scg,

thanks for the nice comments. ive been tying and fishing this pattern for 5 or 6 years and it has proven to be very effective . it helped me catch a couple dozen trout in 2 hours yesterday.

as for help in tying all I can do is tell you what I do. first thing is a rotary vice, I cant imagine trying to wrap the wire and keep it close together with no gaps without one. secondly I use three spools of wire at one time. each spool of wire is on its own bobbin. it helps in controlling the wire when wrapping the body. third, use a brown colored thread , I use camel thread when tying in the wire, no matter how hard I try I cannot keep the wraps of wire close enough together to eliminate any small gaps. if you use the brown or dark colored thread the gaps do not look so obvious. I found out real quick that the fire orange thread stood out like a sore thumb when it was used to tie in the wire. fourth tie in all 3 strands of wire at the same time at the end of the hook shank and wrap the thread forward and back forming a tapered under body. also when tying in the wire tie it in with the 2 copper brown wires side by side, and the copper wire closest to you. fifth, when wrapping the wire I usually pull the wire towards me forming a somewhat right angle between the hook shank and the bundle of wire, pull it tight , and then wrap the wire bundle around the hook shank.

as for the hackle length, I try to make the hackle just slightly longer than the distance from the tie in point to the outside bend in the hook. I use a pettijean tool to do this. to start I pick a feather from the skin, pull off the fuzz, stroke the feather to line up the hackle tips and insert the hackle tips into the tool. the width of the feather section should be about 1 1/2 times the hook gap, this should give you about 1 1/2 and 2 wraps of hackle, which seems to be about the right proportion to me , more and the hackle looks to dense and less not dense enough. you can experiment with how much to insert in the tool until you get the look you want. okay so when inserting the feather into the clip don't stick it in to far because you will want to trim it back later. now that the feather section is secured in the clip, cut it free from the rest of the feather. now you have the clip with a section of the hackle in it. hold the clip with the feather in it up to the fly in your vise with the hackle tips just past the hook bend. look at the hackle tie in point and gauge where you will need to trim the butts off the feather to insert in your dubbing loop to get the proper hackle length.

one other tip that may help, since the hackle clip is clear, I took a fine point felt marker and drew lines on the hackle clip to show how far I need to insert the feather section to get the hackle length I want for a particular size hook.

hope some of this helps and that I didn't confuse the issues.

any other help I can be just ask

john52948