Rainy's Sweeney Todd Size 2 From the Designer Chuck Carpenter..."I wanted a sculpin steamer that acted like a sculpin. A steamer that would get down fast, stay there, and glide along the bottom like sculpins do. What I didnt want was a streamer that would go rocketing head first towards the bottom like a river lawn dart. So, I distributed weight throughout the fly. I accomplished this by adding a series of lead wraps mid-shank to balance out the weight of the lead eyes. It was also necessary to invert the hook due to the bottom skimming nature I was going for. I knew right from the get go that it had to have a large deer hair head. A deer hair head was necessary for two reasons: First, it would create drag and slow the fly down, forcing the streamer to maintain connection with a floating fly line (remember that the surface of the river is moving faster than the bottom) and I was bound and determined to make sure the days of lost connections with my streamer were over. Second, dear hair heads are magical. I usually try to incorporate a red gill throat attractor into my flies. For this streamer, I had something special in mind. I wanted to incorporate the gill feature into the deer hair head. This saved shank space and placed the gills into the correct anatomical position. By creating the red throat slash out of deer hair, it really showcases this feature instead of it being hidden somewhere in the body of the fly. Trust me, fish pick up on it."
