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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Fly Fishing Doesn't Have to Be Expensive...
9:50 AM | Author: Mark
While I was at wal-mart over the weekend to get a hunting license, standing in the loooong line (courtesy of the new, faster system), I couldnt help but spot a new crop of fishing rods sprouting from the display. Specifically catching my eye were the bright yellow eagle claws. I'd picked up one of the spinning models a few months ago, and thought about converting it to a fly rod (there werent any fly-models available at the store), but decided it'd be more trouble than it was worth. Now though, mixed in with the spinning rods, I saw what appeared to be fly rod handles and reel seats. Sure enough, after getting my license, I was pleased to see a few of the 7' 5-6wt rods. Mass-produced and cheaply made, general consensus on the rods still seems to be that, for $20, they're still a heck of a buy and a fun rod inside, say, 40 feet. With the totally pointless, but totally necessary ritual "test shake" complete (kind of like the tire kick when buying a car), I took one home.

Saturday looked like rain, so I postponed the planned trip to a bass & gill pond, but Sunday was beautiful, so I decided to take it out for trout instead. Attaching the only spare reel I've got, the battered graphite reel that came with my starter kit spooled up with some SA AirCel 2 line, I headed out for Indian creek. Once I got to the water, I remembered why I'd retired the reel. It's never quite been the same ever since it tangled with a fresh fall run steelie, and it basically free-spools in both directions. After adjusting for that, I was throwing some nice loops and really found the slooooow rod to my liking. No, it wasnt about to throw a tight loop 60' into a wind gust, but the little cheap rod was, as I'd heard, reliable inside 40' and could roll cast surprisingly well.

I decided to start simple, and found a pool holing some nice trout and threw a few different colors of woolly bugger. Most of these fish were fairly spooky in the slow, clear water, but one was a consistent chaser, and eventually, I got him to take the fly. For a brief moment, I felt the pull of a nice fish on the full-flex rod then, almost as if he knew the game, the trout did a quick loop around a submerged stick, pulled himself tight, and gave a quick head shake, easily snapping the 4X tippet and freeing himself. It was all over within 5 seconds. Disappointed, but encouraged, I got back on the trail and hiked upstream to a few other pools that had held trout last summer. One was devoid of anything larger than a 3" chub this year, but the next one was home to about a half dozen fish, one of which was actually a smallish tiger. Trying the buggers again, I got very little interest so I decided to go smaller, especially after seeing a few of the trout taking something underwater, near the streambed. I switched to a #14 cream caddis larva and tried a drift & swing approach. I was hesitant to drift it through the group, as they were lying fairly close together, and there was a real risk of bumping them with my leader and spooking them or worse, getting my leader across one of them and snagging it when it felt the line and bolted.

Luckily, the drift & swing worked. My first cast saw three trout following, and within ten minutes or so, a cast that had a few chasers saw one of the bigger fish, a slightly battle-scarred brown, move up and take the fly.

As my friend Jerry might have described it, the rod danced to match the trout's fight, flexing from the tip, most of the way to the (surprisingly nice) cork grip. I was pleased to note that while the top half of the rod was soft and supple, the lower half showed a surprising amount of backbone, allowing me to play the fish out and direct it into more open water.

Before long, the trout came to net, and after a quick snapshot, was released, still full of fight, taking off out of my grip as soon as it felt the water.


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Mill Creek and Farm Pond
7:22 PM | Author: Mark
Today was such a beautiful day, I was determined to beat the prevailing conditions (lots of runoff plus a few good soaking rains), and find fishable water after work. Of course, knowing that there was fishing to be done, the clock on the wall went into slow motion, but by the time 3:30 rolled around, I was off like a shot.

After stopping at home to change and get my gear, I headed out to check the Loyalhanna. Luckily, Rte. 30 pretty much follows the course of the creek from about a quater mile east of Kingston dam all the way to Ligonier and beyond. Though you rarely get close enough to the water to determine depth, I've fished it enough to tell at a glance what its like (based on color, reference points, and choppiness of the water among other things). From Kingston, things weren't looking good. The color had calmed down a bit, from "YooHoo Brown" a day or two ago to "Watery Coffee". Not that beautiful teal green everyone loves, but the color would work well for fishing. Unfortunately, the water, regardless of color was still very much high and fast. Though I could have found somewhere to cast from shore, I wouldnt have many options anywhere on the creek. Thus I extended my journey, and swung north at Ligonier to check out a favorite stretch of Mill Creek.




