Simi Seal Leech

Cheech - May, 2014

About ten years ago, I was in Phoenix on a business trip, and I decided to find a local fly shop in the area where I was working. Like I often do, I asked one of the shop employees if they had any local patterns that they could show me. He pointed to a wall of dubbing behind him and said "You ever heard of Arizona Simi Seal dubbing?" I hadn't heard of it before, but I told him that I had some real seal the I used quite a bit. He explained that Simi Seal was a completely different animal even though it bore the name "seal." He sat me down at a vise and quickly showed me how to tie one, and man was it simple... The whole fly was made of the same material, but it looked really good! He gladly assisted me in helping me spend about $50, and off I went. I would later return to the shop a few months later to tell them how great this bug fished... I eventually met John Rohmer a.k.a. the Godfather of Dubbing. He is the mastermind behind the great dubbings that I discovered that day, and is a wealth of information when it comes to dubbing, and fly materials in general. He is one of the guys that I really look up to when it comes Original Simi Seal Leech to pure innovation in tying, and his influence is probably already on your tying bench without you even knowing it. He has his hands in the dubbing of a lot of major manufacturers. Since I started fishing Simi Seal Leeches, I have all but stopped fishing plain jane wooly buggers on lakes. I have caught fish on every color that John makes, and he has told me many times "We don't make colors that don't work." I think that about sums it up.