Bottom Crawler

All about flies Fly Tying
1

Across at UK Fly Dressing we are lucky to have as a contributor, Ulf Hagstrom of Norway, who amongst others from the Scandanavian contingent, produces the most amazing flies from his vice and the pattern I loosely based this on must be one of his finest.

See here - Ulf’s SRM Emerger

I am still stunned by Ulf’s amazing emerger but had a try at something in the same vein ( a heroin addict’s collapsed vein that is) but for nymphing instead of emerging.

About a million miles away but surely some half blind trout might make a tentative grab for it on opening day on the Liffey in March.

2

Roddy,

Ulf is an incredible tier but don’t sell yourself short. This is an amazing tie. Great work

3

I like both very much and thank you for posting this.

Skip

4

Roddy,

Excellent! If I was a trout, I’d have a go at it.

Is that a nymph skin body also?

REE

5

Ron,

I used some natural latex cut to a 3mm strip, slanted point tied in at tails and stretched hard to reduce thickness, and easing off on the tension as you work up the abdomen. I kept the strip on to form the thorax with it doubled over, colouration was with permanent markers and brushable superglue over same when dry. Head was a black marker over the thread. You can’t see the underside but it is a sickly olive colour from the thread underneath.Tail is a couple of Barred Wood Duck fibres.

Glad you are hungry!

6

Hello Albannach, great bug and great tech with the decreasing tension of the latex…thanks for posting that !

Cheers,

MontanaMoose

7

I had another go at this today to try and improve the look but my brushable superglue has gone off and it is not as good as I wanted. Added some wingbuds and some touch dubbing between the legs to give it a bit more substance. I forgot to colour the tails as well - DOH!

Try, try and try again!

A work in progress I say.

8

Roddy,

I like that version a lot. The dubbing around the legs adds quite a bit. It has already caught a fisherman.

REE

9

These are gorgeous, no doubt. I’m thinking if it’s not too hard, maybe an FOTW?

One question though, any worries that the super glue coating wil turn white when in the water?

P.S. I recently received a copy of Paul Whillock’s “Flies as Art.” How depressing.

10

With regards to the superglue, I always use Loctite superglues as it is worth paying the extra for the quality. I have been using brushable for quite a while and have not had any problems with discolouration so far. The only draw back is that you have to allow a good 6 hours for any marker colouring to set well before applying as latex is not one of the best surfaces on which to apply it. I will enlarge on this when I do an SBS soon.

If you want to have real depression take a look at work by Steve Thornton, Nadia and Igor Stancev. Steve’s are so good that they were impounded by US customs for transporting and possessing rare insects! He did get them back after they found the hooks in them!

FOTW? - I have a couple of days off this week and should be able to spend enough time at the vice to getan SBS ready for submission, hopefully!