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In the late 90's I was president of Illawarra Fly Fishers Club (IFF) and lived in Wollongong but was lucky enough to have a holiday home on the shores of Lake Jindabyne.

My favourite form of fly fishing at that time was polaroiding wild brown trout along the shores of Lake Jindabyne. That process involves stalking and targeting sighted fish whilst wearing polaroid sun glasses to help me see through the glare and relatively deep into the water. The fly that I used at that time was a size #10 basic black or brown nymph and when I put my fishing reports in at IFF meetings I always told the members what fly had I used. I was often quizzed about the size of the nymph and I got into the habit of saying "a bit over an inch"... hence the name inch nymph.

So I have been fishing the inch nymph now for over 20 years. It is still basically the same fly except for just the addition of the wings. They were added about 10 years ago at about the same time that I also started tying the fly in a bead head version for river fishing.

In have progressively added different colours and now tie the "inch" nymph in 5 colours. The brown or black unweighted inch nymphs in size #10 remain two of my favourite lake polaroiding flies. ... those two flies and the olive, claret and Adams coloured versions have also found a place in my river fly box and are amongst the flies I turn to as point flies when when fishing nymph under dry or unweighted nymph under a bead head fly.

By the way for those of you born to another generation an "inch" is a measurement it's 1/12 of foot and around 25mm.

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 worry 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. Dub a little dubbing over the tie in of the legs to represent the balance of the thorax. 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 head.

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