Upside down and back to front! :)

This is the dressing for the fly design mentioned in another thread.

If you want an upside down fly which always lands correctly, wont twist leaders, and is also a good hooker, then you might like to try this;

This is how the fly lands and sits EVERY TIME!

I have dressed this one rather bushy, so that all salient points are obvious, but it works perfectly well when dressed sparsely. The “V” hair wing and the weight distribution forces it to land correctly, but will not make it spin, as the air flowing through and across the hair is non directional, as it would be with a solid wing. Also, the wings point backwards when casting!

The main trick here, is to mount your hook in the vice like this, and tie the wing bunch in as shown.

You can use hare, ( as here), snowshoe hare, rabbit, squirrel, or any suitable fur. Things like calf tail etc will also work for wings. When you have tied the bunch in, and split the wing, put the fly in the vice as normal, and simply finish it off. Just brush the hare fur out a bit underneath for legs. ( which of course is at the outside of the hook bend!). You may use anything you like for the body, as for any other fly, but for this one I have also used hare fur of various types.

Of course you can make these flies look very realistic if you want, but the main aim here is to make them behave realistically and work well- They are quick, easy, and very cheap to dress. No expensive hackle required!

My apologies for the colour shifts in the photos, but I am merely using my desk lamp for lighting when shooting these flies, and it has the wrong colour temperature for photos. Just a “quick and dirty” solution.

Cont’d

I would also normally use straight eyed hooks for these flies, but I just used what I have on the bench in front of me for this. A couple of people asked me how I manage to do this so quickly. This is because I dress in front of my computer a lot, here is a photo of that as well!

It’s not pretty of course! And I have on occasion accidentally smoked hare fur dubbing which somehow got into one of my roll-ups ( tastes a bit acrid, but “waste not want not”). It’ s better than seal fur at least, but I think squirrel is a little better! My keyboard is also a bit hairy in the meantime!

TL
MC

A bit of a takeoff from the waterwisp, but I like it a lot! If I ever find my basement, I’ll be adding this one to my fly box. Also like that your surroundings look like us other “multi taskers.”:stuck_out_tongue:

Mike -

Got my attention for sure. Thanks.

John

I like it.

I’ll try one out this spring.

Ed

Not really, I first designed that one over thirty years ago, when Waterwisp was not even a gleam in somebody’s eye! :slight_smile:

Works very well though. Hope you have fun and success with it!

TL
MC