I have used dry fly bombers in salmon fishing for some time now and it is very nice method for fishing some salmons and fun too. I use 9 feet 8 weight rod for salmon dry fly fishing. It is powerful enough for fighting with the fish and you can cast long enough easily.
Today I tied some dry fly bombers for testing purposes for my upcoming trip to Finnmark (North Norway). So far I have had some problems with the floatation of the flies. Until now I have tied bombers using polypropylene dubbing or yarn as a body. I have not used deer hair for the body since it takes lot of work and time to tie the fly. Of course polyproylene dubbing will soak after a while but it has been quite OK.
I bumped into one forum post on some fishing related discussion forum few weeks ago and some guy were presenting his new idea to use foam body bombers. I thought it is a very good idea and worth trying. Unfortunately I did not bookmark that page and I have not found it since. I had some fly foam in my stock and I used these tools below for cutting round foam patches from the fly foam sheet. I used 10 mm diameter foam patches.
Steps are easy:
1) cut the 2 mm thick fly foam with a hole cutting tool. Cut approx 10-20 patches.
2) Glue foam patches together with a suitable glue so they will form a foam cylinder. Press the foam patches together until the glue is dry.
3) Let the foam cylinder to dry good.
4) Put a nail or a pin through center of the cylinder. Make sure it is exactly in center of the cylinder.
5) Attach the nail with the foam cylinder to a miniature drill or Dremel tool so the cylinder will spin around its axis.
6) Grind the foam cylinder to correct shape with a sandpaper. Use minimum 400 grade sandpaper.
7) This should be the result after grinding
You can use different foam colors and sizes. I tied some dry fly bombers using white and light gray foams.
The tying is quite easy after you give it some thought. I used super glue for attaching the foam body to the hook.
Finished fly. Let’s see how these work and the main intrest is how they float 🙂
Pattern:
Hook: TMC 202DS
Tail and wing: White calf tail
Body: Foam
Hackle: 2 pcs of Metz variant grade #2 cock hackle. The hackle quality can be lower since I assume this fly will float well 😉
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