I can’t seem to get motivated enough to try copying the Bing Lempke extended body Green Drake DVD again just yet. I will at some point. It’s snowing hard today and too nasty to fish (at least now with high brown runoff rivers to boot). So I’m tying a few flies. Rubberbutt is a bit awkward for a fly-type name. Maybe I should call these rubber duns, or maybe just rubbers.
Here’s an extended body Green Drake I made 5 minutes ago.
hook: #20 DaiRiki 135 (the fly itself is bigger than a normal #20)
body: olive Chewy Skin, tied on a #12 beading needle
thread: hot chartreuse 8/0 … 14/0 would be better, but I don’t have it in hot green
wing: cdc
hackle: Zelon tuft, mounted below the shank
tails: a few grizzly hackle strands…what ever is close at hand

Henry’s Fork Angler photo: <=== click here to see it in context

Was that on the Lempke video? Hang in there Pitt. Weather turns next week.
i would call them rubberbacks, just sounds less… provocative…
OK. It’s the Rubberdun, for now. This one’s tied with a #20 hook. Bigger is easier. Bigger generally looks better to. This is about as small as I’d ever try to make this fly. I’ll have to try tapering the abdomen a bit more.

heck, i’d still eat it… on the first pic in this thread, did you purposely split the Zelon to create forward and back facing legs? or was that just how it tied in? either way nice flies sir.
I tie on the Zelon as a last step. Tie it on loosely, as a single tuft at right angles to the shank, so you grep the ends and saw it back and forth until it sits the way you want it. Then I pinch it from the sides to splay out the fibers. Then I put a micro-dot of CA glue at base of the thorax, right were the Zelon (loosely) attaches. After the CA glue it isn’t loose any more. The fly tier maybe. But not the fly.
A straight-eye version, with a lighter wire hook: DaiRiki #125
