2005: Never published.....for sale for that matterBoomerangs: Tube Fly Dry Flies that return to your handLike a lot of fly tiers I started tying when I was about 12 or so. Good flies were hard to find and too expensive to buy back then, so I had to tie flies in order to fish. But I'm almost 60 now and good flies are cheap to buy and easy to find. Rather than a threat to creative tying, however, I see that as a great benefit. I don't need to tie any more Elk Hair Caddis Woolly Buggers or Beadhead Nymphs because I can buy those flies for not too much more than it would cost to buy the materials. That means I can spend a lot more time experimenting with new designs. It also means I don't have to worry about tying time efficiency. Because I now buy most of the flies I actually fish with, I can suddenly afford to spend a lot more time on the few special purpose flies I do make. 
Ironically, some of the more complex flies I've developed, now that I no longer care so much how it long it takes to make them, have turned out to be the most time efficient of all. One way to make complex but time efficient flies is the familiar weedless strategy: to leverage the idea of semi-flexible hook guards in order to make flies that catch fish but not branches. Another design approach is to make a fly that sheds the hook when it gets snagged, like a salamander dropping its tail, and then returns to your hand like an obedient homing pigeon. Boomerang dry flies do just that. Boomerangs are hookless dry flies tied around a small-diameter tube on the underside of the fly. The tube itself is made from thread wraps and super glue formed around a temporary length of thin TEFLON tubing. The leader tippet threads through the tube channel on the underside of the fly and then knots to a small bare hook that dangles below the fly. Because the size of the hook is de-coupled from the size of the fly, medium to large sized hoppers and stonefly adults can be tied with smaller hooks, which greatly enhances their ability to float. Flies that return to your handBut floating better is only half the Boomerang story. The most amazing thing about these flies is the way they come back to you when you snag the hook and break the tippet. When you do break off you do lose the hook, but you do usually get the fly back. Even when you snag a high branch on an errant backcast, the fly itself will usually flutter back down like an October maple leaf. You will still lose a few good flies every now and then, especially when wade fishing large fast rivers like Montana's Madison River, where the returning fly does sometimes drift by just out of reach and disappear down stream. But so many snagged Boomerangs do come back I've found I can fish a whole season long with a surprisingly small number of hoppers and salmon fly adults.Salmon FliesDuring the Salmon Fly hatch in late June and July my favorite dry fly strategy is to skip cast large foam bodied Salmon Fly adults back underneath overhanging willow branches along the banks of the Big Hole, Madison and Yellowstone rivers, while casting from the prow of driftboat. That's both a fun and an effective way to fish, but it does lead to an inordinately large number of lost flies. Unless you fish with Boomerangs, that is. I still have some foam-bodied Boomerang Salmon Fly adults in my box right now, from two seasons back. They're somewhat bedraggled and pock-marked with pin-hole punctures from brown trout teeth. But they're still serviceable flies; flies with the best tying time to fishing time efficiency ratio I've ever seen. Some of those flies I've snagged broken off and retrieved 3-4 times in a single day.Fish Catching Strike IndicatorsBoomerangs can be used as fish-catching strike indicators too. To transform a Boomerang into a strike indicator I thread the tippet through the tube channel twice. I push the tippet through the tube, over the top of the fly and then back through the tube again. Then I attach a hook and then slide the excess tippet forward, so the eye of the hook snugs up flush against the back end of the tube channel on the underside of the Boomerang. Then I clinch knot another tippet to the bend of the Boomerang hook and then attach that to a weighted wet fly at the end. Weighted wet flies of one kind or another are the best flies to trail behind a Boomerang because the weight helps to straighten out the trailing tippet at the end of the cast. Threading the tippet through the tube channel twice insures the Boomerang will move when a fish eats the trailing wet fly. If the nymph gets snagged you probably won't get it back. But you will still get the Boomerang back, more often than not. During the Salmon Fly hatch I almost always fish a large Salmon Fly Boomerang with a soft open-cell foam stonefly nymph trailing behind the floating adult (see the Marshmallow Nymph, Fly Fisherman, 1995).Big Boomerangs for Big FishThe late Bobby DiAmbroso, a well-known Ennis-based Madison river guide during