Coho fly primer - a revisit

With the issue of snagging/foul hooking at the forefront of everyone's minds again with the recent sockeye fishery, I decided to highlight a few ways which a similar fly can be tied to reduce the chances of snagging fish on the swing when fishing with heavy tips or when fish are heavily stacked up.  As the chum start showing up in numbers over the next few weeks this becomes particularly relevant.

Recall this fly, tied in a standard way, my favorite coho pattern.  It runs hook point down which is fine for casting and retrieving for coho or chum salmon in relatively slow water, but it can also easily foul hook a fish when fished on the swing.

A simple modification in the way that the pattern is tied can address this issue.  Instead of a normal brass or tungsten bead, substitute a set of hourglass eyes tied along the top of the hook shank.  This will cause the fly to run hook point up and greatly reduce your chance to foul hook fish in most situations.

When using hourglass eyes I prefer to use a straight eye style of hook but other than that no further changes are necessary.  For a budget hook I have been using the new Mustad Signature series Big Game C70SD in size 4 and 6.  The hooks are sharp and strong and relatively cheap.   For size 6 hooks a 1/8" set of eyes is appropriate (Superfly extra small size).  I do not like overly heavy flies so I try to get away with the smallest set of eyes possible that will make the hook ride hook point up.  This technique comes from clouser type flies but it can be applied to most if not all patterns you will chuck for salmon in moving water.  I first saw it applied to flies beyond clousers last year while fly fishing for the heavily stacked pink salmon in the Vedder river in September.

You can also take this one step further and substitute your regular hook selection with a circle hook.  This may be slightly more expensive but for situations where they are lots of big chum or thickly stacked pink salmon it may make your fishing experience more enjoyable.

http://www.mustad.no/products/premium/signature/signature_catl/c71sss_frs.htm

Cheers,

J