A short time later, I pulled off into some soupy mud to see Mill Creek, also high...but maybe...just maybe...manageable in hip boots. Taking a walk a few hundred feet upstream didnt reveal much encouragement, but the same walk downstream led to a few fruitless drifts. While I would have liked to catch some fish, I still was just happy to be fishing, so I headed on downstream, only to find that most of the promising water was inaccessible, thanks to the high water. In contrast to the Loyalhanna, however, Mill Creek actually did have that perfect semi-opaque teal green cast to it, at least in the pocket water and deeper holes. I'd venture a guess that without major rainfall, fishing conditions on Mill Creek might be near perfect by the weekend. Unfortunately, major rainfall is in the forecast. So, unsuccessful but encouraged, I snapped a few pictures, broke down my rod, and headed for more reliable water.

Mill Creek

After leaving Mill Creek, I headed back toward Latrobe. The family of a girl I used to date owns a small (less than 1 acre) pond that they've been gracious enough to allow me to fish for several years. The pond is fairly deep for such a small body of water (I'd estimate at least 12, probably more like 18-20 feet of water, with a fairly steep grade from the bank), and it is home to a healthy population of fat, fiesty bluegill and 12-18" bass. I think the bass may be a bit overcrowded, since 85% of them are between 14 and 15 inches, but there must be enough food to go around, because over the past 6 years, I have only caught one fish that wasn't healthy as a horse here, and that one was injured by scrapping with another fish, not from some disease.

The pond is well maintained, and gets a treatment to knock down the rampant weed growth two or three times a year, but the vegetation still manages to claim the pond in the name of plant-kind from mid-July to late September.

Today marked the first day that the pond was totally ice free. I caught a smallish bass a few days earlier through a large oval opening in the ice, but now the whole thing was open for business. Darkness was coming in fast tonight, thanks to incoming clouds (remember the major rainfall I talked about?), so I had to work fast. A sloppy cast relieved me of the purple woolly bugger I'd been using, so I tied on a white #8, weighted, and moved to the downwind bank.

Several unproductive casts later and I said to myself, "Self, it's getting pretty ugly out, lets make this the last cast."

So I made a great cast (for me), stripped in a few feet in short, erratic jerks, then tended to spooling up my slack line neatly on my reel. With the slack in, I went to reel the bugger in, when I felt resistance on the other end of the line. Without a moment of hesitation, I executed a soft-but-swift hookset and felt the familiar head shake of a largemouth bass connected to my bugger. A short, but well-appreciated battle, and I brought my first post-thaw fish to hand:


This 14" largemouth really made my day. As I released him and headed back for the car, I couldn't help but smile. For the first time in months: It's Fishing Season!


_
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Fishing the Loyalhanna During the Warm Spell
12:04 PM | Author: Mark
We're having quite a heat wave here in southwestern Pennsylvania (temps in the 50s this weekend), so, like any good fisherman, I ventured out yesterday, searching for areas that the warm weather had opened up along some of my favorite creeks.

My first thought was that Mill Creek, being narrower, shallower, and generally faster running, would clear up faster than the Loyalhanna, so I headed out to Mill Creek. Unfortunately, when I got there, there was no open water at all where I normally access the stream. So, a little discouraged, I got back in the car and headed for the Loyalhanna. Luckily, I found some fishable water there.

After parking the car at the eastern end of the delayed-harvest-artificial-lures-only (hereafter abbreviated DHALO) section of the stream, I decided to scout around before donning hip boots, vest, and net; as well as assembling and stringing up my rod; only to find out that it too was unfishable.

So I walked down along the upper 100 yards of the DHALO, and what I saw wasn't encouraging: while free flowing mid-stream, ice clinging to both banks prevented safe access to the water:






Since the best looking stretch of open water was just downstream of the Rte. 711 bridge, I decided to check upstream from the bridge, and was rewarded to this wonderful sight:


So I headed back to the car and traded shoes for hip boots, slipped into the vest, and rigged up my 5 weight, and headed down to the stream.

I didnt catch any fish with the white woolly bugger (sz. 8) I was using, but it felt good to be casting again. I found that my casting skills hadn't suffered much in the off-season, and perhaps even improved a tiny bit by some inexplicable means. Though It could have been my imagination, it seemed as though I was casting farther and throwing tighter loops than I was at the end of last year.

In any event, I fished the 75 yards or so of ice free water above the bridge, then jumped back in the car and headed downstream to check the downstream boundary of the DHALO.

