I thought I'd get things rolling with a fly pattern that, along with the prince nymph (of course), has been producing a lot of fish for me this winter. As with most flies I'm sure this is not an original pattern-- someone somewhere has invented it and has a b.a. name for it-- but that's not where I got it. This fly started with me staring at a fair cloud of some kind of midge dancing their stupid little circles over a slow deep pool in the truckee while I'm lobbing heavily weighted stonefly and caddis attractor nymphs, thinking "derrr this doesn't seem right...." I was simply using what had been working through the fall and early winter and was afraid to change-- you see, I'd rather have a slow day fishing than get skunked because I couldn't find what the fish were biting. But that's why we fish flies in tandem-- I kept the beadhead 20 incher on and tied on a tiny #18 black and white midge pattern off the hook bend. In about 15 casts I had landed 3 fish on the pattern-- all foul hooked! It took me a while, but I finally concluded that the fly looked good to these until they got close-- It was their feisty refusals that was causing them to be hooked! I fished around in the water with my hands a bit to get a feel for what these midges looked like up close-- most were grayish (some greenish) and had a dark coloured thorax that was significantly larger than it's tiny body. That night I tied up the following fly and have been fishing it deep in sloooww water on the truckee with really great success! Don't let my amateur attempts at photographing and photoshopping this fly keep you from tying it up and using it...
Thread: Any gray thread
Tail: Natural Mallard flank fibers
Body: gray thread
Rib: black crystal flash
Thorax: dark hare's ear dubbing
Wingcase: pheasant tail & crystal flash
FULL STEPS:
(click on "read more")
1. Start the thread wherever you feel like it-- I angle the hook to make tying the tail in easier
2. tie in a sparse tail of mallard flank feather fibers-- I wrap over the fibers up the hook just to keep the body size constant-- try to keep it small as possible though
3. Tie in the black crystal flash and make a small smooth body with your gray thread
4. I generally re-orient the hook at this point-- wrap the crystal flash up w/ evenly spaced wraps and wrap back over the crystal flash a little ways -- this will be pulled over the wingcase last
5. Cover the body with some head cement (for me that means "sally's hard as nails" clear nail polish) This holds the slick crystal flash in place and adds some sheen- let it dry.
6. Tie in a small clump of pheasant tail fibers and add a drop of dave's flexament (or other rubbery glue) before dubbing the thorax
7. What you see here is basically a faux dubbing loop I learned from one of Andy Burk's youtube videos (the bird's nest one)-- lightly put some dubbing on the thread and spin the dubbing tight at either end of the clump-- make one or two wraps to catch the first of the fibers and then spin the thread to make a nice spiky dubbing noodle.
8. Wrap a nice fuzzy thorax
9. pull the pheasant tail over and tie off and then the crystal flash and tie off (or do both together) -- the crystal flash just adds a little sparkle.
10. Whip finish or half hitch and trim some of the excessive fibers-- add a drop of head cement and you're done! Notice the head on my fly is a little large-- that's because the only thread I had lying around was 3/0 which works but you have to wrap sparingly-- I suggest 6/0 or 8/0 flat wax thread.
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