My Flies

Dry Flies

Root Beer Dry Fly Emerger X Root Beer Dry Fly Emerger The Root Beer Dry Fly Emerger is a somewhat tricky fly to tie, but is incredibly versatile and worth the long fly times. It can be used in a variety of situations, both on the surface of the water as a dry fly, or in the film below surface to attract fish feeding underwater. I use a small emerger hook, sized 16-22. Using brown or copper-colored thread, begin at the eye and apply a base layer or wraps all the way to the bend of the hook. There, tie in 8-12 strands of crystal flashbou, as well as a length of thin copper wire. The flashbou will serve as both the tail and the wing of this pattern, with the tail length being approximately the distance between the hook point and shank. Secure both the flashbou and copper and wrap the thread back up the hook shank approximately two/thirds, covering the flashbou strands as you go. Then, wrap the copper wire in wide, even gaps and bring it towards your thread, locking it in at about two thirds of the way up the shank. Once the copper is secured, bend back your remaining flashbou strands to form the wing, and secure them with some thread wraps. Secure a piece of collar hackle at the base of the wing, and bring your thread to the eye of the fly. Give three or four turns of hackle, to provide a collar for your fly, and secure the hackle turns at the eye. Whip finish and cut off your thread.

The Royal Wolff X The Royal Wulff The Royal Wulff is a classic attractor dry fly. Whereas it does not imitate any specific bug you would find in nature, its attributes resemble features of many different bugs, making it appetizing to trout. It is a five-material fly, and can be mastered with some practice. Using a black thread, tie first tie in a piece of white calf tail hair (or some white Norma hair) to form the wing column. Now, I personally do not believe trout can see this part of the fly when it is floating on the surface, but it does make your Royal Wulff easier to spot when it is 30-40 feet away on uneven water. Use multiple thread wraps on each side of the wing to make it stand up straight. Tie in a strand of brown or tan hackle at the base of your wing. We'll revisit it later in the fly-tying process. Bring you thread to the bend of the hook to tie in some moose or deer hair for the tail. I have even used goose biots to form a tail here. Peacock tail feather fibers make up the body of this fly, segmented in the middle of the body by some loops of red floss to break up the body. This will require tying in the peacock fibers twice, as you shouldn't tie the red floss over the fibers. Once the peacock body is finished, take hold of the hackle feather we tied in earlier. Give several loops both in front of and behind the wing, and lock in the hackle feather with some thread wraps, being careful not to pin down any of the hackle fibers. Finally, whip-finish to complete this fly.

Nymphs

Pink Squirrel Nymph X Pink Squirrel Nymph The Pink Squirrel Nymph is a four-material fly that is relatively easy to tie. It is tied on a nymph hook with a bead head. The tail of the nymph is made from a few strands of flash-bou. The body is made from fur dubbing, typically rabbit. I use both brown and tan fur. The dubbed body is wrapped in fine copper wire. The "neck" of the fly is a pink dubbing wrapped below the bead head. This fly is fished under the water using an indicator. The flash from the pink neck dubbing and flash-bou tail should attract fish, especially on sunny days.

