| Steve -- those flies are beautiful!! And they will swim great too. Love the one with the fox collar -- it'll be all twitchy in the water. Because you have the transition down so smoothly, I can't even tell if they are all articulated or not. Is only the olive one articulated? It took me a minute, but I gather you are having the tail swing on a separate shank/body, with the hook up front, right? The reason I used the shanks on the patterns below is, among other things, because I wanted the hook farther back. With trout, you do indeed get some short strikes and get better hookups (sometimes) with a hook trailing back, kind of like the trailing hooks steelhead guys use on Intruders and such. For stripers, obviously, you can have a footlong pattern with the hook in the first one inch and it won't matter. While you're going for a different effect with the swinging tail section, you really should try those shanks. They are very light, lighter than most hook shanks, and swim freely. Anyway, great looking flies. |