These I already have tied:
Goldmine:
body: snipped from a bass tube
ribbing: brown flat waxed nylon
legs: light tan spanflex, sewn into the body with a wide-eyed rubberleg needleA
hook: #12-14 DaiRiki 135
glue: ca glue
I like to fish these with weight on the leader and not on the fly. But you can add weight as a bead to the front of the hook, or as flattened lead on the back side of the shank.
A…you have to make your own rubberleg needles. Start with a thin-shank big eye sewing needle. Heat the eye up to cherry red with a cigarette lighter. Use needle nose to jam the red-hot eye down onto the point of another needle. Now you can sew all sorts of stuff into foam or soft plastic–bundles of Crystal Flash, rubberlegs, synthetic hair, etc. To sew in hair bundles you need to start by loading the rubberleg needle (with the hair) using a bobbin threader.
Marshmallow Nymph (Fly Fisherman 1992)
http://montana-riverboats.com/index.php?fpage=Fly-Tying/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Marshmallow-Nymph.htm
body: brown (rit) dyed open cell polyurethane mattress foam
legs: dark brown spanflex
thorax: flattened lead with yellow dubbing, sandwiched between a slit in the foam
It’s tied on a horizontal beading needle. This is (perhaps) the best fly I’ve ever made. At least if you measure success by numbers of big fish caught over the past 20+ years (I first published this in 1992, in Fly Fisherman, but I’d been making it a good 3 or 4 years prior to that). The important thing about Marshmallows is not appearance so much as texture. Fish bite these flies and don’t let go. I couldn’t even begin to remember the number of times I drifted one of these without detecting a strike. But then, when I lifted the rod in preparation for another cast, I found a throbbing fish on the end of the line…a fish that had taken moments before, undetected, who was still chewing.
This is obviously not a spring creek or tailwater fly. But for big early-season freestone western rivers like the Gallatin, Madison, Yellowstone and Big Hole in Montana, the Marshmallow Nymph is a fish catching machine for me. The best time of all is generally the last few days before the Salmon Fly hatch, when the big nymphs gather at clumps of willow roots along the river’s edges. Interestingly too–something I only discovered just a few years ago–these flies are deadly even during high brown run off water. At least in the week before and during the Salmon Fly hatch. When the river is brown and ragingly high you do have to fish them no more than 6" off the bank, which can be tricky when the water is that high. You’ll often see brown trout backs flush with the surface, huddled between willow shoots. When you drift a nymph two – three inches out past the willows the fish have to swim out from between the branches to intercept the nymph. When you have to reach out between the branches with your rod, sometimes a 10 or 12’ flick of the rod tip is all you can manage. Just this past June I hooked several large brown trout within 4 feet of my rod tip, with Marshmallow Nymphs, in raging brown water.