the 1980s, once told me the way to fish Montana's Madison River was to mentally divide the river into fifths, and then to throw out the two edge strips and the middle. The second and fourth strip sections of the river were the place to fish dry flies and nymphs--the best place and the best way to consistently put your clients into fish--and to maximize your tips over the course of the summer. But other Madison River guides, like my old friend Stewart Howard, who has guided Southwest Montana anglers for more than twenty years, have pointed out that if you want to specialize in big fish, especially on the Madison, then it's best to forget about dividing the river into parallel sections and to concentrate exclusively on the deepest fastest dark blue runs in the river, where ever they happen to be. One particularly effective way to target those mid-river monsters is to cast an extra-big, extra-buoyant hopper-dropper rig with a heavily weighted streamer as the trailing fly. But to fish that rig you need every milligram of buoyancy you can find, else the hopper spends more time underwater than on top. For that kind of fishing, a fat foam Boomerang Hopper, attached to a relatively small #12 or #14 dry fly hook, provides the maximum possible buoyancy. The size of the mid-river fish that come up to attack an extra-big hopper is astonishing. If you cast over your other shoulder and throw that same rig into the shallower water near the edges of the river you'll scare and scatter more fish than it's worth. But if you drift it through the rolling deep blue mid-river troughs the Madison is famous for, you will pull up some of the very biggest fish in the river.A Drag Free Way to Fish Deep WaterWhen casting an extra-big Boomerang Hopper Dropper, especially from the prow of a driftboat, you'll find you have to mend the line frequently. Lobbing the rod tip back up stream to mend the line will momentarily sink the hopper. But a second or two later it pops right back up to the surface. Best of all, the bulk of the drag on the line is absorbed by the line between your rod tip and the hopper, which allows the weighted streamer to dangle almost straight down from the hopper. Two to three feet of dropper tippet, between the hopper and streamer, puts the fly almost that far down. A weighted streamer is an absolute requirement. An unweighted streamer at the end of a dropper tippet that long would be impossible to cast. With that rig you can fish a weighted streamer 2 to 3 feet down in deep fast water with a surprisingly drag-free drift. In just one magnum-sized hopper dropper trip down the river you may well see more fish over 20 inches long than you'd see in a whole summer of fishing Royal Wulffs and Beadheads near the edges of the river.Smaller BoomerangsLarge stoneflies and hoppers are not the only thing Boomerangs are good for, however. When fishing the local Paradise Valley Montana spring creeks in summer, during the late afternoons when the Pale Morning Duns are finished and the late evening Sulfur duns haven't yet started, I like to fish with small spring creek sized Boomerang hoppers. The spring creeks are shallow, slow-moving and filled with weeds twigs and half submerged stumps. Snagged flies are common, especially when pin-point casting into the well defined holding pockets the fish retreat to in the absence of a hatch. The spring creeks are shallow enough to wade almost anywhere. So you could wade up to any snagged fly and retrieve it by hand. But to do that you'd have to wade through and disturb any fish you might be stalking. With a small Boomerang you simply snap the tippet, move sideways a step or two and scoop the returning fly off the surface as it drifts back down. For both deep fast big river water and slow smooth afternoon spring creek fishing, Boomerangs are flies I wouldn't be without. For the Salmon Fly hatch, Boomerang stoneflies give you the confidence to target the most difficult bankside slots and pockets, underneath the overhanging willow branches, during one of the few times a year the biggest fish in the river can be found lying in shallow water near the bank. During late mornings in June, when the Salmon Flies are hanging from the branches like clumps of ripe juicy grapes, it is into and underneath the branches where the biggest fish are at their most vulnerable.Tying Boomerangs does take a little more organization and effort, particularly in the beginning, when both the materials and the techniques are new. Like all skills, Boomerang making gets easier with practice. It takes so few flies to stock your fly boxes for a season of fly fishing, the extra-time it takes to make them really doesn't matter. Boomerang Hopper Materials:Tubing: 24 gauge thinwall TEFLON tubing (http://action-electronics.com/jttt.htm#Clear) Foam Body: any 1/4 tan or gray closed-cell foam Thread: Unwaxed flat floss that matches the color of the foam. Glue: ZapAGap and ZapCA Wing: Deer hair Hook: Well, the hook