So last night I was tying up some crawdads that use dumbell eyes to get the fly to ride hook point up. Well I don't have any but while down in my work area I saw my tin of air rifle pellets.

Tied on pretty well, and look halfway decent, especially considering they are $15 for 500

Bob

Actually I think I used Benjamin brand

I'll give a report after I get them out. I know what you are saying, totally makes sense. I just don't know how big of a deal it will be for a crawdad. Maybe in a clouser it might be more pronounced, but then again, it may be beneficial for the clouser to swim a bit cockeyed as it would better replicate an easy target?

Bob

Used as a jig motion on a crawdad it might even improve the motion, if it steers the fly just a bit as it settles with out overturning it. Waiting on a report with pictures of the fly and fish together.

Tested out the flies yesterday. They actually seemed to swim well, the slight offbalance didn't affect the movement. Only issue was that a 22 caliber pellet is more of an 8-9 wt fly, so my 5wt wasn't really up to the task. I'll dig around for some .177 pellets downstairs and tie a few more, see if those work better for the 5-7 wt range.

Bob

Same here, same calibers. Im embarassed to say how many air rifles I have. (i actually do not know)

Great idea on the crawdad eyes.

i've got a variety of dumbbell eyes but usually just tie my bluegill clousers with lead wire and white plastic bead chain eyes. i don't worry about hook point up at all. my flies tie inexpensively, maybe 0.15 -0.25 each.