Don's Fly Tying - the Coho Rabbit Fly

I finally gave in to the urge, now that my wife of 55 years of marriage has passed, to introduce a new pup to my household. She is a black Labrador Retriever, just full of vim and mischief, hard for an old guy like me to keep up! As a consequence, my usual trips to the Vedder River during coho season have been curtailed for this year anyway until she is older and more sensible to take with me on fishing trips. I did make one visit to the Vedder this past month after farming out Tessie to my Kelowna grand daughter, Calla for the day. My son Trev and grandson Xander came along to see what we could do at my favourite Tamahi Rapids fishing spot. With a fair bit of rain recently experienced in the Lower Mainland, I was disappointed by the apparent lack of returning salmon in the river. We fished from about 9:00 am until 2:00 pm with only one fish landed, not a good result for what should have been the peak of the run!

In spite of very few coho, a positive result was that Xander at 11 years old caught on fairly quickly in using my spare level wind float outfit. His casts were soon directed in the proper slicks just short of the white water where in past years I have caught many salmon. Only one huge bird's nest on the Ambassador 6500 reel that did take me a while to untangle! Even the red and white fly so successful last year did not work but a new fly that I recently tied did the trick, a rabbit fur blend. Let's have a look at it for this month's fly tying article.

Below is my grandson Xander holding a male hatchery coho and to the right, my new family addition, Tessie, with grandkids Colin and Laurel.

[Xander holding an 8 pound Vedder hatchery coho]

[New Lab pup Tessie with grandkids Colin and Laurel]

Materials

Hook--Silver or black octopus size 1/0 to 1
Tail--None
Body--A strip of white rabbit behind a strip of blue rabbit
Rib--None
Head--None
Wing--As in the body
Hackle--None
Thread--15 to 20 pound clear monofilament

Instructions

Start the fly with a nail knot using about a three foot piece of say clear 20 pound test leader. Before tightening the knot, insert both the white and blue rabbit strips in the loop at the hook eye. Pull tight, cut fairly short, and you have made a fly using rabbit fur rather than yarn, perhaps allowing more movement when fished!

Your comments are welcome at "dhaaheim at telus dot net"

Do you want to see the previous fly tying articles?

Monthly Fly Tying Articles from November 1996

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