Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 18 January 2025
Last week we had a look at the killer worm, I think I forgot to mention its real name Dräparmasken, and this week it is time to take a look at Kobberbassen, the Copper Bully. Looking around the Internet it is credited as being created by Frank Jensen in 1996. I think the dräparmasken was created somewhere around then also. The 1990s appear to have been a productive era for fly design.
The Copper Bully is also a very effective and sparse pattern for seatrout fishing. It is like some flies are created to catch fish, others to catch fishermen. Just some copper dubbing on the hook, more intricate variations exist, but the fish don’t seem to care.. The most obvious creature it is supposed to imitate is the family of gammarus. Gammarus are interesting creatures, when they swim it can look like they just come flying through the water without any obvious movement causing them to propel forward. This is kind of slow movement used for longer transportations. Other times they just dart around over shorter distances, then they seem to move faster. And that’s also how I have the most success with this fly and other gammarus imitations when fishing them alone. Either short pulls with stopp or with steady hand twist retrieve.
I often fish with two flies when I fish for seatrout. One larger fly at the end and a small fly attached to a tag end of the leader in front of the bigger fly. The small fly is usually some gammarus imitation. And some days it is only the gammarus that gets any action and the trout is crazy good at finding these things. I have caught fish on white gammarus in milky water when it has been fishing in front of a large orange fly.
It might be time for me to start to tie some flies for the coming season. I tend to keep myself occupied during the closed season, the problem is that I tend to push it so long that I end up rushing to get ready before the season starts.
Cheers, Rickard