Small, light and easy to cast.
Dives and wiggles like a daemon.
You can make them as small and lite or as large and heavy as you want.
Made with closed-cell foam body–the diving lip comes from a tomato container roughed up with 220 paper,
and glued to the body with CA glue. Hook keeper is flat waxed nylon.
The body is built on an ultra-thin needle, prior to gluing to the bill.
Body is also coated with water based fabric cement as a last step.
This one uses a size #18 DaiRiki 125. Bead goes between hook eye
and the back side of the diving lip.
Adding the plastic lip is a good idea !
This same principle can be used on burrower type nymphs when they are swimming to the surface during a hatch.
Thanks for sharing.
Jim
pittendrigh…some where you said the plastic came from a Costco tomato container…I was there yesterday and didn’t see any that seemed that thick …can you give more info…
One of the most creative patterns I’ve seen in quite a while. Very nice! I’m a little unclear of how the body is attached to the hook shank. Is it place into the hook and wrapped with flat waxed nylon thread or is there a loop of thread and the hook is just threaded through the loop? Also, is the bead on the hook shank which has been bent like a swimming nymph hook or is the tippet slipped through the plastic lip and the bead and then tied to the eye of the hook?
I appreciate you sharing this pattern with us and I would love to tie some up.
The hook isn’t attached.
The body is modular and separate from the hook…made from closed cell foam, skewered temporarily onto an ultra-thin beading needle.
Tail is attached. And so is a hook-keeper loop, made from flat nylon.
The keeper loop is lashed on at the tail (almost) tightly. And then I loosely wind the thread
forward, just tight enough to slightly dimple the foam body, while lashing down the tag ends of the keeper loop.
Then I pull the modular body off the needle and CA-glue it to some roughed-up clear plastic.
The clear plastic comes from a greenhouse tomato container. The photo at the beginning
of this thread is a closeup, which hides how small this fly is. That’s a #18 DaiRiki 125.
The plastic bill is not thick. It’s actually quite thin. You can cut it with scissors.
After gluing the foam body to the diving bill, I coat the body with thinned-out water-based
fabric cement, in order to lock the tail in place, plus the hook keeper. Without the fabric
cement the body would unravel.
Once the body is done I snell a scud hook to some 4x, so the tippet comes out the top of
the ringed eye on the DaiRiki 125.
Then I thread that through a bead. Then skewer the point of the hook into the looped hook
keeper on the body. And then thread the tippet through a hole in the diving bill (made with a bodkin).
Wiggles like crazy. Dives down too. And fish cannot resist. Sometimes they will refuse
2,3 or 4 or 5 times in a row. And then turn around and bite.
I’m not making this up. This is an xxxxxxly effective fly.
I wrote xxxx because I don’t know what the right word is.
But this fly sure does work.
pittendrigh? You have all the instructions, how about filling it in with the photos and we’ll do it as a Fly of the Week? Please?
Deanna Travis (LF)
Publisher, FAOL
Lash thread to the needle. Make one or two whip-finish loops around the needle, which helps to keep thread from spinning on the needle, due to the weight of bobbin.
Cut a length of flat waxed nylon for a hook keeper loop. It doesn’t need to be waxed, but that’s what I have. Wet the nylon with water-based fabric cement. Form a loop using a bodkin. Lash it on at the tail. Wind forward with just enough tension to slightly dimple the body as you go. Make a few additional wraps a the front (just back of the eventual diving bill) and whip finish. Coat the entire body with thinned-out water based fabric cement…actually, do that after gluing on the bill, so it doesn’t compromise CA glue used to fasten the body to the diving bill.
Sandy, If you go to the Home page…
In the column on the left click on " Fly Tying"
Then click on “Fly Of The Week”
You will be in the fotw archives
If you submit your fly to Lady Fisher as she suggested the fly and recipe will be available forever…If just left in the forum thread it will eventually disappear.