John Deere Maribou Jig X John Deere Maribou Jig Whenever I fish Bennett Spring or Montauk State Park, I always seem to have the best luck whenever I use the the John Deere Marabou Jig pattern. I first learned about this fly last May, when I was fishing with the Eckelkamp family at Bennett Spring. I had a lot of luck with it on that and several subsequent trips. I'd been meaning to learn how to tie my own and this week I finally buckled down, bought the materials, and taught myself how to tie this incredibly versatile fly. This is one of the most popular fly patterns in Missouri, and you can find it in pretty much any fly shop in St. Louis or near the Missouri trout parks. Both T. Hargrove's and the Ozark Fly Fishers have instructions on how to tie this particular fly but I thought I'd give a crack at explaining my experience with it. This fly is fairly simple to tie, and even a novice (like me) should have no problem tying it, so long as you know the basics of locking in multiple materials and whip finishing. Not counting paint, this is a two material fly. Compared to some of the more complex emerger or dry fly patterns I've tied in the past, that seems like nothing. Furthermore, I'm tying these on a fairly large size #10 jig head hook, which seems like a monster compared to sizes #16 or #18. Here's a complete list of materials: Hook: Size #18 Jig Head - Horizontal Presentation Thread: Olive 8/0 UNI-Thread Tail: Olive Marabou Fibers Body: Olive Wooly Bugger Chenille, Medium (or Small) Head: Acrylic Paint, Green Head, with a Large Yellow Eye Your first step, and perhaps the only tricky step with this fly, is to paint the head of the hook. Now, this head is going to be two colors, so my advice is to paint several hooks before moving on to traditional materials. It's tedious to have to let the paint dry before moving on to the next step, so you might as well tie a bunch of these at once and get the boring head-painting out of the way first. I painted several hook heads green, let them dry, and then moved on to paint the large, yellow eyes on each hook. I used acrylic paint, and as you can imagine, you're only painting a very small jig head, so a minuscule amount of paint goes a long way. I bought mine, along with the brushes, for about $1 per bottle at JoAnn Fabric. I didn't worry too much about getting paint in the hook eye, and just used a needle to clear the eye once the paint had dried. Once your paint is dry, you can begin with starting your olive thread behind the head, and adding a base layer of thread all the way down to the bend of the hook. Once there, you're going to tie in your marabou fibers for the tail. I found marabou surprisingly tricky to work with. The feather fibers are incredibly airy, and I accidentally blew them off of my tying desk more than once when trying to get the head paint to dry. It seems that the end tips of the fibers have much finer barbs that at the base of the feather, and work better for the tail. That means that reusing the feathers for multiple flies can be tricky as you trim more and more material off the tip as you tie. I found that once the marabou material starting to change color as you approached the base of the feather, it was time to discard it. Once your tail is tied in, you attach the chenille material at the bend of the hook right at the base of the tail. It does not take a lot of material here, maybe an inch per fly. I bought the medium thickness chenille, but I wish I had gone with the finer, small thickness. I'm in no way disappointed with how my flies look, I just prefer the smaller diameter chenille that I have on my store bought John Deere jigs. Once your chenille is tied in at the bend, wrap your thread back up to the head. In tight wraps, bring your chenille to the head also, making sure not to overlap yourself. Once you have the chenille at the head, lock it in with your thread, and trim any excess. Use your whip finish tool to complete the fly, and you'll be set to catch some trout in Missouri's parks.

El Diablo X El Diablo The first time I tied the El Diablo Fly, which roughly translates to, "The The Devil Fly" was on my kitchen counter a few nights ago. It was the Friday night of my first week back at work after the holidays, and even though it was a shortened week, it somehow didn't feel that way. The baby was sleeping and wife was working, so I busted out my Christmas toys. The El Diablo is the first in a series of six flies I will be tying as a part of my subscription to PostFly, a subscription all-in-one fly-tying materials package my wife, Emily, gifted me for Christmas. I had never heard of the company or the fly pattern before, but wow, she really knocked it out of the park. The package included all the materials one would need to tie a specific pattern, and even though it didn't come with instructions, it did have a complete model fly example included that I could try and copy. Ultimately, I think my first effort could have been a bit neater, so I decided to try again tonight to get a better example. I am happy to say my sophomoric effort was much more successful, and I am looking forward to tying more of this pattern in the future. The El Diablo Fly Materials Hook: Curved #12 - #18 Thread: Black Uni-Thread Head: Tungsten Bead  Core: Solder Wire Tail/Wing: Golden Pheasant Wing Body: Orange and Green Dubbing Material Rib: Fine Black Wire The El Diablo is a heavy fly, with a tungsten bead head and a solder wire core. The goal is to get it to sink as fast as possible, so the heavier, the better. The first step is to shimmy your bead in place at the hook eye, and secure it in place with several wraps of your fine black uni-thread. Next, you'll need to add several loops of the solder wire to add more weight to the fly. This wire will not be visible in the end product, so don't be too worried about how tidy your wraps are. As shown below, I used my fine, needle nose pliers to help wrap the solder. Secure it in place with your thread, and then bring the thread down the hook shank to the bend. Once your thread is wrapped to the bend, it's time to tie in the golden pheasant feathers and fine black wire. The pheasant feather fibers will serve as the fly's tail, shell casing, and its wing, so be gentle with them. You don't want to break the fibers, bend them, or accidentally pull out most of the fibers when tying the tail in place. I made my tail equal to about half the length of the fly. Full discloser, I did trim my tail and wing fibers. Most purists will avoid trimming feathers, and even in the demo fly, you can see that they did not trim them. Oh well. Once your tail feathers are in place and you like their length and position, tie in a length of the fine black wire. Now it's time for the orange dubbing material. Add a pinch to your black uni-thread (not to be mistaken with the fine black wire), and make several wraps until you are about halfway or two-thirds of the way to the bead. You don't want to overcrowd the area immediately before the bead, so be careful. And don't go overboard with the dubbing material. It's easy to do. You'd be shocked how easy it is to put too much on the thread, and how far a seemingly tiny amount of dubbing material will stretch out. If you do put too much on (and we all do it), don't be afraid to pinch it off and throw it right back into the dubbing material storage bag. Once the dubbing is in place, it might look a bit messy. Mine did. That's okay. It'll all come out in the wash following the next few steps. First bring forward your remaining pheasant feather fibers to form the shell casing over the orange dubbing material and tie it in. Next, wrapping in the opposite direction of your thread, bring forward the fine black wire from earlier to form the fly's ribs. This will lock in and tidy up your orange dubbing. Now, it's time for the green dubbing material. In the same manner as before, add the material to your thread and wrap towards the eye, but be sure to leave yourself a smidge of room at the end to work with the wings. These wraps should be tied on top of the pheasant feather fibers. Once it's in place and tied in, pull back on the remaining portion of the feather fibers to form the fly's wing. Use a whip finish to complete the fly, and feel free to tidy up the wing, tail, and remaining wild dubbing fibers with your scissors. Here's my end product from tonight. And here's a comparison between the fly I tied tonight (left) and the model that came with the kit (right). I like this pattern a lot. It's a good amount of materials and isn't too overly complicated to tie. It's a nice pattern that benefits from the messiness of the dubbing fibers, so for someone who is still a novice (i.e., sloppy) like myself, it's perfect. If you're looking for that special gift for a fly-fisherman, you can check out PostFly here. I can't reccomend it enough. It's perfect for amateurs and expert fly-tiers alike. Thanks, Emily.

