Steel on the stinger missile...
During a winter storm in 2009, I concocted a fly for one of my first sessions ever swinging for steelhead. It is heavily influenced by John Barr's Slumpbuster, but is much larger and has a few key differences. At the time, I was learning on a switch rod with a 510 Airflo Skagit Compact and I was tying and throwing some seriously heavy stuff. Needless to say, it was not pretty. On a late November outing, Adam and I did really well for ourselves. My fly was able to pick up my first ever fish on a legit two hander setup. The brown pictured below crushed it in a very fast section of water and I was hooked. The fly became my "go to" pattern for the next few years as I learned the ways of the skagit. I started calling it the "stinger missile," and it accounted for most of the steelhead from the Salmon River in my early days of swinging flies.
The fly needs to be fished with a heavier skagit setup with proper technique because of the weight of the cone head and how waterlogged the rabbit gets. The larger the fly is, the slower it will sink because of the rabbit strip. You can also decrease the speed with which the fly sinks by using a magnum bunny strip for the tail or bunny bou for the body. This will increase buoyancy. Using a regular rabbit strip and crosscut, the fly will sink like a rock. Therefore, it needs to be fished in deeper pools and fast pocket water. I prefer to fish it broadside with some speed. The profile entices some vicious strikes to aggressive fish.
Good luck.
