Buoyancy is an incredible principle that as fly anglers, we need to take more advantage of. Buoyancy can be achieved through a variety of materials like cervid hair (deer, elk, moose, caribou), dubbing (like Upavon’s Hollow Dub), yarns (like Upavon’s Breather Yarn), and foam. I’m going to talk about foam in this article. It is the most used buoyant material in fly tying and it gives the most buoyancy for its weight. It also comes in a wide variety of colors that can help you achieve either a natural look or an attractor look for your flies. Most of my foam I use comes in blocks. I cut out cylinders from these blocks with the Upavon Gunville Foam Cutters. I then either cut them down to smaller sizes and/or I use heat to shape them into my desired looks. The rest of the foam I use comes in sheets either 1mm, 2mm, or 4mm thick. Luckily Upavon has sheets and blocks in lots of colors and if you don’t want to do the cutting yourself they have some pre-cut bodies as well.

Buoyancy is achieved through a material (or structure) being less dense than the liquid (or gas) it is suspended in. The best way fly tyers and anglers have accomplished this is through trapped air. Foam does an excellent job trapping air and, more importantly, keeping water out. This is why foam reigns supreme compared to hair or dubbing. Hair and dubbing do a great job of trapping air, but can’t keep the water out as well as foam. They either need to be sealed or treated with a floatant. When I stacked deer hair divers and other bass bugs, that was the goal when I packed the hair as tightly as I could. Think of a fly pattern like a ship that is taking on water. One of the first things a ship’s crew can do to slow or even stop the ship from sinking is to close off the hatches around the leaking area to not let the air, which floats that boat, out and water in. That is what a good deer hair bass bug does, closes off the “hatches” around the areas that can let in water. Foam does that in a more user-friendly way. Speaking from experience, packing and stacking deer hair is a lot of work and a huge mess compared to foam. 

The other principle that gets flies to float is through water tension. This is an entirely different principle than buoyancy and hardly applies to the techniques I’ll list below, but I thought I would mention it for those curious about it. An Elk Hair Caddis floats, not because the deer hair is buoyant (it is part of it but not the main reason), but because the hackle that makes up the body of that pattern can push against the water tension and float the fly despite it being more dense than water. This is why floatant is so important for floating a fly that is using water tension. The floatant is trying to preserve the water tension for as long as it can while being less dense than water. It is also why surfactants (like fly fishing muds) are also important for breaking that same water tension and allowing the fly to sink naturally.

I have some favorite uses for foam and buoyancy in the flies I fish; from dries to attractors to natural nymphs. Foam can be more than just a way to keep your basic dry fly floating; it can be a way in which you present your sub-surface flies differently than other anglers on the water. Enough with the nerdy stuff, let's get on to the flies.

Dries

When people think of a foam fly they are thinking about dries most of the time (especially in North America). This is a great application for using foam. Nothing is more frustrating than a dry fly sinking because it got too waterlogged. Foam rarely gets too waterlogged due to how the material traps air and repels water like I mentioned above. Some of my favorite patterns using foam are the Upavon Foam Daddy, in orange, and a Blue Chubby Chernobyl to represent adult damsels and dragons. 

Attractors

When I think of foam flies I think of FAB’s, Boobies, and a pattern I tie called the Dr. Miami (combining the foam from both a FAB and Booby in one fly). I use these flies on either a floating line or sink tip line in a washing line set-up, on sweep/parabolic lines to accentuate the arc of the sinking fly line, or even a booby basher line. You can tie these in an array of colors. My personal confidence colors are: sunburst (yellow/orange), starburst (yellow/pink), boxed wine (black/claret), and apples & oranges (orange/green). The thing about these flies, no matter how well I know they work, it still surprises me how many fish I catch on these over the course of a season.

Naturals

For those that can’t stand the idea of fishing a fly like a FAB or Dr. Miami then the natural approach is the way to go. A buoyant fly on a sinking line is incredibly effective so for those fish or anglers that want a more natural pattern it’s good to have a few in your box. The classic Hare’s Ear Booby is a good choice or the Foam Back Shrimp, but my friend Gabe Kuedell ties a pattern he calls Carey’s Wife, a Carey’s Special with booby eyes. This a great pattern, depending on the color you tie, to represent a dragonfly or damselfly nymph, a baitfish, a shrimp, or anything else found in stillwater.

Pop Fry

These might be the most exciting patterns you can tie using foam for your next stillwater outing. Lindsey Simpson wrote a great article breaking down fishing fry patterns for trout and Tom Bird also wrote a great article about autumn fly patterns and he mentioned Pop Fry as well. These baitfish looking patterns can account for some of your biggest fish of the season. These are essentially a zonker with a foam post nose that, when fished, act like a wounded baitfish on the surface, a perfect place to be ambushed by a hungry trout. I fish these flies all by themselves just because of how aggressively I move these patterns, most of the time, and how voraciously trout eat these flies. That being said they can be used on a washing line set up if you plan to fish them slowly with a team of nymphs.

For those who are new to the idea of using foam on your subsurface flies, I hope this will inspire you to start, and for those who already use foam on those flies, I hope this can jump start some personal innovation and get you to fish or tie new flies you haven’t before. Please feel free to comment down below or find me at oregonflytying.com or on youtube and instagram at @garrettlesko.

Garret Lesko

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