I live in Western Montana. I don't have much opportunity for warm water fishing. I wish I did. These would be well suited to fly rod smallmouth bass fishing I think.
They're also remarkably effective for trout.
I cast them across and then down. They dive and wiggle instead of planing up to the surface. I do use a small barrel swivel in the leader. At the big culvert above Betty's old Cabin on DePuy's Spring Creek in the Paradise Valley, a few miles South of Livingston Montana, where it costs $100 USA dollars or so a day to go fishing, I can cast these down and then work them back up along the edges of the fast water coming out of the culvert.
I've caught fish right there over 20" inches long that way. I once moved a fish that swam behind but didn't bite, that looked like a 30" inch ten pounder. River keeper (now retired) ....can't remember his name, it will come to me....watched me do that once. Back in the early 1990s. Bob Auger. I remember Bob watching, shaking his head, with his hands on his hips, saying "Only you Sandy, only you."
In retrospect I'm not sure what Bob meant by that. Was I the only one he'd allow to fish that way? Or was he saying I was the only one who would ever try?
I'm trying to learn how to make video. I'll get there eventually. Fishing and boat building and visitors keep getting in the way.
MATERIALS:
A big saddle hackle
Closed cell foam snipped into an arc
Polyethelene tube buried in the back end of the foam
(make the foam fatter at the rear, tapering to thin where the bill is)
Clear plastic bill cut from an electronic parts container
Pink thread...or what ever color you choose
CA Glue AND water based fabric cement.
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The CA glue fastens the diving bill (rough it up with sand paper) to the foam. The fabric cement fastens the feather to the foam.
Fly rod diving wigglers that have a wide bass-lure-like diving bill are too hard to cast. But if you make the diving bill pointed or almost pointed at the front end and slightly wider in the middle, where the leader hole is (with tungsten bead there behind the bill) they're a lot easier to cast.
II I used to guide there at DePuy's. I don't often pay the rod fee. When I had customers who had to leave early--perhaps to catch a plane--I'd stay and fish. At midday there are usually good dry fly hatches. But late in the afternoon and early evening the hatches are done. And the big browns start to get restless.
