Charlie Craven’s variation on the standard; the ungulate wing pad provides a bit more floatation. Tied here a green drake; change colors to suit your needs.
hook - Dai Riki 280 #10
thread - MFC 6/0 light olive
shuck - Congo Hair/ostrich herl brown
rib - UTC wire small olive
abdomen - ostrich herl brown
wing/wingpad - yearling elk
thorax - antron olive
hackle - grizzly dyed olive
Part 1
mash barb, start thread, tie in CH, fold back, tie in wire and wrap everything back past the barb; trim shuck
measure (even with shuck) some ostrich; tie in
gather ostrich butts, wrap to 50% mark; tie off/trim
used the same winging technique Charlie uses for Humpies, tying wing first, then folding the butts (thinned) back over to create the hump; much easier for me to get consistent, proportioned wings than the standard “measure distance from hook eye to tail, trim exactly to length, tie in exactly at point X” (followed those directions I don’t know how many times and got it right maybe 25% of the time); you could also skip all the trouble and make the pad from 2mm foam
clean, stack, measure (distance from eye to hook point seems to work for this hook) a clump of elk; tie in
to cut down on bulk, trim out 1/2 of the butts that will be used for the wingpad
wrap butts back to abdomen
then, since I forgot to post the wing, return to the front, post the wing and tie in the hackle, shiny side out
