tying

Vibration Flies

By Jeff Morgan

What do you do when the water's so murky the fish can't see your fly? Check out the flies Jeff Morgan used to outfish the velveeta and stinkbait crowd.

n a recent transcontinental railroad trip, I spent some time flyfishing in the off-color waters of one of the easternmost of our western states, North Dakota.

Flyfishing is not a long-practiced tradition on these waters, and most likely I seemed a novelty to the numerous bait and lure anglers along the banks. This was catfish country, with far more permutations of minnow-cheese-liver-blood baits than fly patterns lining the shelves of the local sport shops.

Finding Food in Murky Waters

In murky waters flies seem an unorthodox choice. However, despite the handicap of my tackle, I was able to catch as many, if not more, fish than most other anglers around me. In three days of fishing, I landed a mixed bag of goldeneye, sauger, walleye, drum, and northern pike. In addition, I had three channel catfish in the 10-15 lb range within feet of the bank, but with a 5-weight rod, riprap banks, fast current, and no net, they all trashed their way to freedom.

The key to fooling such a random array of fish on unconventional gear is understanding how fish feed in turbid conditions. If the water is high and off-collor for a couple of weeks, they still have to eat, but they do so in ways that deviate from their normal behavior. Fish that normally find there prey with visual cues will switch to "feel," via their vibration-sensitive lateral lines. The same sense of vibration that these Heartland channel catfish used to hone in on my big streamers is the same one (albeit less finely-tuned) used by our Western trout and smallmouth bass when our waters have an extended period of murky conditions.

Creating Vibration in Flies

Anglers can create vibration in different ways. One is with the rod tip, using sporadic jerks to make the fly dart and dance in the water. Spinning anglers tend to use this technique more than fly anglers; our water-resistant lines and flexible rods mollify much of the action we try to incorporate. Fly anglers prefer to strip line to add action to the fly. Both long and slow pulls or very short, rapid strips create different sonic effects, but because they don't move the fly through the water too quickly, fish have time to sense their action and move towards the fly.

Another way to create vibration is through fly pattern design. However, in the quest to design more visually appealing patterns, many tiers forget that vibration can be far more important than color, size, and profile. On my recent trip, non-vibration patterns (Zonkers, standard Woolly Buggers, and larger marabou-based streamers such as the Appetizer) caught almost no fish.

The best way to create vibration is through bulk. Tiers should avoid bulk under most circumstances, since sight-orientated feeding fish tend to reject unnaturally obese imitations. But when vibration is the goal, bulk is good. I like to focus the bulk at the head of the fly because it keeps the fly proportionately similar to bullheads and sculpins, which have large heads compared to their bodies.

A large Matuka-style wing or flowing rabbit strip can also create vibration. Stiff saddle hackle--a material normally detested for its lack of motion--can be effective in a vibration-creating pattern, especially on Woolly Buggers.

While a big head and bulky body is the easy way to create vibration, other tying techniques have their virtues. Articulated bodies (e.g., Articulated Leech) can be effective, though it is important to have some bulk on the rear hook and a flexible connection between the two hooks in order to encourage movement. Many British "lures" now incorporate stiff plastic bills (like a crankbait) or soft plastic grub-style and shad-style tails.

New Patterns

The Lainey Jane is a variant of the Green Butt Monkey, an East Coast streamer noted in Schollmeyer and Leeson's Trout Flies of the East. The main virtue of this fly is its extremely large head and pectoral fins, which displace far more water than the standard Muddler Minnow or sculpin imitation. This allows fish to feel the fly before they could see it. The hot-spot of the marabou tail allows the fly to quickly stand out, unlike a uniformly dark or light fly. The long rabbit tail swings in the current, dancing around with the dips and darts propelled by the large head.

My favorite color schemes for this fly are "Oakland Raider" (black head and rabbit, white marabou tail) and "Oregon Duck" (olive head and rabbit, chartreuse marabou tail). This has long been my most effective vibration fly, though only recently named for a good friend who lives near the appropriately-named Little Muddy River in North Dakota.

The Hi-Vibe Woolly Bugger is simply a thick, reversed-hackle Woolly Bugger tied with a big spun-wool head. The fly can also be tied with a large spun deer-hair head, which adds more buoyancy and keeps the fly farther from the bottom--usually not a good technique for vibration-feeding fish which tend to hang near the bottom. However, by using deer hair and clipping it in a Dahlberg Diver style, the fly can "dive" and wiggle seductively like a crankbait in the current.

The reversed-hackle can cause this pattern to spin. One can either omit the hackle or add a small swivel between the tapered leader and the tippet.

The Virtue of Patience

When fishing vibration flies it is important to be patient. Unlike visual feeders that will move several feet to take a swipe at a large morsel of food, vibration-feeders need time to locate the source of vibrations in a confusion of conflicting currents. Allow the fly to swing down and hang in the current for quite a while before stripping it in for another cast. Simply letting a vibration fly hang in the current, jigging it occasionally, and swinging it a few feet at a time can be a boring but extraordinarily effective technique for vibration-feeding fish.

Jeff Morgan has written many articles for Westfly, mostly on entomology and fly tying. He is the author of An Angler's Guide to the Oregon Cascades and Small Stream Fly Fishing. Jeff is currently a graduate student at Stanford University, where he is finishing his PhD in History.

Uploaded 08/02/2004.

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Lainey Jane

Hi-Vibe Woolly Bugger