by Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies: Find him on his YouTube channel at Savage Flies
This month’s pattern will be familiar to many smallmouth (and big trout) anglers and for good reason. It has been a killer warmwater streamer throughout the country and guides from Idaho to Virginia will swear by it.
Created by Kim Keeley of Victor, Idaho likely sometime in the early 2000s, the TeQueely is a heavy, buggy fly that doesn’t look much like anything except maybe the unlikely offspring of a woolly bugger and skirted bass jig.
Kim tied the original on a #2-8 long-shank hook, with a gold bead, a chunky yellow/black/yellow marabou tail, three pairs of yellow rubber legs coming off each side, and a meaty copper crystal chenille body. Extra weight is optional.
I’ll typically tie this pattern on the smaller side as I’m usually chasing trout in smaller tailwaters with a 3-weight rod, but I did have the opportunity to float the Shenandoah River in Virginia recently and I’m happy to say that this pattern in a bigger/heavier size woke up a dozen or so smallmouth in the 10-14 inch range. On an early morning after a three-day cold snap we feared the fish would be sluggish and not interested in much. Not the case with the TeQueely. It got deep fairly quickly and surprisingly enough, I didn’t lose a single streamer on the boulder-strewn bottom.
If you’re a smallmouth (or largemouth) bass fly fisherman, consider putting a few of these in your box. Tie them as big and chunky as you can comfortably fish and you might be surprised at what you’ll pull out of your local waters. But don’t neglect this thing if you’re a die-hard trout angler. Maybe tie it a little smaller, or make the body a little sleeker, and see what the big browns think of it. I’m looking forward to plying some of the deeper holes on the Savage River here in Maryland with this guy.
Recipe:
Hook: #2-8 3x long streamer
Bead: Brass, sized to match the hook
Weight: 0.015 - 0.025
Thread: Black
Tail: Marabou, yellow over black over yellow
Comments
I tie mine purple and black
Looks a lot like a JJ special that we used to fish on the Big Horn back in the late 90’s
With a mix of black and brown this makes a great hellgrammite imitation.