Not being totally satisfied with my Baetis Cripple attempt, I decided
to tie my old standby BWO dun, the Sparkle Comparadun.
Hook: Mustad 94840 (or other appropriate dry fly hook) sizes 16, 18, 20, 22 Thread: Olive Tail: Light gray sparkle poly yarn Body: Blue Wing Olive Wing: Coastal deer body hair
1 Lay down a base of thread back about 1/4 of the length of the shank from the eye.
2 Select a small clump of the deer hair and stack them to even the tips. Measure the deer hair equal to the length of the shank and tie it in with the tips extending foward over the eye. Make 3 or 4 wraps, each time pulling succesively tighter to make the hair flair. Clip off the excess butts and make a few more wraps to secure the hair. To get the hair to fan out correctly in the next step, you want the hair fibers lying on top and to the sides of the shank, but not underneath it.
3 Reach foward and pull the hair upright and back over the shank. Wrap a great many turns of thread in front of the hair to force it into an upright position. As you do this, fan the hair out so that as you look head on down the length of the shank, it radiates out in a 180 degree arc from horizontal left over the top to horizontal right.
4 Bring the thread back to the start of the bend and tie in a small piece of the sparkle poly yarn. I find that a piece 1/2 an inch long is long enough to work with and I seperate the yarn into fourths, since we want a light sparse tail. Once tyed in, pull back on the yarn and clip the length of the tail so it is no more than 1/2 the length of the shank.
5 Dub a sparse body to the wing and a little in front of the wing.
6 Finish with a small head and tie off.
I tie this pattern sparsely. It is not a great floater so I only fish
it on still quiet water like spring creeks where the trout can be mighty
finicky. The poly yarn, sparkle tail represents the tailing shuck of the
mayfly as it crawls out and attempts to become airborne. The wing on this
pattern has a tendency to point foward of its upright position. When you
fish it, stroke the fibers back to keep the wing upright if necessary.
Michael Valentiner (MValentiner@Visi.com)
Minneapolis, MN