Bird Fur Dirt Dart
I fish a lot streamers in my quest for larger trout, and spend hours combining materials to create productive and lifelike flies. Always looking to add new patterns to my arsenal, and frequently searching for easier and less time-consuming ways to round out my fly boxes, I recently stumbled upon a product called Bird Fur from Whiting Farms. The company describes it as a feather combining the characteristics of marabou and craft fur. What I found was a multidimensional feather with inherent movement that produces the illusion of bulk at rest, and a streamlined silhouette when pulled through the water. This pulsating action breathes life into the fly and helps imitate many different prey species. Apart from its fishy attributes, Bird Fur’s greatest asset may be its low cost—for $6 you get a half cape that produces dozens of flies.
The Housatonic River has robust populations of smallmouth bass, holdover brown trout, and the occasional northern pike, which all feed heavily on forage fish. My experience on the river has shown that crayfish are a dietary staple for these large predators, so I started with crayfish imitations and various forms of baitfish streamers for my original Bird Fur creations.
While brainstorming my new fly design, I wanted to incorporate two attributes important to most streamers. I wanted the fly to push water and send out vibrations to attract fish, and it had to be ambiguous enough to trigger a broad predatory response. Most important, I wanted it to take five minutes or less to tie.
I started with a nickel-plated popper hook and chose a large Whiting Farms Woolly Bugger hackle for the head. The hackle is soft enough to pulsate but stiff enough to still push water while stripped. When paused, the fly retains its shape. The short-shank hook has increased my streamer hooking ratios because most large, aggressive fish aim for the head when they attack.
The tying sequence is simple: Start at the hook bend with shorter Bird Fur feathers on either side of the shank; continue up the hook shank with consecutive hackles—both on the top and the bottom—and use longer pieces as you get closer to the hook eye. When you get to about a quarter of a shank length behind the hook eye, tie in two large bugger hackles, wind them to the eye, tie a neat thread head, and whip-finish.
When I open a new Bird Fur package I pick the cape apart and separate the plumage. The base feathers are shorter and more like marabou. As you get to the top of the cape, the feathers are longer—similar to marabou at the base and more like craft fur at their tips. In some capes the top plumage can reach lengths of 8 to 10 inches.
I place the smaller feathers in a Ziploc bag and label them as tailing pieces. I then take the middle plumage—those feathers in the 3- to 6-inch range—and label them as body pieces. The rest of the pelt, those feathers longer than 6 inches, I keep in the original package for my pike and saltwater flies.
For bigger streamers, use 3-inch plumage at the hook bend and add longer lengths as you reach the hook eye. On average, I fish 3- to 4-inch patterns, but I’ve had success with 5- to 6-inch flies—and for pike I haven’t found anything too big.
Techniques
In optimum trout temperature ranges, 45 to 65 degrees F., I like to fish the Bird Fur Dirt Dart aggressively on a 150- or 200-grain integrated-head line. I cast slightly upstream and strip the fly aggressively through a run while maintaining a slight belly in the line and following the fly’s path downstream with my rod tip. In these conditions, I target current seams, structure, rocks, drop-offs, deadfalls, anywhere fish wait to ambush prey.
In colder water, I focus on slower seams and tailouts and use a down-and-across Atlantic-salmon or steelhead swing. Another useful coldwater technique is the same approach with short 2- to 4-inch strips in a pause, strip, strip, pause cadence. Hang on—the strikes are aggressive.
For smallmouth, the most effective retrieve is Bob Clouser’s strip-and-pause technique, which mimics the movement of an injured baitfish. Begin with the tip of the rod pointed at the water’s surface, in direct line with the fly. Make long, controlled strips followed by distinct pauses. Clouser varies the length of the strip or pull, but the fly should move at least 6 inches at a time. The takes are often on the pause, and visual because the fly line straightens and starts to swim away. [See “Susquehanna Strip” by Bob Clouser in the Feb. 2007 issue. The Editor.]
For most of my Housatonic fishing, effective Bird Fur colors are brown and olive. I also have good luck with black and white, and for high- and dirty-water conditions, yellow or chartreuse patterns are the ticket. I have played around extensively with multicolored patterns, and they have their moments as well.
Putting It to the Test
I gave the fly its initial critique on a mild February day. The flow was 2,700 cfs on the Housy, high but clear, and we did a short float from Cellar Hole to the park. My first shot into the water with the fly showed that when left hanging in the current, the fibers pulsed and undulated freely. When stripped, it became streamlined and took on shapes reminiscent of fleeing baitfish, crayfish, or leeches.
By the end of the short float, I managed to land a fat brown trout, which took the fly on a slow downstream swing. The take was strong and aggressive. This wasn’t the only strike I had that day—it was the last of nine. When I went home that night I switched to the short-shank hook, and the recipe has stuck ever since.
Rich Strolis is a Housatonic and Farmington river guide based in Simsbury, Connecticut.Contact him at strolis12@mac.com.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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