Umpqua Draggin' Nymph

"The Draggin’ Nymph was designed to mainly target Rio Grande Cichlid and carp in the slower waters of my local creeks and rivers. Although it was intended for two species, I’ve managed trout, bass, and many species of sunfish on it. I developed the Draggin’ Nymph after watching a creek entomology presentation held by a biologist for Texas Parks & Wildlife. There were a lot of dragonfly nymphs in the sampling that they had brought for the presentation. Since a lot of the dragonfly nymph patterns are either not as thick as I’d like or don’t have much movement, I figured I would try to make something to remedy that. The Senyo’s Laser Dub abdomen is the most crucial and unique part of this fly. It was something I just kind of stumbled upon. I tie a lot with Laser Dub and was burning some frayed thread on a streamer I had tied when I got a little careless and scorched the Laser Dub head. I realized the melted Laser Dub hardened and fused the dubbing together. Since dragonfly nymphs were fresh in my mind from the entomology presentation, I immediately thought of a dragonfly abdomen. I went through a lot of testing before settling on the final product. There were two main problems I was dealing with. The first was I needed to be able to drag the fly on the bottom without hanging up. The second was when thrown loosely together in a box, the hooks would tangle in the Laser Dub abdomen and it was hard to get out. Once I realized a barbless jig hook would solve both of these issues, the final product soon followed." - Signature Tyer Josh Smitherman