Cover the bases by having both the green and tan Bull Candy for Baja. These flies are tied on Gamakatsu SL12S 2/0 hooks (available on 4/0 upon request)and have boated many large cabrilla, pargo, tuna and dorado. Named BULL CANDY because they were responsible for taking the larger Bull Dorado during the past two summers great Dorado bite. Also tied as clousers on either 2/0 or 4/0 Gamakatsu SP11-3L3H hooks. Streamers are $7.95 while the clousers are $5.95 each. If you want the most BANG for your buck when fly fishing in Loerto, contact the Baja Big Fish Company

You can read the Bull Candy story here as it first appeared in the October/November 2007 issue of Saltwater Fly Fishing below,

This versatile fly will catch a wide variety of species from East Cape to East End.

I hate naming flies. There's always a chance the name won’t relate to what the fly does or is. Why can’t we just call patterns what they are? Take, for instance, the Bull Candy. For years, I called it the Tan Sardina or the Green Sardina, depending on the color.

But there I was on the phone with Pam Bolles of the Baja Big Fish Company out of Loreto, Baja California Sur, discussing the pattern’s name. She felt that Tan Sardina fell short of fly’s full capabilities. I was happy with the name, but after some back and forth she suggested Bull Candy because it seems bull dorado view the fly as a sweet treat. Well, I gave in, and Bull Candy stuck.

Nonetheless, by any name the Bull Candy is still intended to match sardina, also known as flatiron herring (Harengula thrissina). This prey species is used in Baja as live chum to attract predator fish into fly-casting range. The average sardina is five inches long, but you can find schools of smaller ones. When you locate these little fish, simply employ a throw net to catch them, fill your bait tank, and take off fishing. When you reach a reef or rocky point, throw a few of them out and wait for the inhabitants of the deep to come up and attack the free lunch.

If the sardinas swim as fast as their tails propel them toward the shallows or band together for safety around the boat, you can bet the farm that there’s something down there with teeth. It usually doesn’t take long for the calm to be broken by a cabrilla flying through the air.

If the sardinas head straight to the bottom, there’s a good chance that no predators are around. If that’s the case, it’s time to move to another spot and repeat the process.

The Bull Candy has morphed over the years. It took a lot of experimentation to come up with the right combination of durability and color.

From the beginning, however, yak hair has been the choice for making up the body of the fly because of its translucent appearance, stiffness, and strength. I also use it as the color of the sardina’s back, which according to the light and the fish’s mood, can range from olive to a gold hue. In a bait tank, a flatiron herring can have a vibrant green back, but send the same fish into predator-rich waters, and the color changes to a rich golden tone. Even in its green mood, the fish has a gold stripe down the side. I use olive yak hair for the green back and tan yak hair for the lighter, gold pattern. I found the color combinations I needed for topping off the yak hair in Orvis’s Sparkle Hair and Wapsi’s Polarflash.

To make the fly more durable, I eventually added a drop of superglue to the yak hair, and this prevented toothier prey from scalping the pattern. After a few wraps of thread, place one drop of superglue on the yak hair, and as you finish off the wraps, the glue will be sent deep into the threads, which makes the pattern nearly indestructible.

While testing the pattern in Loreto, I experimented with design, including tying the body well back of the hook eye and wrapping it sparsely or as massive as possible. I settled on tying it behind the eye of the hook with a body that’s somewhere between gargantuan and anorexic.

Most of the Bull Candies I tie are between 41⁄2 to 5 inches long, but it’s not a bad idea to have some in the 3- to 31⁄2- inch range. You can also carry some scissors in your tackle bag to cut down the larger flies to the size you need. I remember an instance on the beach when the roosterfish were taking only small bait, and I had only larger flies and no scissors. I used nippers to trim down a pattern and proceeded to land 12 roosters.

When fishing the pattern, I use a sinking line and have not needed to weigh the pattern down in any way. You could add some lead wire behind the eyes, but even a 300-grain line gets the fly down to fishy depths. And with the addition of a Cam Sigler popping head to the leader, I’ve fished the fly effectively on a floating line.

I’ve boated dorado, ladyfish, pargo, cabrilla, hogfish, black skipjack tuna, yellowtail, roosterfish, barracuda, triggerfish, and pretty much everything else that swims down there except a sailfish— and I’m still working on that. Out of all these fish, the dorado seemed particularly eager to chase down the Bull Candy, and although I still prefer the name Tan Sardina, sometimes you just have to call it like you see it.