Hi Luke,

Really good eyes for damsel fly nymphs can be made from 50 lbs monofilament line. Cut off a section around 1/4 to 5/16 inch long or so, more or less depending on the size eyes you need, and how long the tie down section in the center needs to be.

Now take a pair of tweezers, the fine point type work best, hold the section of mono in the middle, and put one end of the mono into a candle flame slightly to melt the mono into a round glob on one end to form one eye. Turn the section around and melt the other end to form the other eye.

If I recall correctly, you don't even need to go into the flame much, just kind of touch the mono end barely to contact it. Melting the mono slowly on the very tip and slowly feeding it into the flame works better than shoving it into the flame and melting it all at once. You want to melt it on the very tip and feed it into the flame melting the eye bigger as you feed it in.

It has been several years since I have made any of them, and I have quite a few in a small zip lock in my main tying box, so don't need to make more for a while. Since it has been a few years since I have made any, the lengths I listed may not be quite right.

Works great, but you may need to fool with the length, feeding rate, etc., some. Throw away the ones that don't turn out too well, as the cost is almost nothing if you already have some heavy duty old mono laying around. Don't buy high dollar mono, pick up the really cheap stuff. If you don't have any heavy mono around, the butt section on a tapered leader will work too.

I passed up buying some black 50 lbs mono several years ago because I thought it was too expensive, and have regretted not buying it ever since. Small spools of 50 lbs black mono are hard to find. That said, the fish seem to like my damsel fly nymphs just fine with eyes made from clear mono. Brown or olive may be better than black. I do see red or green mono fairly often, but really don't know how red or green eyes would work.

The 50 lbs seems to work well for me, but if I had heavier or lighter weight I would use it. I have also thought about using the 50 lbs I have and buying some light weight black, as the light weight black is easier to come by. What a person could do is melt the 50 lbs end and touch some of the black to it, effectively welding a black section to the clear, then trim the black to give the right length of black for the eye size you want, and then melt that back onto the rest of the eye, thus forming an eye of the color you want. If perfectly done, I think you could even form eyes with a clear edge, and a black center.

Regards,

Gandolf