When I go fishing I’m not always looking for a single species. If I can catch a brown, brook trout, steelhead, or even a bass or pike on a single fly, then I don’t have to constantly change flies to try to catch a specific species of fish. That is where this fly comes in. This pattern that takes basics of a wooly bugger and uses the tying techniques from an intruders to produce a fly that imitates many different food sources including leeches, minnows, and sculpins. It is so light it can be thrown on a 3wt for bass and brook trout, but it has enough action it can be swung on any standard switch rod for steelhead and browns. You can tie this on nearly any size hook or even a shank or tube with a stinger hook, and in many different color combinations, with or without a bead for weight. Try white and chartreuse for Coho, chartreuse and blue for kings, or pink and pink for pinks! Tie some up and see what you can catch!
Place your bead head on the hook and start your tying thread behind the bead and wrap back to the bend of the hook.Tie in your back marabou feather as well as any flash.Tie in the tip of one strand of lateral scale and advance your thread forward.You may need to add dubbing to create an even body for the lateral scale to wrap over.Wrap the scale forward Create a dubbing ball out of red or orange dubbing, 1/4 inch before the bead. The dubbing ball should be similar in size to your bead.Create a dubbing loop in front of the dubbing ball by looping your thread around your finger then around your hook. Your loop should roughly be 4 inches long. Wrap your thread back towards the dubbing ball so your dubbing loop you just created is tight against your dubbing ball.Cut off roughly 20 strands of Barred Predator Wrap and place in your dubbing loop with 60% on one side and 40% on the other. This will give your fly more of a teardrop profile in the water. Cut down each side of a black marabou feather to create a stack of individual marabou feathers. Grab a pinch of your favorite dubbing and place it on your stack of marabou. I like using Hareline's Creepy Crawley Ice Dub in Black. Place the marabou and ice dub in the dubbing loop next to the predator wrap so that the ends your marabou reach as long as the predator wrap.Cut the butt ends of the marabou so there is roughly 1/8 of an inch left and spin the loop using a dubbing spinner. If you don't have a dubbing spinner you can use your whip finisher to spin your loop. Make sure your materials are tight enough that you cannot pull them out with light tugs.You will need to pick out any trapped fibers with either a bodkin or a comb. To get the most bulk and water push from your fly wet down the materials and wrap as tight as you can against the dubbing ball. This will make the materials stand up straighter and give the fly a bigger profile in the water as well as show the shiny silver body in-between strips or when it hits slack water.Finish the fly by tying down the thread from your dubbing loop and securing your thread with a few whip finishes.You can see the dubbing ball that pushes the wing material out to give it more water push.Trim any extra fibers that are longer than the tail.Your done! Time to hit the water!
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