for the rest of the day. Egg/glow bug/sucker spawn patterns seemed to be the ticket for us. Only 1 fish came on a different fly. With catching great numbers of fish typically means a lot of smaller fish in a general sense, but I did manage to nab a nice healthy 18 incher too! All in all it was a great day to get out and fish with my dad. We don't get out there together as often as we used to but it's definitely special to me when we do. I would recommend this float to anyone with a smaller pontoon and a general sense of how to navigate a bit of whitewater. The rapids are nothing extreme by any sense of the word but can definitely put you in a bad position if you are unsure of what you are doing. There are a lot of great wild fish in that section of river!

Stay fly

The Bass'n Video!

For those who haven't seen it already! Featured on The Orvis blog and Fly Fishing for Bass! This video is a compilation of the GSF crew and our bassing adventures this past year. All of it was shot with GoPro video cameras and was only shot on small waters in the Central Valley in CA. No Delta. No Reservoirs. We basically took Google Maps and searched out small bodies of water within an hour of home and went at it and this is what we came up with. Enjoy and Stay Fly!

Vis-a-dun does WORK

I fished up on one of our valley rivers yesterday. Let's just say it was one of those days where everything didn't quite go as planned. I did not plan on fishing a river. I did not plan on there being a hole in my float tube. Lastly, I did not plan on catching 15+ healthy sized bows on dry flies!!! I got lucky and happened upon a hatch coming off at around 1:00 yesterday afternoon and actually had a fly that matched close enough. All day I had be stripping streamers/watching the bobicator and only had one fish to boot. Then, out of no where, a ton of rainbows started porpoising at the end of this tail out I was fishing. I quickly noticed some duns fluttering about (which I think were BWO's) and switched out my nymph rig to a 9' 6x leader with a #18 BWO Vis-a-dun and a BWO emerger dropper. I proceeded to make a nice first cast slightly upstream, got a good drift, and BAM! Fish on! For a solid 45 minutes the fish were keyed in and I was catching fish after fish. It was quite possibly some of the best dry fly action I've ever had on a valley river.

I've always been a believer in John Barr's flies. With a classic such as the Copper John, it's hard to not love his flies. I have now tied every fly in his book, but have yet to catch fish on every fly. The Vis-a-dun was one of those flies. I love throwing just a simple parachute Adams in most dry fly situations, but for whatever reason, yesterday I grabbed a vis-a-dun. Thankfully, to my surprise, the fish couldn't say no! I shot some video of the action yesterday and I'm thinking about maybe doing a quick time-lapse movie of tying the Vis-a-dun, so check back in a few days.

See ya on the water,
T

Old Man Winter

Winter is definitely upon us. Rain, fog, wind, and cold ass mornings. He tried to stay away as long as possible but it was inevitable. Old man winter is here. With the lower waterways closed til Jan 1st we must search out other places to sling some line. Trout are still biting and if you can get to one of the open rivers and withstand freezing your ass off, hit it up. Browns are on the move to spawn and the Rainbows are eager slam something. Throw big buggy buggers and baitfish patterns down deep or go with a super small baetis pattern and you will be in the fish.

Striper season is near but not quite on it yet. Yes there have been some decent bass caught recently, check out Pats and Patricks nice keepers above, but for the majority the bite hasn't been good. I was supposed to go on a trip with Dan Blanton tomorrow on the Delta in search of a lunker but he decided that it would be better to wait a couple of weeks for better weather and better fishing. He says its been down right horrible out there. Anyway when that happens I will post up some video and pics from the day and hopefully land me a fatty.

So brave the cold morning, navigate through the fog and get out there and find those fish. Most believe fishing stops in oct and picks back up in the spring but I feel thats when it gets good. This is the time for the bigg'ns to be caught so man up and get out there.