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 Fly Tier: Stan Gula |
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Tying Instruction : 1) Tied on thread at hook eye and wrap the hook shank with a layer of thread 2) Greg tied in two short segments about half the shank length, centered on the shank, on the sides of the shank. The idea is to get a flat body profile. I hate that. I wrapped wire the same length, added a drop of superglue, and wrapped with thread. Greg uses superglue too, and sets aside the leaded hook to dry. I did that too, and when the glue was dry I flattened the wire wraps with pliers. Similar look, less effort, a bit more weight. 3) Tie on two brown goose biots. Greg had then pointing slightly up and separated by almost 90 degrees. That's a lot wider than most biot tails. I tied mine in at about a 45 degree angle. 4) Greg used 6 strand cotton floss. That's available at Michael's craft store in West Springfield for 10 cents. They have dozens of good colors. The technique for tying in the floss is: tie a 6 inch or so length of each color to the hook at the rear, pointing toward the bend. The darker color should be on the side closest to you. Run the thread forward and secure with half hitches and cut off. Otherwise, the thread will get in the way. You will restart the thread later to tie off the floss. Rotate the vise so the eye is pointing at you. Then hold the floss, dark color in your left hand, lighter color in your right. Go under the hook and tie an overhand knot (loosely) in the flosses making sure the dark strand goes behind the light. This is best done by holding the lighter strand and doing the knot with the dark strand. With the knot tied, pinch the side with the light strand tag, and push up on the dark strand. This opens up a loop. Slip the loop of dark floss over the eye of the hook. Slide this loop to the tail and pull the two strands out to the side, hard. Repeat six or seven times. If you're doing it right (dark behind the light, dark loop over eye) you'll be building up a body that is dark on top, light on the bottom. You want to cover about half the hook shank. The natural has an abdomen about 60% of the bug's length, but 50% looks OK. Restart the thread and tie off the floss. 5) Tie on dark turkey feather. Oak mottled turkey would look good too. Greg treats his feathers with flexament or Krylon fixative for durability. He cuts off a 1/2" section and folds it in half for thickness. He trims one end flat and ties it in with about 1/4" free behind the tie in and the rest pointing to the eye. Fold back the feather over the hook shank to make room for the thorax. 6) Tie in a grizzly hackle feather, shiny side toward you by the butt, like you would to hackle a dry fly. Greg used a cree cock neck hackle. He recommends any kind of barred feather, and I think a golden dyed grizzly looks good as does a normal grizzly. The size looked about 1.5 times bigger than you would use for a dry fly on the same hook. Tie in and dub the body. 7) Dub thorax with light yellow dubbing, tied very fat. Greg used yellow dyed rabbit. I used sulfur spectrablend. The thorax on the natural is almost twice as wide as the abdomen, so go heavy. Make sure you leave room at the eye for tying off the wing case. 8) Palmer the hackle forward. First pull the hackle feather forward to break the stem. Take 4 or 5 evenly spaced wraps. Tie off. Trim off the hackle on the back if you want. 9) Pull the wing case over the thorax and take 3-4 wraps to secure it. I then pull the rest of the turkey feather back toward the bend and take 2 wraps of thread between the wing case and the eye. Whip finish or take several half hitches. It's a good idea to put a drop of head cement on the head. 10) To make the antennae, use your bodkin to pick out a strand of turkey feather at each side of the remnants. Pull those two strands out of the way and cut off the excess turkey feather. Reposition the antennae so they point forward. Note : Here's the writeup I did after watching Greg Hoover tie one at our TU meeting on May 8. No recipe as such, but a detailed description of the technique. The weaving technique for the body is shown in nice detail as Body Method #114 in Leeson and Schollmeyer's Benchside Reference (ISBN 157188126-3) - the overhand weave. |
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ã Andrew Cooper 2000 All rights reserved .