Kevin has a problem and needs a little help. When he started carp fishing many years, ago the advice was to throw brown or black Woolly Buggers. They worked well then and they still do now. But the standard Woolly Bugger has one critical design flaw for carp fishing in snaggy waters: it rides hook down and loves to hang up on everything.
The simple way to overcome this problem is to add lead eyes and call it good. But lead eyes cause quite a splash when they land on the water and for slow moving fish in shallow water, flies with lead eyes will often spook them. Kevin overcame this problem by using a bent shaft TMC 200R hook and placing weight in the center of the bend. This, in conjunction with tying the tail well around the bend of the hook towards the point and trimming the hackle tight on the bottom of the fly, creates a keel effect and keeps the hook properly oriented. It lands on the water very softly, has a long hang time, will dance in their face with the slightest switch, and rarely snags bottom. In Kevin’s opinion, this bent design has a better look and action and entices more carp than the standard bugger, at least where he fishes.
The pattern has evolved over the past couple seasons into a couple specific color combinations, some with and some without rubber legs. As with many things, this pattern started out as a flipped Woolly Bugger and ended up being quite different.
While this has always been a standard in Kevin’s carp box, he never thought that it was very original and simply referred to it as the Carp Bugger. This fly now needs a name and in a quick Google search it appears that there are many carp buggers. Got any ideas or opinions?
These are some names the Indigo crew has thrown in the hat: Sneaky Bugger, Carp Snack, BICB (Beaver Island Carp Bugger), Flipped Bugger, Sneaky Snack, Wake-Up Call and Bacon Cheesebugger.
Leave your suggestions over on our Facebook page. Thanks for your help.
