North Shore Tying Company: Laker Leech

I was approached a while back about creating a fly for trophy Lake Trout and Pike for a guide with Lakers Unlimited

The idea was to create a fly that was big and easy to cast, originally we had decided on the "Moal Leech". The Moal Leech is a large fly that consists of a rabbit strip super glued around a dacron braid trailing loop tied on a cut off salmon hook. The advantage of wrapping the rabbit around the dacron is that it gives the fly a lot of movement, where as if it were wrapped around a long hook shank, the fly would be fairly stiff.

I have never really been a fan of the Moal Leech, the reasons being :

Pain in the but to tie.
The trailer hook cannot be swapped out once dull.
If a toothy fish cuts the rabbit strip the fly will fall apart relatively fast.
Size and Colour cannot be changed

So to fix the issues I was having with the original Moal Leech I designed the "Laker Leech"

The Laker Leech is more a less a "Leech Kit" where you build your own leech pattern depending on the size, colour and weight that you want. The leech is made up of several different one inch sections of tubes that you just slide onto your tippet material.

The Pros:

Easy to tie.
Trailer hook can be swapped out easily.
If a toothy fish cuts the rabbit strip, you only loose one small segment and not the whole fly.
Easily change colour, size and weight of the fly on the water.

So I will do a picture step by step to show you how I rig up this fly.

Start with your tubes, here I have five, 1 inch segments and a 1 inch head segment with a cone on it for weight. You will also need your tippet material and a hook

Each tube has a defined front and back. the front has a visible section of thread.

The rear end of the tube is exposed simply by stroking the rabbit fur back.

Segments are approximately one inch in length.

I use a single Gamakatsu hook because I really like the shape of it, but hook choice is completely up to you

I am going to start rigging this tube up by sliding on an olive colour tube onto the tippet.

Slide on as many tubes as you like ( just make sure you can cast it haha )

I like to add colour segments to give the fly more of a pattern, this fly will be olive and red.

The head of this fly is another section of tube with rabbit fur tied on, I have also tied in a collar of marabou to give the fly more colour and finished it off by adding a weighted turbo cone.