The urchin baits have become very popular for bass and a friend and fellow club member of Magnolia Fly Fishers has adapted a fly for bream that also takes advantage of multiple silicon legs or rubber tentacles. I guess it was inevitable that Albert Wood, who ties what he calls “Fuzzy Jigs” for crappie fishermen would want to tie a fuzzy fly for bream and crappie. We have long used upside-down bream killers for bream because here in the south we have muddy bottoms that will foul a down-pointed hook with mud and gook or sink it in whatever woody material there is very quickly. Having that hook pointed up is important in the ponds and lakes we fish. Adding more than the usual rubber legs or tentacles was a pretty easy add-on.
It’s no surprise that this creation is a fish catcher. Tom Nixon of Louisiana had a fly in his book, Fly Tying and Fly Fishing for Bass and Panfish (first published in 1968), called the “Calcasieu Pig Boat” that was loaded with legs. Of course spinner baits and buzz baits have been using skirts forever. But the Pig Boat was a bass fly.
The Calcasieu Pig Boat is the only fly that I can think of that includes so many rubber tentacles, but of course bream “spiders” and numerous flies for bream use them as well. Even some trout flies like the Girdle Bug. But until now I haven’t seen a fly designed like Albert’s that uses so many tentacles targeting bream and crappie, though I am sure bass like them too.
Albert sent some videos for me that show how his fly looks underwater:
Breambugs.com is now carrying Woods Fuzzy Jigs and they are featured at https://breambugs.com/breambugs-blog/
I too, am a user of Wood’s flies myself and here’s a bream I caught on one.
