BOO1.  The White Booby Nymph Fly

BOOBY NYMPHS
British fly-fisherman and fly tier Gordon Frazer used a standard marabou tailed nymph pattern and added two polystyrene balls tied behind the eye of the hook to add buoyancy to his new fly called the Booby Nymph. His design went on to establish a whole new genre of fly patterns know as Boobies. Gordon wanted to design a fly with built in buoyancy that he could suspend at a fixed depth below the water surface close. He wanted to be able to add and take off weight to the line to be able to find the feeding zone of the local trout. Once found he would be able to stick at that depth.

In winter trout eat fry, baby juvenile fish. Use a white or olive colored booby. When fishing the Booby as a fry imitation use a retrieve, pause, retrieve, pause movement to imitate the darting nature of the real juvenile fish looking for food and avoiding predators. On the pause the fly floats upwards. When you start the next retrieve the fly darts downward again. It is a very clever but such a simple design. The booby eyes can be tied in two different ways. The original method which we still use involves trimming foam into two balls and encasing them in fine nylon mesh before tying them onto the fly. We use ladies pantyhose as a source for the mesh. A more recent fly tying method is to use a length of foam tubing tied in the middle. They work. It is quicker but have you ever seen a woman with breast that are that shape? They can’t really be called boobies now can they?