Shapes In The Water

What I do have to write about this week is Dahlberg shapes. Coincidentally to mentioning some of the advantages of a fat Dahlberg last week I was reading an online discussion about how to trim them and what shape they should be. The Duing Kruger was out if force and, while I doubt loops readers are so dogmatic yet poorly informed, I think it's a reasonably interesting topic to think about. 

I don't think in absolute terms but I think I can group my Dahlberg divers into 3 broad forms, although another person might look in my box and split them into 2 or 4 camps. It's all on a spectrum and while I have general "rules" about which shape to choose a lot of the decisions on the water come down to intuition.  

The first shape I'll look at is the one I mentioned last week, the fattest. I like these to have a kind of stubby, round cone in front that leads to a comparatively small collar as much by necessity as intention due to the limitations of the hair. Probably the most naturally noisy they don't go deep, pop up quickly making plenty of noise and bubbles on the way. The perfect dahlberg for adding legs to,  it's almost a popper.   This is probably my favourite for largemouth bass around cover. As a real fatty it's for moving slowly and not very far most of the time. It can easily cope with the restrictiveness of a short stout leader. It plops under, it will dance on the spot. It'll even back up as it floats if you give it a touch of slack and unlike other shapes, it's relatively hard to catch up on lily stems or sticks-I suppose it’s analogous to the shallow square bill crankbait the conventional guys use.  Its weakness is instability if stripped, you can pull a fat Dahlberg to keep it sub surface but not too quickly or it’ll stall out and turn upside down. A keel weight can help a bit, but there are limits to both speed and how much weight you can add without negatively affecting the fly’s behaviour. 

The next one is the classic shape(POD), the ones Larry first put out. A bit pointier and longer in front with a bit bigger collar, than the round one. This shape has slightly less buoyancy so, tied on the same hook, will go deeper and want to travel more underwater before rising more slowly.  This is the allrounder for me, good for all the bass, pike and pretty much any predator. It can be used in a variety of water types and situations. It’s the one I often choose when I go home and fish for pike, or when fishing for smallmouth bass in the rivers around Tokyo. Another advantage of this type is that it lends itself wonderfully to muddler minnows and similar flies. Tied smaller relative to hook size than a normal Dahlberg head instead of just round as a normal muddler, this adds fantastic action to the pattern without necessarily turning it into a topwater. Fished on a long leader with a fast glass intermediate or similar line, it’ll dart and wiggle like nobody’s business.

The final shape is, you’ll be unsurprised to read, thin and pointy. These are the fastest ones, great when imitating fleeing bait in open water. They lend themselves especially well to flowing tails of saddle hackle or zonker. and I never give them any appendages in the head. Having less hair they’re slower on the float and depending how you trim the collar and the leader setup can be worked quite deep if you need to.  I carry fewer of these than the other two because of the fishing that is largely available to me here, but if I was doing more targeting of fry feeding trout or had more open water bass fishing handy, I’d definitely have more of them in my various boxes.

As I said earlier, these aren’t absolutely fixed shapes and there are definitely a few inbetweeners in my Dahlberg collection that I might pick when something like surface slap makes me not want the middle shape but I want something that Is more suitable for quick fishing than the fatty, for example. I know a lot of people who fish them buy them so don’t have the options on the shape front, but probably do just fine. Despite that, I like to carry divers that are suited to exactly what I want to do with them. Round peg, round hole and all that.. you know?