Spring should be here shortly on the edge of the Hill Country here in Texas and been thinking of big blue gill and rios. With those fish in mind I sat down at the bench and tied up some damsels with a furled body and a few jumbo johns. Used to tie a mess of jumbo johns for fishing the Arkansas River in Colorado in pocket water and eddies during runoff and used to some effect on big Rios and redbreasts here last summer hopefully they work here during high water too. Damsels are probably more wishful thinking as I don't think they will be out until at least May. The style I did was effective on the bigger lakes in Colorado as well as my little brookie ponds on the side of Pikes Peak and Sheep Mountain.

Those are furled tails I make. I saw a tying video on the jeezus lizard bass fly which has a long fat furled tail and I did a few of those flies for big browns in the Dream Stream that were eating big crawfish. Then I got to thinking about the applications furling a tail could have. On the ones pictured I also add a very, very scant amount of thickened Sally Hansen's to the thread before furling them up so they will have some rigidness to make that curl. I have used that style of furled body on flies as small as #24 BWOs and #20 Sulphur duns.

Creek panfish here especially the Rio Grande cichlids like nymphs as do the redbreasts. Water is uber clear on many of these creeks I have been fishing and light tippet the key. I even dropped as low as 4x fluoro a couple of times last year. Which is kind of funny considering in Colorado pitching big nymphs in the spring I used 3x or bigger.

Nice! Harry Murray speaks of how aggressive smallmouth feed on damsel adults in summer.

I’ve been tying damsel nymphs after reading an article about how abundant a food source they are for warm water species. All those years ago, catching loads of crappie on tiny jigs, thinking I was imitating minnows when in reality, a great deal of their diet was damsel fly nymphs.

I also found big stimulators worked well for damsels and dragon flies too. The ones I tied today are on a #8 as they are the biggest hooks I have on hand with hackle to match but have gone as high as #2. On a stimi hook because of the slight hook gap I go with a much smaller hackle as the body material pushes it out to meet what is required to float it correctly. I tie them with and without rubber legs and prefer round rubber.

That pattern looks good simple to tie and low material count.

I have some spoons tied up but they are on a #2 mustad 34007. I imagine they will do well on the whitebass but would like to ties some up in #6 or #8 for crappie and creek bass. The little creek I fish a bunch has spotted bass and either tiny or big largemouth there seems to be a large gap in age classes. Still need to do some more of those damsels but in a parachute style. I actually prefer the parachute as I can see the post/wing better.

Those look good bet the bass and 'gills love em.

Spring is springing here on the coast. The water oaks are getting leaves, live oaks are shedding theirs. LMB are shallowing up. Get those good looking ties ready! Spring is here and moving north.