Rubber Legs

[louisianajeff]

Alright, I've been tying flies since I was 14. I've mastered spun deer hair, can tie spey's with ease, woven bodies, all the good stuff.

But I can never seem to get those stupid rubber legs to point the direction I want them to. And since the sacalait(crappie for you noncajuns), bream and bass in my area won't eat a fly without at least 4 rubber legs on it, this annoys me to no end.

Does anyone have any tricks for controlling these things? I've read the panfish articles, the flytying stuff and such but haven't seen any good methods for the m.

Jeff

[dragonfly1]

Have you tried the figure eight wrap? Like you would lead eyes or bead chain. This works for me, if you need to you can work on one leg at a time after you do the figure eight to get them to do what you want.

[louisianajeff]

ok, to clarify a bit.

yeah, the figure-eight is typically how i tie them on. But I usually go for a swept-back leg, and most of the time some type of body wrap (marabou, chenille, dub, whatever) goes over the legs. Getting the legs to hold position through the wrap as it gets beat up is my biggest problem. That, and little gillies pulling the legs off, but not much I can do about that.

[dragonfly1]

O.k., You are talking swept wing I see. The way I do them, might not be considered conventional but it works. When you do the body wrap take a piece of thread and bend it in half to make a loop. On the one wrap of body material where you want your legs to be, wrap the loop of thread under the body material and insert the rubber leg. When done with one or two wraps pull the thread and rubber back toward you. Now you have swept legs. Of course you have to do this on both sides of the body at the same time, so I guess I should of said two loops of thread(LOL). Hope this works for you.

[DG]

For submerged flies, I don't think it really matters if the legs are pointed the right way, although of course pretty flies catch more fish than ugly ones. If the cheese was on the bottom of the burger instead of the top, your brain would still say "cheeseburger", even though that is not the way it is supposed to be made, according to those fancy cookbooks.

Foam poppers are easy. Hot needle, poke a hole, then thread the legs through with a bobbin threader.

[William Fitzgerald]

This is easier to show than explain--- I add legs by putting on two wraps of thread ,lay two piecies of rubber on top take two more wraps. Pull one set of rubber leg away from and one set toward your body. This puts one leg to the rear ,one to the front on each side of the fly. No figure 8--that doesn't leave a space between the front and rear legs. You can cut the front legs shorter then the rear for hopper type legs. BILL

[Lew]

Here's a video of a guy tying a Madame X fly, with rubberlegs. The legs are the last part of the video, so hang in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5sl6x-tvCw

[Peter F]

Bill,

So, just to confirm my understanding of your suggest tying-in technique....

I assume you are laying the rubber on top of the hook and parallel to the hook. Am I right?

Peter F

[Betty Hiner]

Huh? I'm so confused! Minds' eye must not be functioning well this morning!!

[MontanaMoose]

Betty, I think they're talking about drag racing...you know...'laying the rubber to the road' kinda thing? :))

Cheers,

MontanaMoose