Salmon Fly Rope

Salmon Fly Rope in-stock, no sales tax - $50 orders ship free in USA.

Bullet Head Salon Fly

Salmon Fly Rope
In 1981 Ed Henry (who at the time was a guide on the Deschutes River) showed us a unique salmon fly pattern. Up to that point all the Salmon Fly patterns we had seen had bodies of yarn or dubbing wrapped directly on the hook shank.  This one had a body that was separated from the hook; being only attached at the front of the fly. This gave the fly a very life-like appearance. However, these flies were very time consuming to tie because the extended body was constructed from poly-yarn braided on a needle.  Patty Barnes had been building some plant-hangers for our shop from orange polypropylene macramé cord. It was the same color and diameter as Ed's fly. I burnt the end of the rope with a cigarette lighter. The rope instantly fused together.  When trimmed to length we had a Salmon Fly body.  It was much faster than braiding a body on a needle.  The original flies and the copies made

from rope were bright orange, and they caught a lot of fish.  A couple of years later, we found that a fly tied with a burnt orange body caught more fish because it more closely matched the color of the real insects.

Bullet Head Salmon Fly
Around 1990 Dick Bushnell showed us the current version of the Bullet Head Salmon Fly.  He and his buddies had been playing around with, and improving our Bullet Head Salmon fly. Dick leased the cabin, directly below the Rereg dam on the Deschutes River; a place loaded with very large Redsides. The pool in front of the cabin probably provides the best Slamon Fly hatch fishing in the world.  That gave Dick lots of time to study how fish reacted to a variety of Salmon

Fly patterns.  Their fly sported black rubber legs and strands of orange Krystal Flash in the wing.  We copied the improvements and the fly has remained about the same ever since.  It is still very productive.