Streamers

Crawdad X Crawdad The crawdad is a large, complex pattern that takes a few minutes to tie. This pattern is tied on a massize size #4 hook, and is significantly larger than any other hooks I have tied trout flies on, so I am skeptical that it won't be too large. I've seen many variations of a crawdad pattern, some of which use feathers with painted tips for the actual body and claws of the crawdad.I tied mine on a felt cutout pattern. The full list of materials I used are listed below. Materials Dai-Riki #700B Size 4 Streamer/Nymph Hook - 1x Strong, 4x Long UNI-Thread 6/0 Camel .025 Lear-Free Wire Fish Skull's CrawBody Felt Crawdad Pattern, Medium, Brown Fishers Advantage Barbell Eyes Centipede Legs - Speckled Brown Medium Hare's Ear Plus Dubbin - Reddish Brown The first step is to tie this fly is to secure your giant hook into your vice. I begin my thread wraps at the eye of the fly and bring them to the hook bend, leaving a nice thread base along the entire shank. At the bend of the hook, I secure the barbell weight using figure-8 thread wraps, ensuring it's locked firmly in place at the top of the hook bend. Once the eye is secure, I use a rubber centipede leg to form the crawdad's antennas. I double the leg in half, and pull it around the secured eye. I lock it in place with several thread wraps. Behind the secured eye, I will add several wraps of lead wire to give the fly more weight, and hopefully bring it to the bottom of the water column where all the big browns hang out. I secure the lead in place with a good number of thread wraps and bring the thread back to the eye of the hook (not to be confused with the secured dumbbell eye of the crawdad). Now it's time to flip the fly over in your vice, so that the point of the hook is facing the ceiling. Pulling out several large pinches of dubbing material, apply the hare's ear fur to your thread, approximately 6 inches' worth. If you are having difficult twisting the dubbing material onto your thread, try a dubbing wax. I personally do not use dubbing wax, but I know several tiers who do and swear by it. In slow, deliberate wraps, bring your thread and material back up to the dumbbell eye. You might have to add more material halfway through if you run out. I did. Above the dumbbell eye, on the opposite side of the hook shank, tie in the head of your felt crawdad cutout, being careful not to lock in its claws with thread, or to have the body twist along the hook shank. Finally, wrap in each segment of the crawdad tail, careful not to crowd the eye of the hook. Whip finish at the eye and enjoy your new crawdad pattern.