FAT BOYs, A deadly fly style for many species but mostly used for large fish.
This 92 cm Barramundi was caught on a tan over white neutral bouyancy Fat Boy fished over weed beds at Awoongs dam in Queensland. For this fishing my favourite line is either a Rio Saltwater Intermediate for water 2-3 meters deep or a Rio Saltwater intermediate tip line for water from 1-2 meters deep.
Steve Gresham with a cracking Hunter River Jewfish caught on a black Fat Boy.
Clark Reid of New Zealand thinks the Fat Boy is a great kingfish fly.
He mostly fishes the well weighted version.
The "Fat Boy" is a fly style I've worked on for a number of years. No doubt it has predecessors that use the ezi-body or flexo tubing in the same manner. I have sought to make this a very versatile pattern that can be tied with a variety of tails and in a variety of densities from surface flies that are deadly on the "walk the dog" retrieve to patterns that "go down quicker than a White House intern" - as my good friend Clark Reid in New Zealand so colourfully describes those "Fatties" with lead in their heads. The thought behind this fly was to create a really dominant silhouette and a fly that had plenty of presence in dirty, deep and dark water, some real push. I wanted something like a mullet that everything likes to eat but could also be a generalist large bait pattern.
The article on how to tie these first appeared in FlyAngler magazine. www.flyangler.com.au
My preferred hooks are the Gamakatsu SL12 and the Tiemco T600.
You can tie these flies with a wide variety of tails. A straight flash tail is extremely effective for bluewater, the double bunny is great for heavy dark water where you want a lot of action in the fly, the standard hair tail is good - I really like the Steve Farris blend material for this fly. A Deceiver type tail is very good especially with some grizzly saddles tied in there. This is my favourite freshwater style however with a white deceiver tail and the veil of hair over it it is an astonishingly effective fly, especially on big cagey fish.
Tails - you win
Heads - you win too!
Like the tails you can make this fly with a variety of heads which of course will be dependant upon what you want the fly to do. A big shot of packing rod foam with the flexo pushed back over it (see the next section on creating the head) makes a great surface fly and big wrap of solder creates a head heavy fly that fishes very well on the way down and really gets deep. The warpas of saltwater chenille create a great "gill" effect under the body as well. Tied with nothng but flexo or ezi-body its a reasonably neutrally bouyant fly and most I tie are like this.
This is how the head "mould"is created. Tie the tubing facing forward. At this stage you would wrap on the solder or apply the foam or the chenille then cut the thread.
Then push the ezi-body/flexo back to form the cone. Wrap with thread and cut off the excess tubing. Make sure you leave some room between the thread wraps and the eye of the hook - you do need to leave some space here as it can get congested with hair stubs.
The hair is tied in as a "veil" as per Bob Popovics - flatten it between your thumb and forefinger and lay it onto the mould
then tie it in.
Apply counter shading to the top the same way, I like these flies in natural muted colours or all white. You can add more flash at this stage as well. I coat the head with Zappa Dappa Goo II. NOTE THIS IS NOT A CA GLUE. It dries fast so you get no movement of the hairs within about 30 seconds. No doubt others will use different materials some prefer epoxy, some silicon. IT is very important to make this fly foulproof by spreading the Zappa Goo back to the bend, especially on the belly side of the fly.
Add the eyes (I use Zappa Goo for this as well) and then a day later a coating of sparkly Tshirt paint to match the fly.
My usual size flies, these are aimed at large or greedy fish.
Good fishing.
Morsie