Dog Nobbler for Crappie

My favorite fly tyer is Barry Ord Clarke. He’s just about perfect in his tying and in his instructions and I’ve learned quite a few new things from him, like Wally Wings for example. So in planning for an upcoming workshop on crappie for our club, I was thinking to myself “What would BOC tie for crappie?” But of course, crappie are a North American fish, BOC lives in the UK, in other words, no pattern for crappie.

But then I found a video of him tying a “Dog Nobbler” and I was thrilled because it’s a crappie fly whether BOC knows it or not.

I thought it was interesting that BOC mentions he doesn’t normally tie “lures”, which was confusing. Someone in the comments asked him about the use of the word “lure” and BOC responded by saying in the UK they use the word “lure” for what we would call a streamer.

Of course I would substitute the hook with a light wire Aberdeen hook, which is more easily bent with an about an 8 lb test line. In our turbid water here we can get away with using a heavier tippet which promotes this little trick which is bending the hook to bend it out of a submerged piece of wood. Considering how much wood we have in our reservoirs, this little trick can save you a lot of flies.

At the end of the video BOC refers to it as his “Kraken fly”, or would that be “Crackin”, as in good? Ha, I don’t know but its definitely a fly for crappie if I ever saw one and he said “it has accounted for uncountable amounts of rainbow trout in the UK”. The “Dog Nobbler” is basically just a Crappie Candy, but hey, it’s got a cool name and BOC tied it in his best English accent, I’ll have to make some.

Postscript:

Well, I did, I did, I did tie some Dog Nobblers, but I corrupted BOC’s pattern some for crappie and my English is not as perfect as BOC so let’s just call’em “Dawg” Nobblers.