Boobie Fly – DIY
- This topic has 18 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Feb 25, 2009 at 6:30 pm by
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The Boobie fly is a great slow sinking pattern. I have been struggling to figure out how to make the eyes at home and specifically how to make the foam templates for the eyes that can be cut or molded to any application. Some people use car antennas or bullets to cut the foam but today at the craft store I had an epiphany when I saw some cheap small paint brushes in the clearance section. Read below to see how I modified the brush tips as a cutting device. I took some shots of the flies as well and posted some instructions. With this technique you can fill up a box with boobies at very minimal cost.
Hook: Daiichi 1720, size 4-8
Thread: UTC 140
Tail: Marabou
Flash: Flashabou
Body: Chenille for the traditional Boobie (here I show a foam terrestrial variant with crystal chenille or Estaz and foam overlay)
Eyes: Boobie eyes made from Foamies 3-D Shapes, cut in a small long cylinder shape with a modified paint brush metal tip which has been removed from the body and sharped to act as an hollow drilling/cutting device.
Pupil: Small craft beads.Traditional white Boobie Fly
Terrestrial Variant Boobie Fly. Note: this is my variation on the deadly effective Boobie fly from Rainy’s, see them here http://www.bearsden.com/page757.html#7231
Materials
Take one of the 3-D foam plugs and cut it in half. Then use a paint brush tip removed from the brush and sharpened with a simple hook sharpening file. Then drill down through the foam and remove the plugs for later use.
Start your base thread on the hook
Cut a piece of closed cell foam sheet the width of the hook gap and make the back rounded in shape.
Carefully cut the edges of the foam cylinder to a rounded shape. Curved scissors are best.
Tie in the Marabou tail and add a tiny bit of flash.
Carefully tie in the foam cylinder with figure eight wraps directly in the middle to create two globe shapes on each side (i.e. boobies). Note: there are some good tutorials on Youtube and various webpages that explain this part in more detail; I suggest you search them out before trying this step.
Color the eyes to match the fly
Tie in the foam with the rounded lip overlapping the tail a bit (not too much).
Pull the foam backward to give room for the body wrap.
Tie in the crystal chenille or Estaz and wrap forward with tight wraps until you reach the back of the eyes. Hint: I apply a bit of lacquer (SH Hard as Nails) before wrapping.
Bring the foam forward over the body and tie off tightly behind the eyes. Then trim the tag close to the body being careful not to cut your thread.
Bring the thread to the front of the eyes and dub a fine bit of excess marabou and tie off.
Almost done. Just need to dress up the eyes.
Choose a small craft bead that matches the fly and gives a contrasting color for the pupil. Here I chose orange. Hint: you can get these beads in mixed sacks that cost about a buck; they go a long way. Just superglue them on the lateral sides of the Boobie eyes.
Much better.
Other Examples.
Hi Neal,
I love the flies you’ve been posting lately!
These boobies look quick and easy to tie! I have a question though.
How durable are the orange eyes? I mean how long do they last on the fly?Daryl
No Neal, just stop it…. I mean, not only are your fly’s stunning, but then you show the rest of us how to photo them…
Great Stufffffffssssssssssssss……………………
Neal,
Great post! I’m definitely going to have to tie some of these up. One quick question for you though, you said that the Boobie fly is a great slow sinking pattern, does it actually sink? It seems like it would float with all that foam. I’m thinking it could be a great pattern for mousing for browns at night….
Thanks,
TimWe fish them with a weighted fly in front of them, on a slow sink line – over weed beds. Gives the fly a zig-zag movement, and doesn’t catch on the weeds!
Carp Boobie.
I tied a dozen of these tonight to add my carp box. After 2 years of stalking I still haven’t caught a carp on the fly. Maybe these will be the answer, LOL. Seriously, I have learned that it’s not the fly, it’s the angler, aagghh.
What I find also works pretty well instead of the paint brush is to take an old telescopic aerial and take it apart. You now have a series of tubes of different diameters to make eyes in different sizes. To sharpen the tube, just place it in a drill and hold a piece of water paper to the edge you wish to sharpen while spinning in the drill (wear safety glasses when doing this please). You can use the drill to also cut the foam but you have to use it at low speed otherwise you will start to melt the foam.
These sharpened tubes are also pretty good to manufacture low cost eyes for saltwater flies from holographic sheets that the hardware slingers use to decorate their lures and spoons, you punch out the circular eyes from the sheet and paint in the black pupil.
With regards to fishing a booby, I think they originate from here in the UK and traditionally they are fished on a fast sinking line with a short leader. The pause is critical (I usually pause between 5 to 10 seconds, experiment) and have found it really effective on lakes when the fish have been put down deep due to a cold front.
The only downfall to this technique is that trout tend to swallow it pretty deep (during the pause) which can make CAR a bit of an issue. To overcome this (and it actually increases the catch rate to boot) is that while you pause, you do an extremely slow figure of 8 retrieve, you’re only trying to maintain contact with the fly but not impede it rising during the pause. This way you can strike if you feel the take instead of only realising when you strip at the end of the pause.
Thank you Neal, I hope that I can be of help where I can on the forum.
I didn’t mean that you can only fish the booby in the traditional method like I described, I’ve even used it as a strike indicator when fishing buzzers/midges, especially if it’s a nice bright orange, it seems to catch the fishes attention and when they come to investigate (they don’t usually take the booby) and they take the midge/buzzers.
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