Pumpkin – Green Black Orange Disco Legs

Disco Legs Pumpkin Green Black Orange Silicone Fly Tying Legs

If you’ve ever walked down the soft-plastics aisle of a bass shop, you’ve seen it: wall after wall of green pumpkin. There’s a reason. Pumpkin with green, black and orange flake is what a crawfish looks like. Smallmouth bass would sell their own grandmothers for a crawfish.

Nature’s Spirit Disco Legs in Pumpkin – Green Black Orange bring that same magic to the vise. A natural brown-olive pumpkin base with three colors of flake. Green and black for the mottled shell, orange for the claw tips and the belly. It matches crawfish, sculpins, gobies, dragonfly nymphs and big stoneflies without trying very hard.

It’s also my go-to bull bluegill leg. I’ve spent more evenings than I’ll admit in public lying on a dock, watching a dinner-plate bluegill inspect a pumpkin-legged spider for a full minute before eating it. Best minute of my week, usually.

Best for: smallmouth and largemouth bass, bluegill and all panfish, carp, trout (nymphs and sculpins), redeye and spotted bass.

Recipe 1: Grumpy’s Pumpkin Bluegill Spider (panfish)

• Hook: Dry fly or nymph hook, size 10 to 12
• Thread: Olive 8/0
• Body: Olive-brown foam cylinder or dubbed peacock and olive blend
• Legs: Pumpkin – Green Black Orange Disco Legs, 2 strands tied in an X across the middle, giving 4 legs per side
• Indicator (optional): Small piece of orange or yellow foam on top

Tying: Wrap a thread base. Tie the foam body on top, or dub a fat body. Figure-eight the leg strands across the middle so they stick out like a spider. Add the indicator tuft. Trim the legs to about one and a half times the body length.

How to fish it: Cast near weed beds, docks and spawning beds. Let it sit. Count to ten. Twitch it once, just enough to shiver the legs. Bull bluegill rise slowly and stare at a fly for a long time before eating it, so resist moving it. A 3 or 4 weight rod and a 9-foot 5X leader make even a hand-sized gill feel like a fight.

Recipe 2: Disco Crawfish (smallmouth, largemouth, carp)

• Hook: Streamer or jig hook, size 4 to 6
• Thread: Brown or olive 140 denier
• Weight: Dumbbell eyes tied on top so the fly rides hook up
• Claws: Pumpkin rabbit strip tips or olive grizzly hackle tips, splayed
• Legs: Pumpkin – Green Black Orange Disco Legs, 3 strands per side tied at the eyes
• Body: Olive-brown dubbing with a palmered brown hackle, trimmed flat on top
• Shellback: Olive Thin Skin or a strip of Scud Back

Tying: Tie the eyes at the hook bend side, so the fly swims backward like a fleeing crawfish. Tie in the claws to point out over the eye. Add the legs on both sides at the eyes. Dub the body forward with hackle palmered through. Pull the shellback over, rib with thread, and whip finish.

How to fish it: Crawfish live on the bottom and so should this fly. Let it sink to the rocks. Use short hops: one 6-inch strip, pause, another strip. Crawfish dart backward when spooked, and that’s what the fly does. Most smallmouth eat it on the drop or the pause. If you’re not losing a few flies to rocks, you’re not deep enough.