Fly Tying Tutorial: Woven Body Woolly Bugger
7:52 AM | Author: Mark
While the woolly bugger is a simple, highly effective fly that nearly every beginning tyer learns, this variation incorporates a woven body, to challenge intermediate tyers to learn a new technique that makes very realistic bodies, and a wide range of body color choices for nymphs, streamers, wet flies, and buggers.

I was asked to create this tutorial for the Fly Tying section on the FishUSA forums, so I thought I'd post it here as well.

Woven Body Woolly Bugger Tutorial


Materials:

Hook: Mustad 36890 Up-Eye Salmon Hook

Thread: 8/0 Uni (Black)

Weight: .020 Lead Wire

Tail: Marabou Blood Quill

Body: Embroidery Floss, 2 colors, woven

Hackle: Rear: Short barb streamer saddle hackle
Front: Long, webby, strung neck hackle


Instructions:


1. Place hook in vise and wrap lead onto shank, leaving plenty of room in front of the bend to tie marabou tail. Wind up to the point where the wire from the hook eye ends. Press wraps up against the end of the hook wire and ensure that the lead underbody is smooth & even.



2. Select a piece of marabou in your chosen color for the tail. In this case, i'll be using hot pink. I prefer to use the "blood quill" marabou for bugger tails.


3. Tie in marabou tail in a length about equal to the hook shank. Trim the butt of the quill and tie down ends.


4. Select a saddle hackle in an appropriate color. This is a good place to use the hackle on a dry saddle with barbs to long or soft to be of any use in a dry fly. I have a few cheap saddles from Keough that I like to use on my buggers, but any saddle with shorter barbs will work. A size #6 salmon hook is shown for scale.


5. Prepare the hackle by trimming away the "fluff" at the base...


6. ...and sweeping the fibers of the feather 'against the grain', leaving a portion of the fibers at the tip in their natural position.


7. Tie in the hackle over the top of the shank, protruding off of the rear end of the hook over the bend (sorry about the slightly blurry image, but you get the idea). Be sure to leave a bit of space between the tie-in point and where your swept back fibers start. This will give you room to start wrapping your hackle later, and will make for a neater looking fly.

8. Select two contrasting colors of embroidery floss. This can be purchased at nearly any craft store, and, unless you get special neon, metallic, or other specialty flosses, the standard colors are quite cheap and available in a wide array of colors. I got three colors of this floss for just over $1 today.


9. Cut a 6-12" strand of each color. 6" will be just about right for a single fly, with enough of a tag leftover to hold comfortably. 12" will be long for the first few flies, but will tie as many as 3-5 flies or more, thus there's far less waste if you tie multiples. Even so, at 35-40 cents per mini-skein, you dont have to feel too awful bad about wasting a few inches.


10. Tie both strands down the length of the shank, extending out over the rear of the hook. Tie in the top color (top of the hook shank after weaving) on the side closest to you, and tie the bottom color on the side opposite you. After both strands of floss are secure, try to smooth out any lumps in the existing body with thread, then whip finish and trim the thread off, otherwise, the bobbin will interfere with the weaving process. Alternately, you can tie a half-hitch to secure the thread, then hang the bobbin straight back off of the rear of the hook somehow, and weave over the standing thread. Then, when you finish the weave and tie off, you'll have a small piece of thread running the length of your body that will need to be cut off with scissors. Either method will work.


Beginning the Weave
11. Start the weaving process by first orienting your vise so that the hook shank is pointing directly toward you. This will make weaving much easier, and will enable you to weave the entire body without having to let go of the floss, and it will also allow you to weave tightly, without tying knots, until you tie things off at the front end of the body. Once the hook is facing you, bring the top color, in this case, the white floss, over the top of the hook shank.


12. Pass the top thread beneath the bottom thread, passing under from the bend toward the eye. Grasp the end of the top thread with your left hand and the end of the bottom thread with your right. From this point on, you should not have to let go of the floss threads until you are ready to finish up the weave.


