This past weekend I finished tying up some flies for a swap that I’m participating in, the Small Fly Swap 2010 with the NLFT/TU club. These were the smallest flies that I’ve ever tied – #28! With eyes ramping up to 50 years old, it was a bit of a challenge, but thankfully I had purchased a magnifying glass attachment for my Peak vise.
I also had to swap out the standard jaws on the vise, replacing them with the midge jaws – recommended for hooks smaller than #22. Fun stuff – as I haven’t used those midge jaws yet as I’ve never actually tied anything smaller than #18 before. ;^)
Deciding what to tie was a bit of a challenge – but after browsing through my copy of Compendium of Canadian Fly Patterns, I got inspired and made up a nice simple pattern.
Was doing some experimentation this evening, and put together a few flies that show some promise I think.
Using a weaving technique that I saw Don Freschi (one of the hosts on Sport Fishing on the Fly) use for a chironomid pattern, I built up a really nice looking body, using contrasting colors of chenille and yarn. The effect was great – building up the body really nice. Using foam underneath the weave also helped build up the body, and along with the foam eyes, I hope that it floats!
The basic pattern was something like this:
Hook: #6 streamer Tail: Olive marabou Underbody: 1/8″ strip of foam Body: Medium dark olive chenille and light olive chenille (tried other combinations, including peacock ice yarn, which looked very good) Legs:
Olive sillilegs and olive partridge rump – wrapped a couple times like a sparse carey. Eyes: black foam
Here are a couple other variations that I did. The one without the foam eyes also uses a lead underbody instead of foam.
This past January, I met Skip at a weekend seminar that our club helped organize, and he tied and talked about this very effective pattern
There are a couple articles over at Flyfisherman.com by Skip Morris, about his Skip Nymph, some variations including some anatomical variants, as well as how and when to fish them.
This looks like an excellent fly – instead of using uni-stretch, I’m going to try a couple other materials – midge flex and and some stretch floss that I have on hand already!
Materials:
Hook size: #14 – #20
Brass/Gold bead to match hook size
Body: uni-stretch (color variable)
Thorax: Peacock herl or peacock dubbing
