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A great fly to use when target fish are actively feeding on small fish such as sardines, whitebait and pilchards. You can either fish it on a floating line and strip it across the surface with dramatic effect or fish the fly on a sinking line, count the fly down and then retrieve it up through the water column using a fast stripping action or roly poly retrieve.

I have seen recipes where the foam is folded from both below and above the fly. If you want to include a beard then its easier to fold the foam from above and if you want a more buoyant fly its easier to fold the foam from above. Both work.

Materials

Process

A	Wind your thread from the 95% position to the bend of the hook. Understanding hooks Tie in a tail. The tail can be a Dahlberg Diver style tail a Deceiver style tail, a woolly bugger tail or just a length of Zonker strip or as just a bunch of white synthetic hair with a bit of contrasting material over the top. Different types of tails In any case make the under-body uniform along the length of the hook shank.

B	The original tie folds the closed cell foam over the top of the fly as in the first  and second picture above. Unless you want to include a beard my preference is to fold the fly from below and to shape the body. Cut out a piece of closed cell foam to this shape. The distance from the end of the groove to the uncut end should be as long as the hook shank. Apply contact cement to one side of the foam and along the under-body.

C	Once the contact has gone off line up the slot at the rear of the closed cell foam and position an imaginary line in front of the slot along the bottom of the fly When your happy with the position being right fold the two sides up vertically and together. Witha sharp pair of scissors trim the top edge of the joined foam to shape. Glue dolls eyes on each side of the head using the same contact cement. Take the fly out of the vice and decorate along the back with your choice of permanent texture pens.

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