Description
“The worm hatch”; this legendary phrase can make some tarpon anglers crazy. First, if you don’t have a really good relationship with a Keys captain it’s nearly impossible to get the right dates to fish the hatch. If you do get yourself into the Keys, onto the water and on the bow, your captain has to get you to a place where the Palolo worms are coming off the bottom. And of course the main event happens at night, most anglers are fishing just before it really turns on. Finally you have to somehow get one of the scores of tarpon gorging on the worms to notice your fly. This can be a frustrating business. Captains love and hate the worm hatch the fishing can be spectacular and maddening.
We’ve tried to help the best we can. A lot of worm fly patterns look like the real thing but they don’t act like it. The Palolo worm swims in the surface film, if the fly is 3 inches down your not in the game. Also when the worm swims it makes a distinct V-shaped wake the most successful fly has to imitate this.
This pattern has the same feature on our Boehm’s Gurgler in that the foam it’s meant to be trimmed. The best performing fly won’t be on top of the water but in the surface film, trim the back to adjust where the fly swims. If you don’t like the shape of the wake trim the front, sometimes just make it smaller, sometimes round off the shape.
This fly only comes in one size, 1/0 but we use the Gamakatsu SL12s a very strong sticky hook that will hold up to the most blistering tarpon attack.