When I arrived at the bridge where SR2045 crosses the Loyalhanna, I once again took a walk before stringin up my rod. In this case, I was glad I did. The ice down here still made safe access totally impossible:



View from the SR2045 bridge, facing east (upstream)

View from the SR2045 bridge, facing west (downstream)

After heading back to the car, I drove down to the causeway, to check out the ice jam that had been forming there for the past several weeks. It had been a topic of discussion on the FishUSA Forums in a thread complete with pictures, so I figured I'd take a look for myself. When I arrived, however, I saw that apparently someone had come and cleared out the majority of the ice, and the causeway was now actually driveable:




As you can see, there's still some ice piled up, but its nowhere near the amount that was there even a week ago. There was no fishing to be done here, due to the rushing water, but I decided to snap a few more photos before I left:


View from the center of the causeway facing east (upstream)
View from the center of the causeway, facing west (downstream)

With my pictures snapped, I got back in the car and headed down to Kingston dam, where I fished a little more. Most of the best fishing here is compromised by ice and/or fast flowing water, but just before I left, I started heading downstream, where there looks to be more open water. Along the way, while driving alongside the slackwater above the dam, I could see where all the ice from the causeway had gone. For about a half-mile above the dam, the entire creek looks like a glacier, with huge chunks of ice packed tight against one another, bank to bank. I didnt take any pictures, though, as I was driving, and there werent any pull-offs with a view of the ice jam.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going to be headed out fishing again this afternoon, and I'll make another post for this outing. No fly pattern for this entry (I only used a white bugger, a simple tie by any tyer's standards), but maybe I'll include one next time.

Feel free to comment or ask questions.



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Tiger Trout on a Baby Trout
9:28 PM | Author: Mark
I figure as a good way to start talking about my fishing experiences, I'll tell you about what was probably the most rewarding fish I caught all of last year. It wasn't the biggest fish, on the best day, or even in a new location. What made this fish rewarding was two things: one, it was the first fish that I caught on a fly that I had tied; and two, it was my first and only (to date) tiger trout.

I was fishing Mill Creek that day, as I'd heard rumors of guys catching some trout there despite the heat that had been keeping the trout in the Loyalhanna down deep and totally uninterested in eating. I was working downstream, only bothering to fish deeper pools and pocket water, as the shallow areas were too warm to be attractive to trout, but even at that, it was shaping up to be a typical day for a new fly fisherman: no runs, no hits, and about a million errors.

I was just choosing flies at random, tying a new one on whenever I lost the one before that up until that day. The evening before, however, I was talking to Rich in his fly shop, and he suggested sticking to ants, beetles, hoppers, and buggers for these hot summer days. So I bought a few of his ants and beetles along with a griffith's gnat that appealed to my fancy, and headed home to tie some buggers. By the time I put my boot in the water the next morning, I was armed with a box consisting of the flies I'd purchased from Rich and about 15 wooly buggers, in varying styles (all showing the sloppy roughness of a beginner tyer), in black, white, and olive.

By the time I got to my first really nice pool, I'd lost about a half dozen flies and was now tossing a modified olive wooly bugger with a front body made of a series of purplish glass beads. A friend and fellow fly fisherman named Mark had shown me this tie, and said that the guy who showed him claimed it imitated a baby trout. While that may be so, I wasnt sure if a hatchery fish would even connect the thought "baby trout" with the thought "food". Still, it was neat looking and easy to tie, so I did a few of them up that still managed to look like crap due to my being a beginner.

So I took my baby trout and tossed it to the tail of this pool, and as I stripped it back to me, around a submerged stump, a dark shape darted out, almost too fast to realize what it was, and disappeared again, with my fly! A good strong battle and a few tense, long, moments later, and I brought my first tiger to shore:
After posing for its photo shoot (just this one picture), this fish was released to fight another day.

For anyone curious, the Tiger Trout is a sterile hybrid of a male brook trout and a female brown trout. You can read more about them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_trout
http://tigertroutfishing.com/
http://ezinearticles.com/?Fly-Fishing-For-the-Elusive-Tiger-Trout&id=1668954

Finally, that baby trout bugger:




Hook: Mustad 79580 or equivalent, sz. 6-10

Thread: 6/0 (140 Denier) in Black or Olive

Head: 3-5 glass beads, pearlescent purple

Body: olive medium chenille

Tail: Olive Grizzly Marabou (4-8 strands of gray krystal flash optional)

Hackle: Olive or black streamer hackle, wound either from the head, or from the beginning of the chenille.

Not a difficult tie by any means, but that's what caught the tiger!


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