This fly is a Sure Bet

By TRAVIS BARRETT

WINTHROP -- Mike Holt employs a simple test for new flies. He ties it to the line at the end of his rod, and casts and strips repeatedly for one half-hour. After the 30 minutes are up, the fly is tossed in either his fly case or his trash bin.

In rare cases, the owner of Fly-Fishing Only in Fairfield picks up the telephone.

When Selene Dumaine heard Holt's voice at the other end of the line last July, she was mildly surprised.

"I'll take as many as you can give me," Holt told Dumaine.

It was a "Sure Bet" that Holt wouldn't be the only angler clamoring for Dumaine's latest creation.

DOWN THE PIKE

Last July, Bob Dionne at Aardvark Outfitters in Farmington placed a call to Selene Dumaine. He asked Dumaine, a local fly tier from Readfield with an outstanding reputation for her work, to come up with a streamer fly which fly-fishermen could use to target northern pike. Dumaine gave it some thought and threw together a bright pattern wrought with gold, fluorescent orange and green.

"I thought, 'Well, pike like to eat yellow perch. I'll make something that looks like a little yellow perch,' " Dumaine said this week at Chandler Pond Outfitters, where she sets up a fly-tying operation for a couple of days each week to try and meet the quaint little store's surging demand. "I did a dozen of them and sent them off, and then I never even heard back if it was a good pike fly or not."

"What Selene's done right is made it so the action is really lifelike," Dionne said. "She's made it so (the fish) can see it and made it in a way they can see it that doesn't look completely (unrealistic). It has to have those lifelike attributes, and Selene's really hit on it."

Soon enough, the glowing little critter's success in attracting northern pike would become a moot point. Weeks passed, and Dumaine returned to the pattern. Instead of using a large hook associated with pike, she tied the identical pattern on a size 6 hook thinking smallmouth bass might be interested in the design.

A customer of both Chandler Pond and Fly-Fishing Only saw Dumaine's creation and quickly grabbed up a half-dozen of them, driving from Winthrop to Holt's shop in Fairfield for hand delivery.

Holt took a look at one and figured he'd put the new fly to the test.

AWARD-WINNING WORK

Selene Dumaine, a registered Maine Guide and custom rod builder, came into regional and national prominence in 1998, only a few years after getting her start as a tyer. It was that March that she was named the Northeast Fly Tying Champion at the World Fly-Fishing Expo in Wilmington, Mass.

Five years later, she was hailed in Fly Tyer magazine as the "modern day Carrie Stevens," and Dumaine has worked hard to carry on the traditions of Stevens, who from her home in Upper Dam outside of Rangeley, crafted the Gray Ghost and other enduring streamer patterns in the early 20th century. Dumaine admits she doesn't really have her own tying style, instead trying to recreate Stevens' methods in an effort to preserve her Maine traditions.

"(Stevens) glued all of the elements of the wing together with lacquer," Dumaine said. "It's called the 'Rangeley Streamer' tying style. She would tie the body, and then she'd attach the wings separately. Her signature was a red band of thread around the head (of the fly)."

Dumaine fills her weeks now by teaching fly-tying classes, filling out orders for Chandler Pond Outfitters and other local fly shops, and by creating custom designs on commission. She said that although it's become increasingly more difficult to design new patterns as she tries to keep up with her orders, it is something she enjoys doing.

"To me, a new fly out of your box is hope," Dumaine said. "You tie on a new fly, and all of a sudden you have new hope. There's a little inspiration out of the fly box with every new pattern you try."

Some of Dumaine's recent fly designs include the "Hook Up" series -- the Caratunk Hook Up, the R&W Hook Up and the Brookie Hook Up -- as well as Jordan's No. 80, designed to honor the 80th birthday of customer Richard Jordan.

"Some are for aesthetics and some are for catching a lot of fish," Dumaine said of her originals.

YOU BETCHA

What Mike Holt experienced that first time out with Dumaine's fly prompted him to call it "The Hoover."

"'The Hoover' wouldn't be wrong," Holt said, "because it cleans out a pool in no time."

What started as a 30-minute test of the fly turned into a morning's worth of fishing, leaving Holt scrambling back to Fairfield in time to open his shop. In an hour and a half, the new fly landed four rainbow trout, three brown trout and two smallmouth bass. Holt couldn't believe its effectiveness, nor could he believe how well it worked with so many different species.

The first rainbow trout Holt caught is believed to be the first fish landed with the Sure Bet.

Holt called Dumaine and told her he'd take however many she could fashion. From that early July start until the end of the fishing season last fall, Dumaine estimated that she made 50 dozen of the flies, some in size 6 and some in size 8. They were sold through Holt at Fly-Fishing Only, by Chandler Pond Outfitters, Aardvark Outfitters and through Dumaine's personal Web site.

Within days, Holt had started an online naming contest for the fly on his forum at www.flyfishingonly.com. Hundreds of suggestions, some outrageous stories and even a few poems later, the name 'Orange Sure-Bet' won out. It was later shortened to the simpler 'Sure Bet' when it was discovered that similar color patterns -- a watermelon sure-bet or raspberry sure-bet, for instance, to cleverly play off the frozen treat homonym -- weren't succeeding in the water.

"I don't know why it works. It's a funny looking thing, and it's pretty easy to tie," Dumaine said. "But it will catch just about anything."

In the end, the Sure Bet became the closest thing to a sure thing the anglers along the Kennebec River have found.

"Between (July) and the end of the season, it was the best-selling streamer or sub-surface streamer we had," Holt said. "It just kept working, and it kept on showing up. Guys would come in here and tell me that they'd landed all kinds of different fish on it.

"I fully expect to have another run on them any time now."

CROSSING OVER

Flies that will catch a variety of species are not that uncommon.

"The Muddler Minnow is a nationally, an internationally, renowned fly," Holt said. "It will catch largemouth (bass), smallmouth, rainbows, browns, brook trout, a whole bunch. The Clauser Minnow is another, and there's the size 14 Elk Hair Caddis. There's a lot of flies that cross over."

What makes the Sure Bet of particular interest, of course, is that it is largely a localized phenomenon. The Sure Bet is not sold outside of Maine, except through Dumaine's Web site.

"Anywhere an olive Wooly Bugger will work, we've found a Sure Bet will work," Dumaine said.

Bob Dionne thinks the Sure Bet succeeds at capitalizing on a new fly's window of opportunity.

"New flies will always work for a few years, and then they don't seem to work anymore," Dionne said. "You have to get more and more realistic, and you have to get smaller and smaller to fool the so-called 'educated' fish. It's more true with trout than anything else. With the advent of new flies, there's something to that thought."

NEW INCARNATION

Soon, outfitters will have a relative of the Sure Bet to offer customers. For the last couple of months, Dumaine has been busy designing the new "Sure Bet Hex," a cross between a streamer and a nymph. Streamer flies typically imitate baitfish or any bugs that swim through the water, while nymphs usually represent insects in their larval stage below the surface of the water.

The Sure Bet Hex is a spin-off imitation of a hexagenia mayfly.

"It's a nymph, but it's also a streamer, too, because the (hexagenia) is such an agile mover," Dumaine said. "It represents a nymph, but it fishes like a streamer on bottom.

"Confusing?"

Not if it catches fish the way its cousin the Sure Bet does.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com