13. Pass the top (white) thread back up over the top of the hook shank to the other side. From this point on, the top thread should never get lower than halfway down the side of the shank, and the bottom thread should never pass higher than halfway up the shank.


14. Bring the bottom thread down, underneath the shank, to the left side of the hook (the top thread is already over here). In the picture, the 'knot' formed where the top and bottom threads hook each other is not in the correct position. Ideally, you should keep these hooked knots in line with one another, on opposite sides of the shank, halfway up/down the side. Dont worry, though, the knot is easy to adjust by pulling on the ends of the threads. Just get it where you want it and keep some tension until you complete the next hook-weave, which will lock the previous one in place.


15. Now bring the top thread under the bottom thread to once again 'hook' it, then pass it back up over the top of the body. This will have the effect of crossing your hands, and will seem awkward, but it's the correct method. The picture is taken after passing the top thread under the bottom one, but before carrying it over the shank. In the picture, I'm holding both strands of floss in one hand, but only so I can take the picture. While weaving, the ends of the threads should never leave your grasp.


16. Now bring the bottom thread back under the hook shank to the right side of the hook. This completes one set of the hook weave, and uncrosses your arms. To continue the weave, just repeat these steps, with the threads hooking one another on opposite sides of the shank.


17. Finish the weave off. This can be a little tricky, because you need to maintain tension on the floss strands and restart your thread at the same time. For me, the easiest way to do this is to weave until both colors of floss are on the left side of the shank (still looking down from above), then wrap the top color up over one last time, then pull both strands down. The hook shank will be supporting the top thread and the top thread in turn will support the bottom thread. With both threads being pulled down, transfer the tips of both threads into your right hand. This is a good time to swing the vise back around to the normal tying position.


18. Then pick up your bobbin with your left hand and grasp the free end of the thread along with the floss in your right hand and pass your bobbin up and over the hook shank.


19. Make a few tight wraps, dropping the bobbin on the far side of the shank (because your right hand will prevent standard wrapping). After 2-3 good tight wraps, binding the tag ends of the floss down, you can let go with your right hand.


20. Trim the tag ends of both strands of floss and your recently restarted thread, and build a smooth thread taper. If you didnt trim your thread, but rather had it hanging off the back of the vise, steps 17-19 would change by having you lift the thread over the back of the body, pinching it with the strands of floss, and making your wraps. Then once you had the floss tied off, not only would you have the tag ends to trim, but also the short length of black thread between the tail and the front of your body.


21. Palmer your saddle hackle forward over the body. As you wind the hackle, it should rest in the notches in the sides of your woven body made by the points where the floss threads hooked each other on the sides.



22. Select a webby piece of strung neck hackle, with long fibers, in an appropriate color. A #6 hook is shown for scale.


23. Pull the fibers back, against the grain, except for a small bit at the tip, to give you a place to tie in. I like to leave the fluffly base of the feather on this hackle to make it easier to grip, which, for me, eliminates the need to use hackle pliers.


24. Tie in the piece of strung neck hackle by the tip, along the thread taper you just made on your fly.


25. Trim the hackle tip, advance your thread to the eye, and wind up the entire hackle (the webby portion only, do not wind up the fluffy feather base). Be sure to gently sweep your fingers back from the eye of the hook toward the bend prior to making each wrap, to avoid binding down any hackle fibers pointing forward. At this point, its not critical to keep your fibers angled in any direction, as long as they're not getting bound down by your hackle stem in a position out over the eye of the hook. If this happens, just back up, sweep your fingers back along the fly, and place another hackle wrap immediately in front of the last one. Tie off the hackle and trim.


26. Build a thread head that extends back to just over the front edge of the hackle. This will give your hackle collar a swept-back effect that, in my opinion, makes for a much better looking fly. Try to make this head small, neat, and smooth. If it turns out a little bulky, though, don't worry. The fish dont mind. Whip finish, trim your thread, and apply a coat of Sally Hansens' Hard-as-nails if you desire.

The Finished Fly:




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