Easy Fly-dressing!

[Traditionalist]

Quite a few people have told me "I would love to be able to dress good flies".  Well you can!  No practice or knowledge required!  I will also guarantee that these flies catch fish, often much better than others!

In order to dress these flies, you will need some hare fur or whatever other fur you can find, and this must be chopped fairly finely. Just cut it up with scissors. You are looking for an average staple ( length of fibres), of about an eighth of an inch. You can also use dryer lint, wool, etc as well, indeed you can use more or less anything! A few longer fibres wont hurt.

Mix this up in your fingers after chopping;



You will also need some waterproof glue. I have used UHU here;



Various waterproof superglues like "Zap-a-Gap" or "Fishing glue" will also work, but don?t get them on your fingers! You can also make these as bead heads, etc etc.  You can make smooth or rough versions, multi coloured versions, and none of them takes longer than a few seconds to make!  They also catch plenty of fish!

STEP BY STEP ! 


Take your hook,  in this case a gold plated one, and coat it evenly with a thin layer of glue. You may find a small stiff brush best for this, but I have just applied the glue directly from a tube here. Now take a bunch of fur in your thumb and forefinger and just touch the fur to the hook.  You can also just press a bunch of fur on to the hook. Put it on one side to dry.  This is what the nymphs look like when a bunch of fur has been pressed to the hook;



The "touch dubbed" nymphs are sparser!

If you want multicoloured nymphs, then you need another bunch of fur with the second colour. In this case only coat two thirds of the hook in the first operation, and allow it to dry.

Then coat the last third, and touch the final third with the dark dubbing. Eh Voila!  A very nice nymph, no dressing skills required. Here are a couple of such nymphs.

After allowing to dry completely, and removing the excess loose fur, which of course you just use again! ;



The flies shown here have abdomens made of a mix of hare fur and fine red wool. The dark thorax bits are just darker hare fur. These nymphs are top class fish catchers, and you can experiment away as much as you like with colours, furs, wool, chopped silk, CDC bits of feathers,  etc etc etc  You can also make some pretty precise imitations of lots of things, but the fish don?t really care much!

The flies are just about indestructible as well!

If you are so inclined, you can make a very large number of these flies in a very short time. Make no mistake, these flies can be real killers! Some days the fish will belt them in preference to all else!

These are glue nymphs, hence "Glymphs"  ! 


These are not the flies I have dressed for the swap! 

TL
MC

[Traditionalist]

This also solves a problem I had with some nymph shapes. Depending on how one applies the fur to the hook, one can control the shape of the finished Glymph quite accurately.  Below are some photos of  the same Glymph, merely rotated.  It explains better than words. The fur in this case has been applied, and then pressed together form above and below with the thumb and forefinger. Just pinched in effect. This gives a great shape for a lot of flat nymphs.  I am still in the experimental stage with a lot of these Glymphs, but they look extremely promising.

Of course one may also use this as a base for other techniques as well. Simply making a Glymph body, and then adding whatever is desired using thread. They make very good sparsely dubbed soft hackles. One may of course dub the thread in the same manner.












The hook is a Gamakatsu LS-5413G

Of course these things float very well if dressed on lighter wire hooks, and treated with watershed, ( or other floatant).

TL
MC

[haresear]

That's a great idea for heptagenid nymphs Mike. You can get that flat profile easily and also the light underbody and dark topside. Mmmm...where's that glue...?

Alex

[Traditionalist]

Try it for shrimps as well.  Lots of uses.  takes three seconds to dress a fly, and anybody can do it immediately!


This design is hereby placed in the public domain. It can  not be patented!

Good for shrimps with the right shape as well. Here the fur was pinched from the sides.








Have a good play with it. Post what you come up with!

TL
MC

[Wildfisher]

The simplest ideas are usually the best. Excellent stuff. I will "glue"  some of these up myself. 

[Traditionalist]

The simplest ideas are usually the best. Excellent stuff. I will "glue"  some of these up myself. 

Now you know why I use the expression "Fly-dressing"  !

TL
MC