Bass Vampire

an original pattern develpoed by John Schofeild

The Bass vampire would have to be the go to fly for most anglers when targeting Australian Bass , schooling down deep or when tageting suspended fish or structure. The instructions ahead are tied on a #2 Gamakatsu B10S , I would normally start with this size and upgarade or change colours from there. The materials used in the tying instruction are readily available from Tie n Fly out fitters you can find a link to Gavin's shop on the sponsers page. This Fly can be fished from a full sink line or intermediate , even a floating line when targeting Bass in weedy areas, it can be fished dead slow or three quick strips then a pause , it really is very  versatile.

Materials

• Hook - Gamakatsu B10S
• Eyes - 2mm nickel real eyes with a 2mm glowing stick on insert
• Thread - Danvilles Black flat waxed cotton
• Tail - sparkleflash UV pink pearl
• Body - 10mm chenille UV black
• Wing - Synthetic slinky fibre purple over black

Step 1

Tie on your thread all the way to the bend

Step 2

Tie on your eyes approximately a hook eye from the eye

Step 3

Tie on your tail with your pink /pearl flash make it bulky and tapered , we want to push water here

Step 4

Tie on your body with your chenile , advance your thread to behind the eyes and tie it off -remember to tighten your wraps of chenile close to the eyes to bulk up the body

Step 5

now tie on your wing , I pull this stuff off ther hank then double it and cut it in half then double it again ,taper it then tie it on high tie style . Follow this up with the purple too but remember that less is more with this stuff , make it too bulky and your fly may not swim straight

Step 6

a very important part of this fly is the eyes, it is essential in my opinion to use glow in the dark eyes . Some guys use a bake on powder however to save time , I put a little ZappaDappa glue on the eye then put the stick on glow in the dark eye on the glue , then push it on and smooth the excess over it to protect it from falling off.

I have had eyes fall of occasionaly and dredged the same school of active bass with poor results only to change back to one with the eyes on and increase my success rate.

I will often only use a two peice rod length leader to fis this fly and have equel success and somtimes greater success in the same boat as conventional fisherman using spinnerbaits , beetlespins and lipless cranks. It is in my opinion a fantastic pattern that is extremly versitile and snag resistant.

here are some variations , the bigger one is on a 1/0 B10S and is fantastic when they are schooling up in winter and are gorging on boney bream , and the smaller one is on a #4 B10S and is better when they have been flogged or just sooking on the bottom , when they are in that mode a very slow short strip works well.

instructions - Chris Adams