The Bleeding Leech

Throughout my fishing journey, bass fishing always held a special place in my heart. I fished a lot of leech plastics, and always had a lot of success. Getting into fly fishing for bass, I tried about every leech pattern I could get my hands on. Some patterns have done better than others. Wanting something different, I hit the vise with a general idea in mind. I looked up hundreds of pictures of leeches, and one leaking blood really caught my eye. I started in 2020, figuring out how to make something similar. It started with two stacked zonker strips and a red dubbing body. It still wasn’t what I was after. I really started playing with dubbing, and found the best body dubbing I could get was the hair from the zonker itself. I’d cut 1/2 and inch of hair off, and tie the bald part of the zonker face down on the hook shank. Using the rabbit hair to create a forward taper up to the bead. I played around blending dubbing and about a year later found what I really wanted. I used cinnamon UV dubbing and red ice dub to create a small reddish brown mass with long red strands. The movement from the dubbing is different than the classic zonker movement giving the impression of blood leaking from the leech. This fly works very well on trout in fast water and bass when it can sink and be twitched. Hopefully it works as well for you as it does for me!