A.K.A. Sight fishing nymph

As well as being a great river fly this is one of the few flies I am really confident in for sight fishing. A brown unweighted size #10 version sinking naturally in the vision of a patrolling brown trout is seldom ignored. It’s also a great fly for covering rising fish.

In either application wet the fly and squeeze out any air before presenting it so as to ensure it doesn’t float.

In both applications I like to fish it on a floating line. For polaroiding I use a 16 foot of 0.18mm or thinner fluorocarbon leader. For covering rising fish I generally use my loch style leader and include it at the point of a team of small flies and fish it relatively slow. It is also a great fly for wet under dry applications.

Any time there are brown or brownish mayfly around this fly is worth a swim.

Materials

Process

A	Wind the thread in touching turns to the bend of the hook. Understanding hooks Tie in a tail of 8 or 10 pheasant tail barbules equal in length of the hook shank. The slightly heavier tail helps hold the heavier bend of the hook up as the fly sinks naturally through the water column. Tie in a length of fine copper wire.

B	I don’t add any extra weight to this fly as I want it to sink as slowly as possible through the water column giving a target fish plenty of time to see it. If you going to add weight to the fly now is the time to do it. One of the easiest ways is to use lead wire. Wind the lead wire around the hook shank placing it as far forward as possible. This will enhance the swimming action of the fly. Adding weight to a fly Using the single strand dubbing method dub on a body starting at almost nothing and gradually increasing in width along the back half of the fly. Dubbing techniques

C	Wind the copper wire along the body of the fly forming 4 or 5 segments along the rear half of the fly. Body segments on flies Take the wire a little forward of the half way point, tie it off with a couple of firm wraps of thread and woory off the excess wire. Take the thread back to the half way point.	<

D	Tie in a slip of pheasant tail at the half way point, on top of the hook shank with the underside facing up and the excess slip hanging over the back of the fly.

E	Dub on the rear half of the thorax making it about 50% thicker than the thickest part of the body. Turn the fly toward you 90 degrees and tie in 6 or so pheasant tail barbule tips in the space left for the front half of the thorax to represent the legs on one side of the fly. The tips of the legs should extend out toward the back of the fly at an angle of around 45 degrees and be about half as long as the body.

F	Turn the fly over in the vice and tie in 6 or so pheasant tail barbule tips in the space left for the front half of the thorax to represent the legs on the other side of the fly. The tips of the legs should extend out toward the back of the fly at an angle of around 45 degrees and be about half as long as the body. When you look at the fly from below the legs should be similar to each each other.

G	Rotate the fly back up the correct way. Pull the wing casing feather slip over the top of the fly and whilst holding it tight and in place tie it off just behind the eye of the hook.

H	Trim away the buts of the wing casing with a sharp pair of scissors. Build up a neat thread head. Neat thread heads Whip finish and varnish the thread.