The Moodah Poodah

Curtis Fry - May, 2015

The Moodah Poodah is one of the more wacky names we've stuck to a fly pattern, but it lives up to its uniqueness with a penchant for hooking a lot of fish. In fact, it got its name even before the pattern itself was designed. While I won't go into the gory details, it all started with a post-fishing stop to eat some grub and a run-in with a not-so-friendly waitress who hardly said a word to us the whole meal. And if you know some rudimentary Spanish, you might understand where the name came from.

But funky names aside, the pattern here, similar to the Chimera fly, was designed to imitate a variety of bugs in all sorts of colors. The color shown in the tutorial is black which can pass as a Cicada, drowning ant, cricket or any other blackish insect that might happen along. Throw in olives and browns for drakes or other mayflies and a crazy purple version and you can see the color options are really endless.

And beyond the pattern's devilish good looks, the other part of the design here was intended to allow for a smallish dry that could support droppers without sinking so quickly. Not only that, but the Klinkhamer style hook allows the body to hang below the surface -- an attribute on dry flies that I personally think is a huge attractant. We throw in some irresistible Ice Dub for the body and it makes for a crazy-effective pattern.

I've caught fish on this pattern imitating all sorts of insects and in all sorts of colors from smaller mayflies to bigger drakes to cicadas, damsel flies and many others. So get a bunch of colors of foam, Ice Dub and rubber legs and you'll be set. The variations are as endless as the food at the Golden Corral. I've found you need only tweak the sizes and the colors, so my boxes usually have these color variations along with sizes from #10 down to sometimes a #14.