Tie A Better Fly

As a youngster fishing the Shenandoah River for bass with live bait in the 50’s the natural hellgrammites were one of my most successful baits. After college I ordered some Hellgrammite flies from William Mills in New York and although these looked great the bass would not take them. Several years later when fishing the Yellowstone River at Livingston, MT I asked Dan Bailey if he could have his girls tie a dozen two inch long woven body Hellgrammites similar to some stonefly nymphs they were using on the Yellowstone. When I got back to Virginia I was very excited about fishing these because they looked great to me. Unfortunately the bass would not take them.

Finally I turned over many rocks on the river bottom and collected about a dozen natural hellgrammites. By dropping these into the stream one by one and watching their behavior I quickly saw why the first two flies did not catch bass…They did not act like the real hellgrammites which swam downstream with a pronounced undulating action. After many years of experimenting with many materials and the kind help of Ron Kommer and Charlies Brooks the Murray’s Hellgrammite was developed. Today this is one of my most successful flies.

The Murray’s Hellgrammite is a great smallmouth fly because it mimics the action of the real hellgrammite in the river.

For additional information on fishing hellgrammites listen to my Podcast “Smallmouth Bass Podcast Part VI“