BOUNCER FLIES

BEAD-BELLY BOUNCERS

A new construction method that can make exciting new patterns, and will improve many old favorite flies.

This new style of fly gets down to the bottom, but seldom snags, due to its springy keel, which keeps the hook point up and bounces the fly out of harm's way. In addition, the beads strung along the keel click together and against the bottom, sending out dinner signals to the fish. This bouncing, talking keel structure can be adapted to many fly patterns, including zonkers, crawdads, crabs, sculpins and Charlies—and to many other patterns not usually thought of as bottom flies, like buggers, deceivers, scuds, tube flies and even egg patterns.

Very little weight is needed to keep the fly riding hook up, because the keel is offset from the hook shank, providing much more leverage than conventional tying methods. The extra leverage means that the body of the fly can be almost any shape; it is not necessary that the lighter materials are tied on the hookpoint side--as is required with most conventional bonefish, bend-back and metal-eyed flies.

The Bouncer style of tying has four important advantages: 1) snag resistance with less weight. 2) noise and flash, 3) reduced mortality because aggressive fish are less likely to be gill-hooked than with point-down flies, 4) higher landing percentage for many types of fish due to secure hookset in the upper corner of the mouth.

The Bouncer style of tying is especially useful for:
* trout, steelhead, salmon in rocky/gravelly waters
* bass, pike, stripers in weedy waters
* bonefish, permit, redfish in flats and coralhead waters
* any fish that hunts by sound in muddy/turbid waters

Please click on the other pages to see more about these snag-resistant rattle flies:
* Basic construction technique
* Old favorites tied Bouncer-style
* Tube flies and propeller flies
* Bouncer patterns for bass, salmon, trout and saltwater
* Crustacean patterns
* Testing Bouncers from a fish's perspective: backlit and underwater

We have had a lot of fun experimenting with the Bouncer style, and caught a lot of fish with these flies since coming up with the basic design in 2000. Give the Bouncer patterns a try; we think you will be very pleased too. And when you do, please contact us to feature your flies in these pages. The patent-pending Bouncer design is available license-free for non-commercial use, so please feel free to try the patterns shown here.

To see the basic construction methods and techniques, go to
Next Page: Basic Pattern