You’ve heard the question 100 times. If you had to choose just one fly…
Well, I don’t know if I could ever choose just one- and fortunately for my ADD- I don’t. But there are certain flies that I use a hell of a lot more than others. For that reason, they catch a large majority of my fish. The fly pictured above is one of them.
It’s a Mixed Media. If you’ve been reading this blog or it’s predecessors, you’ve heard me mention it countless times. I’ve even posted a picture of a Mixed Media along with the recipe. But I’ve never posted a pic of the actual version you see above that I call, “The One.”
Before I go on, I have to let you in on an important detail. Whenever you mention this fly in the future, you must include the quotation marks. It’s not that there is any ego behind the quotation marks. I didn’t even come up with this fly or color combo. It’s just that when you leave the quotation marks out, Shaolin Monks come to your house, grab your fly rod, and tie “The One” on. Then they back up about 90′, and in a single back cast, (and no double haul), they’ll cast “The One” right down your throat, set the hook, then rip your heart out and show it to you before you even know you’re dead.
I’m serious.
This one time, there was this guy who left the quotation marks out. There were some rumors going around that it was an accident. The monks didn’t care though. This guy, we’ll call him Geoff, found out they were coming and went on the run. He went to the extreme.
He moved to North Dakota and changed his name to Batman. He even had his mouth surgically sealed so if the monks ever found him, they wouldn’t be able to throw a loop down his throat. It only took about 2 weeks for the monks to track him down. In the end, it didn’t matter that his mouth was sealed shut, they just ripped his heart out through his ass instead.
RIP Geoff.
I don’t know who originally created “The One”. What I do know is I first got my hands on it through a fly swap about 4 years ago. It’s since caught everything from trout, to the mirror carp pictured below. Anything that eats crabs or crayfish will eat this fly. They just can’t help it.
12 Responses
That is one sexy fly. You know my fly selection Alex and it contains mostly flies that look like that. My goal is to catch each species I catch this year on something that looks remarkably similar.
Posted on March 11th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Brilliant…
People land on the page, and look at the fly. If they are in the know (or getting there, like I) they look at those tasty rubber legs and think “damn, I KNOW a fat carp will eat that thing.”
Then they scroll down the page, reading…reading, and voila!
PS: I sit in front of a 23 inch monitor, and it still worked. Beautiful fish, my man.
Posted on March 11th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Thanks guys. I can’t take the credit for this one though. The one I received in the swap was tied by Joe Cornwall of http://www.flyfishohio.com. (I actually think I still have it laying around somewhere) I should ask him if he came up with the color combo, or if he got it from someone else.
Michael- It’s funny you say “Beautiful”. I didn’t lay a finger on that fish. I beached it, popped the hook with my hemos, and steered the fish back to the water with my boot- gently, of course.
The places I fish for carp aren’t exactly pristine, so I thought it was some kind of mutant
I didn’t find out it was a different type of Carp till I showed the picture to a friend a little later.
Posted on March 11th, 2009 at 10:19 am
cornwall has some dope ties. definitely a killer pattern there
This one time, at band camp….
Posted on March 11th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Alex,
Nice and sparse and sexy, I hates over dressed ties. Joe does some cool warmwater stuff. Gonna’ twist up some for May, which leads me to my pre-tying question. Do you fish these with lead eyes for Carp? My instinct would be bead chain eyes so it rides hook up/make less noise entering the water. I know “those” Carp are less spooky than others but…Your houghts?
McA
Posted on March 11th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
McA-
To be honest, I’ve never fished this pattern with anything other than the lead eyes. I think you’re onto something with the bead chain- the goal has always been to have the fly make as little noise as possible when entering the water. But, the only problem with bead chain is that most of the stuff you find just isn’t heavy enough to get help you achieve the other key goal- get the fly down NOW, and KEEP it down. I’m sure there is a happy medium somewhere in there, but my opinion is the getting it down and keeping it down part is more critical, which is why I haven’t played with anything other than the lead eyes yet.
