Heavy Metal
With the colder winter days now upon us, our quarry, the grayling, can be found amongst other places, hugging the bottom. I, like most, love to catch grayling on the dry fly or tiny subsurface nymphs, but on some days we have to bite the bullet and reach for the heavy artillery.
The obvious advantage of the jig hook is that it fishes point up. As a result it will snag less on the bottom, making it an ideal point fly to take a smaller lighter nymph down to the feeding grayling. Some see it as a ‘sacrificial’ fly used purely for this purpose but even in the bigger sizes fish will sometimes ignore the small nymph and take this more substantial snack.
As I will be using this fly in the deeper runs with substantial flows I have again reached for the silver tungsten bead, to add the glint and attraction. In fact, I was tying this pattern long before I put the silver bead on my quill nymphs which have proved a revelation in my nymphing this year.
I used to use pheasant tail or CDC as the thorax cover but in keeping with the extra ‘bling’ now use pearl mylar. I feel that in the faster, deeper flows the fish have very little time to study their food before it has raced past them. Therefore, any extra flash or glint in my opinion catches the fishes eye and help triggers a take.
Materials
Hook – Flytyingboutique jig hook #14
Bead – 3mm Silver tungsten slotted bead
Thread – Veevus BO7 14/0
Tail – Red game cock hackle
Body – Orvis Spectrablend nymph olive
Rib – Hends silver wire cws-oo 0,09
Thorax – Dubbed hares ear/mask
Thorax cover – UNI Mylar pearl regular #12
Tying
1. Thread the slotted bead up the hook ‘vice up’ and use the slot to ensure it sits snuggly up against the eye.
2. Catch in the thread and build up behind the bead to hold it in place.
3. Tie in the wire taking the thread down the shank until just short of the bend.
4. Take a good pinch of the hackle fibres and tie in to form the tail. I like the tail to be approximately half the length of the body, about 5mm for this hook.
5. Now tie in the tail fibres and trim off the waste left behind the eye.
6. Using the thread build up a carrot shape body tapering down to the tail, leave the thread at the base of the tail.
7. Lightly dub the thread with the Spectrablend dubbing and wind up approximately two thirds of the shank to form the body.
8. Rib the body with the silver wire. Tie off wire behind the eye and snap the wire waste off whilst holding between finger and thumb.
9. Take a short length of the mylar and catch in tight up against where the body has finished lying the mylar on top of the hook. Tie in waste then leave thread at base of the body. Pull the tag back to use as a thorax cover once the next step is completed.
10. Now take the hares ear/ mask dubbing (I make small amounts and store in pots ready for use, make sure your dubbing has plenty of long fibres to give a leggy look).
I wax the thread and then lightly apply plenty of dubbing. Form a thorax with dubbing right up to the bead leaving the thread tight up against the bead.
Plenty of dubbing……..
Gives a lovely ‘buggy’ thorax.
11. Stroke the fibres down and then pull the tag of mylar over the thorax towards the eye making sure it lays nice and flat, catch in with one turn of thread. Give the mylar a pull to tighten up and tie in with another one or two turns.
12. When happy whip finish behind bead (I apply a small amount of varnish to the thread before whip finishing).
13. Trim off the waste mylar as tight as you can and tease out a few of the longer hairs in the thorax.
Look out for these…
1. Make sure enough room is left for a decent size thorax. The effect of the mylar thorax cover is lost if too short.
2. Make sure the thorax dubbing is made up more of hair than the soft down of the mask to give a
‘leggy’ look.
The finished fly
Summary
With its big ‘hairy’ thorax this is somewhat of a scruffy looking old fly but I like the buggy look the hare’s ear gives. Both the bead and thorax could be toned down. But the glint, flash, or air bubble effect (call it what you will) that the silver bead and thorax create is bringing great results for myself of late.
Deadly double
A great jig pattern to have in your winter fly boxes. What I like is that although offering the attraction of the silver bead and pearl mylar thorax cover it is still a little less gaudy than many jig nymphs available.
I have tied this on a #14 and with a 3mm bead which is a hefty fly, meant to be used as a point fly with a smaller nymph on a dropper in big flows. However please try tying this in smaller sizes i.e.. #16 and #18 and use in a single nymph set up a great rig especially for venues where grayling have become wary due to heavy angling traffic.
Let’s hope the rain eases off letting the rivers settle down and in many cases become fishable! Then we can all get out for a few grayling sessions over the Christmas holidays.
BEST WISHES to all ESF readers.
You can contact Warren via email or call him on 07771 558 028.