really isn't part of the fly. You add the hook when you've got your waders on, not at the fly tying bench. But I do use any standard #12 or #14 or #16 dry fly hook, depending on the size of the hopper. Step one: make a rubberleg needleThe final Boomerang construction step, for both hoppers and adult stoneflies, is to sew three pairs of rubberlegs into the front end of the foam fly body. To do that you need a rubberleg needle made from a any thin-diameter sewing needle that has a relatively large needle eye. But first you have to widen the eye of the needle. To do that I heat the eye of the needle with a cigarette lighter and then use needle nose pliers to push the red hot needle eye down over the point of another needle.Step Two: make the tube channelCut a 2 or 3 inch length of TEFLON tubing, slide it onto a thin-diameter beading needle (available at sewing stores) and then mount the end of the needle horizontally in the vise. It's important to pinch both the TEFLON tubing and the needle simultaneously in the vise, so the tubing doesn't spin around the needle as you wrap it with floss. Now Wrap flat floss around the middle of the TEFLON tubing to make the foundation of a 1/4 long thread channel around the tubing. Soak the wraps with ZapCa. Then finish with a drop of the thicker ZapAGap. Leave the thread bobbin hanging.Step Three: make the hopper body on another vise, on another needleMount another beading needle horizontally in another vise. Cut a foam body blank from a sheet of 1/4 thick closed-cell foam. Skewer the body blank onto the horizontal needle. Wind some tying thread near the rear end of the body blank two or three times. Make a whip finish knot in the thread but don't cut the thread. Now wind forward to dimple the abdomen of the fly body at regular intervals. Make three wraps at each dimple and then move on forward until you reach the front end of the abdomen. Whip finish again, at the front end of the abdomen, but leave the bobbin still hanging.Step Four: add the wingLash on a tuft of deer hair over top the body, wrapping it on at the dimple that forms the front end of the abdomen. Whip finish.Step Five: mount the hopper bodySlide the hopper body off the horizontal beading needle. Lash the body over top of the thread channel, which is still mounted horizontally on the other vise. Use eight to ten loose wraps to mount the body. Do not use much tension on the thread. Turn the fly upside down and carefully add another drop of ZapAGap to securely and permanently glue the fly body to the thread channel. Carefully moisten the thread wraps (that hold the body onto the thread channel) with ZapCA.Step Six: trim the thread channelSlide the TEFLON tubing off the needle. Now pull the TEFLON tubing out of the channel and set it aside. You can reuse the tubing numerous times. Now use a razor blade to trim the back end of the thread channel off at an approximately 45 degree angle, so the front end of a down-eye hook can be pulled up tight to the rear end of the thread channel in a later stream side step. Put one last and tiny drop of ZapCA on the thread channel, after trimming it.Step Seven: add the kicker legsCut two kicker legs from the closed cell foam, so they are a little wider at one end than the other.Lash the kicker legs on at the dimple formed at the base of the wing. It is important not use much thread tension here. Use just enough tension to dimple the sides of the kicker legs slightly. Once mounted, add a small drop of ZapAGap at the base of the kicker legs, to glue them permanently in position. Step Eight: add the front legsUse the rubberleg needle to sew three rubber legs into front end of the hopper body. For each leg, sew the rubber leg from the bottom of the thorax outward and upward, so the legs slant upwards slightly, rather than straight out from the sides. Slanting the rubberlegs upward helps to make the fly land upright at the end of each cast.Step Nine: prepare the fly for fishingThe last step happens at stream side. In order to fish with Boomerangs I keep a few #12 and #14 hooks in my fly box. If I'm not using a dropper fly I just thread the tippet through the thread channel once, attach a hook and start casting. When I do attach a trailing dropper fly I thread the tippet through the thread channel once, and then over top of the fly, and then back through the thread channel a second time. Then I snell the bare hook onto the end of the tippet and then gently push and pull on the excess tippet, so the down-turned eye of the hook pulls up snuggly to the slanted, rear end of the thread channel. To add a dropper I clinch-knot another length of tippet to the bend of the hopper hook, and then attach that to a weighted wetly of some kind. A weighted wetly is easier to fish than an unweighted one, because even a slightly weighted fly will tend to straighten out at the end of cast, rather than tangling with the Boomerang. |
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