California 420 Leech

Anyone that's fished leeches, buggers or other patterns using John Rohmer's Simi Seal dubbings knows how insanely effective they are. In fact, I was looking in my stillwater boxes the other day and realized I've got a lot of patterns featuring simi seal. And as many of you know, we work with John on custom colors and blends of most of his dubbings, so when Cheech came up with the "420" series of dubbing colors for Bruiser Blend, we knew John could work the 420 magic on the Simi Seal.

And magic he did work. The color is an awesome darker olive with UV highlights in red and green. It's the perfect leech color for the darker olive leeches we see, so I knew the first pattern we needed would be a leech.

If you've ever wondered why wooly buggers and those types of patterns work so well with trout, well it's because trout eat a lot of leeches. Check out Phil Rowley's section on leeches here, but they come in all shapes, sizes and colors. I tend to like olives, browns, blacks and dark reds but it depends on where you fish of course.

I was going for a pattern here that had some color variations like we see with naturals. Leeches are often comprised of a number different colors, so besides the 420 Simi, I threw in a collar and tail that would add some highlights.

Material List

Hook: TMC 5263 #10  (+) or
           U 103 (50 pack) #10 (+)
Bead: Plummeting Tungsten, 3.3mm, Metallic Olive (+)  (Nickel, Metallic Brown or Metallic Green also work well)
Thread: UNI 6/0, Olive (+)
Tail & Collar: Coq De Leon Hen, Soft Hackle with Chickabou, Speckled Yellow Chartreuse (+)
Tail Flash: Krystal Flash, Rootbeer (+)
Body: Arizona Mega Simi Seal, California 420  (+)