Some other food for thought, but by no means proven-
From what I’ve observed and read on Carp, their sense of “hearing” is way better than most other fish since they’ve got some other sensory organs that the other fish are missing. I know most of the literature out there says you want to cast pretty much right on top of the fish, but I prefer to cast past the fish- say somewhere around half of my leader length, which are about 12′-13′. Then I’ll bring the fly to the fish. I don’t like to do this for fear of spooking the fish when the fly lands, I just think it gives my fly a better shot at being noticed, but I’m sure having that plop 5′-7′ away from the fish let’s me get away with a little louder entry.
Posted on March 12th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Alex, you’re killing me. You do know that “The One” is capable of completely decimating a game fish population and rendering a creek dead, don’t you? That’s what happened at Ceasar’s Creek lake, here in Ohio. 2500 acres of prime water now known by most as the Dead C. There are no fish left. I gave a couple Mixed Medias to some unscrupulous characters who harvested the entire population and sold it to some Asian nation where it was promptly ground and rendered into an additive for toothpaste. Such a shame.
I’d also like to ensure all who read your post that the monks used Orvis Wonderline 3+ when they did that reach cast up poor Sam’s ass. The line was so slick that he never felt a thing.
Here is the true story of the Mixed Medai, never told in public before;
Ten years ago, maybe a little more, I was playing around with some particularly difficult smallmouth on a gin clear (rated “pre-settlement” quality by the ODNR) flow that looks a lot more like a trout stream than a warm water flow in southwest Ohio. I could regularly see fish up to 20″, but hooking them was nearly impossible. They’d just drift out of the line of the fly, turning their scaled and finny backs to even the best presentation. I observed and fished, then observed some more. I knew the fish were keying on johnny darters – a common-but-overlooked baitfish that’s very ubiquitous, young northern hog suckers, log perch darters and other things similar to a sculpin but different in action and shape.
I’d already worked out the Clouser Foxee Redd variation, perhaps my favorite smallmouth pattern. I learned that if I tied it with the softer red fox body fur instead of the stiffer tail fur that I got a more translucent effect with a very soft action – even more subtle than marabou. I’d further discovered that the underfur, when properly included in the upper wing, gave the fly a graduated opaqueness and teardrop profile that imitates a fresh soft-craw almost perfectly. The color is spot-on when wet. But the Foxee Red just didn’t complete the darter look and the fish weren’t as enthusiastic as I thought they’d be. So I experimented.
Darters are more opaque than a soft craw. They are much slimmer and have a slight bit of flash and color, They stay on the bottom, hence the fly needed to be inverted and weighted. The fox fur was good for the overal body, but I need to get a stronger profile because the Mixed Media is intended to be hopped along in the current and not high-sticked like the Foxee. Afte a few dozen tries I decided on sili-legs. The effect was just what I wanted. Under tension the silicon legs hold closer, keeping the streamlined profile but they move and impart a swimming action. The fox upper wing keeps the bulk of the head of the baitfish and veils the body to make it more subtle. I like gold eyes on bright days and unpainted eyes on dark days and I use four to six strands of copper/black grizzly crystal flash. The exact pattern as tied for that swap back in 2004 is in the FTF archives – I’ve since tied them at most of the fly fishing shows I’ve participated in, but never on the podcast or FFO site yet. I’ll put it on the list….
Joe C.
Posted on March 14th, 2009 at 8:50 am
BTW, Nice glass rod there, two. Did you finish the Kook-Ade? Glass and carp is how we know you’re ‘one of us’…
Joe C.
Posted on March 14th, 2009 at 8:53 am
What kind of feathers are used? What sizes are usually tied? This looks like an Atkin’s diet version of my best fly last year. Instead of the feathers, it just had a “poof” of what appears to be ruddish orange indicator yarn. Lead eyes, barred legs as well. I caught more fish on that fat version than any other fly last year. I’d like to try this one out as well.
Posted on March 15th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Thanks for chiming in, Joe!
Danno- click the link below, recipe is at the bottom of the post
http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/40rivers/2009/02/17/carp-flies-the-mixed-media/
Posted on March 16th, 2009 at 6:04 am
You don’t make your guest feel like they caught more fish than you did, even if they didn’t.
Posted on March 16th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Nice fly. I’m going to have to try something like that.
We have a lake with Carp in it around Bakersfield that I would love to
throw a fly at
Kern Fishing
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
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