Topwater Bream Flies

[Tony Ong]

As a club, we've been doing a lot of work on top water black bream in the last few years. Paul Vogel was one of the guys that kicked this off with the disco shrimp. We've done a lot of work since then, and there have been subtle improvements to what we are fishing now. Conditions need to be right to fish surface flies for bream. Different estuary systems also fish very differently to each other. There are however enough common ideas here and myself or someone else will start a thread on this.
Success with the Disco Shrimp got me thinking if this fly works, what other surface flies would work? Mid 2018, I had a trip to Mongolia. Some of the flies that I tied up for that were some hopper flies, large caddis, as well as cicadas. They all worked on the lenok and grayling that we encountered over there. As I had some left over flies, I decided to try them out on the bream. Another resource is the latest copy of Western Angler. Scott has an article in there regarding catching bream when there's an ant hatch.
It's still early days, and very much in experiment stages. So far, I've had quite a few hits, but haven't been able to convert those to hookup. It will happen, just need time on the water. The disco shrimp is still a more effective fly. We are generally fishing 2 up per boat, and the disco shrimp is still getting more attention. Out of the three patterns, the hopper has had the most attention. I've tweaked this pattern a little. Using Gamakatsu B10S #4 as the hook, as it's a little more saltwater resistant. I've also added an underbelly of UV Ice dub, as UV seems to play a large part of success in disco shrimp flies. Below is a video of the hopper pattern that I used.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=mo ... M%3DHDRSC3

With all three patterns, I'm just waking the fly. ie subtle movement to suggest an insect trying to get away.

Hopper. For the foam, I've glued 3 x 2mm foam together to make a 6mm thick foam. Floats nice and high. It's a reasonably straight forward tie. You just need to make up the legs and glue foam sheets before hand. Quite a quick tie when you have all the bits and pieces together.

[Tony Ong]

This is an upsized version for an elk hair caddis. I think this is tied on a size #8 hook. I showed this fly to a very experienced freshwater fly fisherman. Wanted his feedback on proportions of the fly and if there was anything he would do different. His first comment was where and what are you targeting with such large elk hair caddis. He thought I had found some secret trophy water trout in WA.
I've had a couple of hits on this fly. Again, I haven't fished it enough to write if off. The only issue with this fly is eventually it will sink. Treating with floatant will only keep it going for so long. Had to keep changing to fresh flies every 20 or so minutes otherwise the fly would eventually sink.

[Tony Ong]

Lastly is this spun deer hair cicada. Probably the hardest of the 3 flies to attempt.
The cicada floated a lot longer that the caddis. The trick is to try and pack the deer hair as tight as possible. Lots of talented deer hair stackers out there. I've dabbled with packing and spinning deer hair in the past, but haven't done a lot of work on it. I can see the next couple of months, my tying desk is going to be a pile of shaved deer hair.
It's a pretty cool fly. I just need to sit down and work out how I can incorporate more uv materials into the fly. Again, its a work in progress, and the disco shrimp simply works better. These are just fun projects to keep us thinking.
I hope this gives some inspiration and to get people tying something other than a olive over white clouser over the coming months. Anyone keen to share ideas, please add on to this post.

[Hirdy]

Those are great flies Tony. I'm sure at least one of them will bring home the goods when the fishing techniques are refined.

I'd hate to lose the cicada to a possum on the first cast though ...

Cheers,
Graeme

[Mike Andrew]

Aaagh , not possums , meerkats !

[Tony Ong]

Bound to happen Graeme. Plenty of tying time coming up.