Nick Thomas comes up with yet another pattern that is well thought out and totally fit for purpose.
Most nymphs we fish have round bodies. That's the nature of fly tying; you wrap something, dubbing, organza, wire or whatever, around a hook and you get a round body. You can taper it to more closely match a natural nymph, but it's still going to be round. That's fine and dandy for many imitations of fish food; for caddis and midge pupae a round tapered body is pretty much just what you want. However the nymphs of many up-winged flies, particularly those of the stone-clinger/heptageniidae varieties, are characterised by flattened triangular bodies which don't lend themselves to imitation using conventional tying methods.
There are methods for tying stone-clinger nymphs using lead wire or sheet as an underbody, flattened with pliers to give the desired profile. I’ve tried tying them that way, but it’s a bit of a faff getting the body shape right, the squashed lead doesn’t give a very robust body and with all that heavy metal in their arse the resulting nymphs swim like bricks instead of wafting about in the current like a misplaced natural. I like to control the fishing depths of my nymphs reproducibly by using a tungsten bead pattern on the point or dropper, so a stone-clinger pattern with an unknown weight of lead squashed into the body doesn’t work for me.
In the past I’ve tried using different types of plastic to make a flat skeleton for the abdomen, but the problem has always been in securing the material to the hook shank. Cutting triangles from acetate or other thin sheet material always resulted in the shape being distorted by the thread warps or the body slipping and twisting around the hook. Then I discovered plastic canvas.
Plastic canvas is sold in craft stores as a base material for making pictures using cross-stitch and other embroidery techniques. It’s a flexible translucent sheet about 1mm thick with a grid of holes. Look out for sheets of material marked '14 count', which have 14 holes to the inch.
Cutting the sheet along the lines of holes produces notched strips which are ideal for tying onto a hook shank with a series of thread wraps. It makes a great skeleton which can be covered with dubbing, nymph skin, latex, or as in the pattern described here my favourite tying material, organza ribbon. I haven’t tried it yet but I would bet that cutting two profiles and fixing them to either side of a big hook would make a very nice bait fish pattern for perch, pike or saltwater predators.
The Flat Bottomed Girl is a generic pattern that has all the key aspects required to imitate a variety of stone-clinger nymphs. A triangular flattened body, a large head with prominent eyes and splayed legs reflect the habitat and habit of the naturals and trigger recognition in fish on the lookout for nymphs that have lost their grip.
Hook Long shank nymph size 10-14
Thread Veevus 10/0 olive
Underbody Plastic canvas sheet
Eyes Plastic bead chain or dumbbells
Tail Organza fibres
Abdomen Organza ribbon
Thorax Hare’e Ice Dub
Thorax cover Swiss straw/synthetic raffia
Legs Micro rubber
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Run the thread on at the eye, take down to the bend in touching turns and back up to a couple of mm behind the eye.
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To make the underbody skeleton cut out a strip of plastic canvas from the sheet cutting between the holes and then taper one end. Tie in on top of the hook shank with several tight turns between the first pair of notches. Take the thread back under the shank and make a further set of wraps in the second pair of notches. Continue to the rear end of the strip and finish with a couple of thread turns on the bare hook. Give the thread wraps above and below the body a smear of superglue and allow to dry. You should have something that looks like the picture below. If you are making a batch of flies then tie up all the skeletons and set aside to dry.
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Cut a 6 inch length of organza ribbon, trim off a 4-5mm strip from one edge and strip out the long fibres. Fold half a dozen or so in half around the thread and tie in as a tail at the rear of the plastic skeleton. Trim the tail fibres to length.
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Cut the short fibres from 1cm of the stripped organza and tie in this tag along the side of the plastic body with the short organza fibres pointing down. Wrap the organza forward in touching turns covering the plastic underbody. Tie in and trim off the excess.
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Closely crop the organza on the top and bottom of the body with a sharp pair of scissors leaving the fibres along both sides to accentuate the body shape and mimic gill fibres.
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Tie in the eyes just behind the hook eye using figure of eight thread wraps.
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Cut three strands of rubber legs, fold in half around the thread and catch in under the shank below the eyes. Secure with further figure of eight wraps around the eyes and legs.
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Tie in a length of raffia on top of the shank in front of the eyes with the free end projecting forwards.
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Starting just behind the hook eye and working backwards dub the thorax separating and splaying the legs into pairs with turns of dubbed thread as you go. Pull back the raffia, secure behind the eyes with a couple of tight thread wraps and cut off the excess.
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Smear a dab of superglue on the thread and whip finish at the rear of the thorax.
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Darken the thorax cover and the top of the abdomen with a permanent marker pen.
Stone-clinger nymphs, such as March Browns, Large Brook Duns, Olive Uprights, Yellow Mays and August Duns make up a good part of the diet of trout and grayling on many rivers in the UK and wider afield. The naturals vary in size from 10-15mm, so tie a up a few Flat Bottomed Girls in different sizes in dark and light colours and be sure to whistle that Queen song as you fish them.
Nick Thomas lives in South Wales. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs many years ago and continues to design, tie and fish flies for trout, carp, bass and anything else that’s going.