Touch dubbing imparts a soft silhouette to a fly body and allows creation of many bug like effects through carefully combinations of thread and dubbing material. Natural dark mole fur and yellow Pearsall’s tying thread are combined here in a Waterhen … Continue reading →

The technique outlined below illustrates how to produce a full peacock herl body. You can use it for dressing flies like the Red Tag, Black and Peacock Spider, Coachman, Diawl Bach, and Temuka. If you’re tying a pattern like the … Continue reading →

This method of tying a marabou tail produces an even underbody and a robust pattern. I’m illustrating it so as to provide an alternative to the technique offered in the other marabou article. In a situation where you could employ either … Continue reading →

Buoyant foam eyes, or booby eyes (named after Gordon Frazer’s original Booby Nymph) have been used to modify several well established patterns, giving us a whole collection of flies popularly referred to as Boobies or Booby Nymphs. Amongst others, they include … Continue reading →

This guide illustrates the original method used by Gordon Frazer to create his Booby Nymphs back in the early 1980s. The only difference is that he used balls of polystyrene packaging foam instead of Ethafoam. Shaping your own ‘eyes’ does require a little … Continue reading →

Paired feather-slips are used for tails and wings on many patterns including the Butcher, Invicta, Muddler Minnow, and March Brown. Paired feathers come from various birds including, turkey, mallard, starling, grouse to name a few. Mostly the slips come from … Continue reading →

Tinsel bodies are used in patterns, from traditional winged wets, to streamers. The Butcher, Silver Invicta, Muddler Minnow, Kenny’s Killer, Silverside, Lady Iris are just a few. Originally dressed with flat metal tinsel, many patterns now incorporate metallic Mylar instead. … Continue reading →

Steamers, wet flies, dry flies, fully dressed salmon flies. Many of them are ribbed, and more particularly ribbed with tinsel, be it single strand wire, or flat, round, or oval bound tinsel. Whichever material you use, as you’ll read in … Continue reading →

Moose-hair and deer-hair tails are associated with fast water patterns where more floatation is required to avoid the fly becoming quickly swamped. Their length is a little shorter than a traditional hackle tail. I’d suggest 6/0 tying thread is about … Continue reading →

Explaining this technique is problematic at the best of times. In the long run you may find a visit to a fly-tying demonstration helps a deal more. In the mean time, hopefully I’ll manage to shed some light on how … Continue reading →