The Best Fly You May Have Never Used

Jeff “Dredger” Durniak

Unicoi Outfitters

Want a great pattern that’s easy to tie, easy to fish, and deadly on river predators from trout to bass?  Then sit back and enjoy the tale of “Secret Weapon #1.”

Back in my former career, our division hosted the annual meeting of southeastern wildlife agency trout biologists at Unicoi State Park.  When Trout Committee business concluded, our guests had a special treat waiting on them: guided trout fishing on local waters with some of my friends, the best volunteer fishing guides from GA Trout Unlimited.

I had paired up Missouri DNR’s Mike Kruse with The Ole Rabunite, better known as Rabun TU founder Doug Adams, for an afternoon on the Dukes Creek trophy stream. It had rained the night before and stained the stream, so they quickly departed.

When they returned to the lodge for the evening meal, Kruse sported a big smile while Adams had bug eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. The Ole Rabunite explained that Mike had laid out the big rainbows on his own, home-made fly pattern, the Mike’s Mohair Leech. He said the recipe was on his agency’s website.  Link:  https://www.missouritrout.com/mikesmohairleech.htm

We looked it up and then cooked it up ourselves. Lo and behold, it worked magically!  It was a slinky woolly bugger.  We held the secret weapon close for a while (actually a long while), and perfected its use on both stream trout and river bass; olive and small (#10) for clear water, big (#6 or 8), and black for dingy water, and huge and black  (#4) for river bass. It worked dead-drifted, stripped, and even as a dropper behind Craig Riendeau’s Hairy Fodder crawdad fly. It took credit for countless Dukes Creek trophies, hefty trout from the Southeast’s Delayed Harvest streams, upper Hooch shoalies pushing 20 inches, countless NC smallies, my first big Yellowstone Park brown, and an unexpected monster brown from the Smokies that nosed close to 22 inches.

When we were asked how we were catching our biguns, we few Rabunites in-the-know dutifully replied, “I don’t believe I said.” But, after a while, the guilt set in and we finally started fessing up. I shared the love on North Georgia Trout Online’s forum around 2007, via a post called “Secret Weapon #1.”  Soon leeches of various sizes, shades, and beadheads started showing up in fly boxes and trouting reports across north GA.

If you haven’t tried one yet, you should. And then pass it on to that rookie angler beside you. He or she will catch more fish, think you’re a Pro, and soon join your conservation army.  

If it wasn’t for the benevolence of Mike Kruse and Doug Adams, I might have missed out on this secret weapon. Instead, our trio has enjoyed it and we now pass it on to you. Give it a try, pass one to a buddy, and have some fun while you adopt and conserve your favorite “home” waters.  Good luck. Don’t forget that good buddy, armed with a net and a camera!

Dukes Creek in the Rain

Sunday after church, with high anticipation because of the rain, I met up with "The Dredger" who was fishing Section 1 on Dukes Creek. It turns out the fishing had been slower than expected that morning because the water was too muddy (a rare occurrence on Dukes but we did get a lot of rain this weekend). He had only landed a couple of smaller fish but had broken off two big ones that morning. By the time I got there, Section 1 was beginning to clear just a little but at least 5 other anglers were staking out different stretches of it so we decided to go down to the middle of Section 4 and fish up 3. Unfortunately, the water didn't begin to clear at all down low until around 3 PM so the slow fishing continued there also. We did manage to catch about 15 fish between us in the four hours we fished and most of them were good solid fish with a couple of twenty inchers, a couple of 17's and 15's. All rainbows this trip. Off-color water is usually brown trout time but today it just didn't happen. A couple of fish were caught on San Juan Worms and one on a Power Egg but everything else was on big ugly black leech patterns (with more split shot than should be legal). In one hole, I counted 9 flies lost on the bottom between the two of us as we played tag-team while tying on new rigs. It was fun though. High sticking those heavily weighted flies just a few feet from where we were standing. Catching fish in the same run the other guy just fished with no luck (both of us). And I must say that the Simms Vibram soled boots performed great in that heavy water. Sunday afternoon was beautiful after it stopped raining. And the catching was just good enough to bring lots of laughter, hootin' and hollerin'.