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The Clouser in my view is the quintessential salt water fly. It can be tied in sizes to suit Bream or Bill fish and with the correct dressing and size is equally at home in salt water, trout and bass fisheries. Many flies whilst not acknowledging their heritage are based on the Clouser recipe. Have a good look at David Dodd’s Bream Fly or John Schofield’s Bass Vampire and you will see that at the very least they are influenced by the Clouser recipe and specifically dressed for Bream & Bass respectfully.

The original Bob Clouser recipe calls for the use of buck tail tail as the dominant dressing for the fly. It works very well but on the down side it's not a durable fly and you may want to consider using more durable materials as in my synthetic clouser. Alternatively, as a minimum, add a little synthetic material on top of your buck tail to give it some protection.

More often than not I also use bead chain eyes rather than "real eyes" or "dumb bell eyes" because I do loose a few flies fishing into snags and the bead chain eyes work just as well for me but of course cost almost nothing by comparison.

What ever your dressing do keep in mind that you need to ensure that the combination of the wing and the eyes do cause the fly to swim hook up when fished.

Materials for example below

Process

A	Wrap the thread in tight touching turns down the front 1/3 of the hook shank. Understanding hooks Tie in your bead chain, dumbbell or real eyes on top of the hook shank so that when in place they will be around the diameter of the dumbbell eyes from the eye of the hook. I have used size 7/32" eyes for this 2/0 size fly. Finish with the thread half way between the eyes and the eye of the hook. Tying in dumbbell eyes

B	Select a small bunch of bucktail and hand stack it so that the tips are roughly aligned and the fuzz has been removed from the butt end of the bunch of buck tail. Do take care when selecting bunches of materials that you don't select too much. From my experience a lightly dressed clouser is always better than an overdressed clouser. Position the buck tail so that the tips will extend a distance roughly equal to two times the length of the hook. Tie the bucktail under-wing in on top of the hook shank.

C	Lift the butt ends of the under-wing up and trim off the excess well behind the eye of the hook at an angle. Pull the bucktail under-wing over and between the eyes and tie it down behind the eyes and on top of the hook shank. Tails on flies Return the thread to half way between the eyes and the eye of the hook. Select a couple of strands of pearl flashabou or similar material and tie that in with the flashabou extending back behind the fly. Invert the hook in the vice.

D	Pull the flashabou back so that it lays above the marabou under wing. Return the thread to half way between the eyes and the eye of the hook

E	Select a small bunch of bucktail for the over-wing and hold it firmly in place with the tips extending out the same distance behind the fly as the under-wing and the flashabou. Lock the over-wing bucktail in place. Lift the butt ends of the over-wing up and trim them off well behind the eye of the hook at an angle.

F	Continue wrapping the thread in front of the eyes to build up a neat cone shaped head. Whip finish and apply and cure a small amount of UV resin over the tie in of the dumbbell eyes and the cone shaped thread head. The finished fly #2/0 fly should be around 9cm long overall.

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