The Deer Hair Spook

For several years, I had the thought "Wouldn't it be great if you could match a Zara Spook's action with a fly?" Of all places, where this thought became a plan was perched about 22' off the ground in a tree stand during a slow night in Ohio's archery season.  It suddenly hit me that a large articulated shank would be the key piece in making this work.  Since it was a slow night, I pulled out my phone and actually ordered the materials I needed to make this work from the stand.  Knowing that balance was going to be important in making the fly mimic the conventional lure, I headed to the local WalMart a few days later and bought a Strike King version of the lure.  The "chassis" for the fly was going to be an articulated shank with an octopus-style hook, one tungsten bead off the rear of the shank, and another embedded in the belly of the deer hair body.

Once all of the deer hair was stacked and trimmed, I used a wood burning tool to hollow out a small cavity for the second tungsten bead about 2/3 back from the head of the fly.  Tank testing with beads tied to the fly with old tippet material told me which size beads to use for proper weighting.  I tried my best to match the resting angle of the conventional lure side-by-side in the test tank.

The result was a very similar look and balance between the conventional lure and my fly.  At that point, I just had the lingering bit of doubt, would it behave the way I envisioned it would behave when retrieved?  To be perfectly honest, I did not expect the walk-the-dog action to be as violent as the conventional lure.  I was never so happy to be so wrong!  The side-to-side motion of the fly was sharp and violent, just like the conventional lure.

I was able to film the fly in action on a cold wintery day.  No fish were going to be had in those conditions, but I wanted to document the action of the fly.  

As of yet, I have not been able to fish this pattern.  I can't wait to finally get out on the water this summer and see some bass blow this thing up!