www.flyfishingoutfitters.com “Side-to-side movement is pretty intoxicating for any predatory fish.” So says Charlie Bisharat, inventor of one of the most revolutionary flies in recent memory, the Pole Dancer. Born of Charlie’s “love for topwater stripers”, the Pole Dancer was designed to imitate the action of conventional lures like the Zara Spook and the Lunker Plunker. As experienced bass and striper anglers know, this zig-zag, ‘walk-the-dog’ action mimics the movement of a wounded baitfish, and is far more enticing to big-shouldered fish than any ordinary in-line retrieve. The Pole Dancer fly achieves this unique action in large part thanks to its molded foam head, which builds water pressure on one side of the fly when retrieved with sharp stripping motions and causes the fly to veer from left to right and back again. For the Pole Dancer to achieve this action, everything about the fly must be in balance. To ensure this, the head is held neutral by weight placed toward the back of the shank, and tail materials are kept evenly distributed by a beefy monofilament anti-fouling guard. Beyond these functional design attributes, the Pole Dancer has a few nice touches that are characteristic of almost any fly that’s successful with predatory fish: big eyes and a red ‘bleeding’ gill slit add a level of realism that help seal the deal. Though it was first developed for stripers on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta system, the Pole Dancer fly has done very well in tropical …
