Quite a few people have told me "I would love to be able to dress good flies". Well you can! No practice or knowledge required! You don't even need any tools! I will also guarantee that these flies catch fish, often much better than some others!
In order to dress these flies, you will need some hare fur or whatever other fur you can find, and this must be chopped fairly finely. Just cut it up with scissors. You are looking for an average staple ( length of fibres), of about an eighth of an inch. You can also use clothes dryer lint, wool, etc as well, indeed you can use more or less anything! A few longer fibres wont hurt, quite the reverse.
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Mix this up in your fingers after chopping; You will also need some waterproof glue. I have used UHU here, but any flexible waterproof glue which dries fairly quickly will work;
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Various waterproof superglues like "Zap-a-Gap" or "Fishing glue" will also work, but don't get them on your fingers! You can also make these as bead heads, etc etc. You can make smooth or rough versions, multi coloured versions, and none of them takes longer than a few seconds to make. You can make dozens of them in an hour. They also catch plenty of fish!
If something goes wrong, then just wipe the hook off with acetone, the approriate glue solvent, or similar thinner, ( Wont work with Superglue and various similar cyano-acrylates TAKE CARE WHEN USING SUCH) and start again.
STEP BY STEP !
Take your hook, in this case a gold plated one, and coat the shank evenly with a thin layer of glue. You may find a small stiff brush best for this, but I have just applied the glue directly from a tube here. Now take a bunch of fur in your thumb and forefinger and just touch the fur to the hook. You can also just press a bunch of fur on to the hook. Put it on one side to dry. This is what the nymphs look like when a bunch of fur has been pressed to the hook.
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The "touch dubbed" nymphs are sparser!If you want multicoloured nymphs, then you need another bunch of fur with the second colour. In this case only coat two thirds of the hook in the first operation, and allow it to dry. Then coat the last third, and touch the final third with the dark dubbing. Eh Voila! A very nice nymph, no dressing skills required. Here are a couple of such nymphs. After allowing to dry completely, and removing the excess loose fur, ( use an old toothbrush for this, when the glymph is completely dry)which of course you just use again!
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The flies shown here have abdomens made of a mix of hare fur and fine red wool. The dark thorax bits are just darker hare fur. These nymphs are top class fish catchers, and you can experiment away as much as you like with colours, furs, wool, chopped silk, CDC, bits of feathers, etc etc etc You can also make some pretty precise imitations of lots of things, but the fish don't really care much! The flies are just about indestructible as well! If you are so inclined, you can make a very large number of these flies in a very short time. Make no mistake, these flies can be real killers! Some days the fish will belt them in preference to all else!
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