Product Review: Mangum’s Variegated Mini Dragon Tail

Mangum’s Variegated Mini Dragon Tail has some remarkable qualities and one that makes it a bear to cast.

First, the good: tied as I have it here its swimming action is remarkable (there’s that word again). Its life-like action may be one of the best I’ve seen fly fishing. Moving it slowly through the water alongside the boat you’d swear it was this big-ass worm, an eel, even. Stop and let it fall it swims away like a released fish. Just beautiful.

The color seen here is UV Treated Black/Purple, just the right color to entice bottom-shopping black bass. It’s the modern and very edible version of the old purple worms most of us used as kids on our local bass ponds. But it moves much more elegantly.

If you can cast it more than 30 feet.

It retains water. All of it, it seems. Like many others have commented – it casts like a wet sock. A wet athletic sock at that.

I tried it out on Lake Tarpon casting a 9-foot, 7-weight medium-slow action rod and 7-weight sinking tip line with a 9-foot, 20-pound leader. The best I could get out of it was about 30 feet, a reasonable roll cast with other flies. Not this one.

On first cast I could hear it pass sounding like a, well, wet sock flying by, or a wet pigeon. The F-4 Phantom fighters I used to work around passed more quietly. Okay, maybe not but you get the idea. Unlike other materials like feathers or bunny strips, the Dragon Tail retained much of its water and didn’t shed it during the cast, even that moment where the forward cast is initiated and the fly undergoes a somewhat abrupt change in direction overcoming its inertia where it’s most likely to shed water.

So, if one were to use this fly, which I hear is killer on ‘poon and other fish, if you can get it to them, is to use an 8-eight, fast action rod (or heavier) instead of my lighter choice. From what it does in the water, I believe it’s well worth the effort given the right tackle.