I use this fly as a lure when the fishing goes dead and not a fish in sight. I tie it in all different shapes and sizes. Black and red is my most successful but the oringinal one looks better. Its always good to have one in your box in the colder months or when the warmer months are in you can use a hackled varriation to pull across the surface to create and disturbance...


Hook: Kamasan lure hook size 12
Thread: Uni black 8/0.
Tail and wing: Molted turkey.
Body: Gold myler tinsel.
Rib: Gold wire.
Underwing: Squirrel tail.
Head: Deer hair.

I was fiddling around with my camera and i found a good way to improve my pictures, so i decieded to do this step by step.





Ok lets get started....


Step 1: Start the thread nearly half way onto the hookshank to leave some space for the head, Tie in the gold wire for your rib and tapper the body out nice and even.



Step 2: Now you have to select two identical slips from the turkey feathers. You have to put these to slips you cut out from each wing together. Here is a picture showing the two turkey feathers.


Now you have to cut out a slip from the left feather and a slip from the right feather. The slip from the left goes at the back of the wing and the slip at the right goes infront of the wing. So the left is the back and the right is the front.

Once you place the both slips together you get a much neater wing than a single slip just tied on. You can easily fix the wing with a dubbing needle which saved me some hassle. To tie the wing on, well to tie the tail on you have to hold the slip tightly with index finger and thumb and place the thread inbetween your fingers very lightly, you can place two wraps of thread inbetween your fingers or one. Now hold the wing tightly and slowly pull the thread downwards. The right side of the wing should lift upwards and if you tie it on correctly you will be left with a (V) shaped wing. Look at picture below. Practice makes perfect. The material i used for the tail is cheap molted turkey but it does what i need it to do.


Step 3. To speed up your tying don't cut away the waste end of the tail. Use it to help you to tapper out the body so the gold tinsel can go on nice and even Once your satisfied tie in your tinsel.


Step 4.
Now this is easy, wind your tinsel up the hook and then back down, tie it off and then give ur gold wire 5 turns to secure the tinsel. Your result should look like this.


Step 5. Now select a small amount of squirrel tail fibres and tie them in for the under wing. The length of the fibres should not go past the tail. Some of mine have but they are loose fibres... Then again repeat step two and tie in your wing over the top of the squirrel fibres. This does not look the best type of wing but its going to get wrecked anyway when the fish hits it. Never mind about the amount of thread i used on the head, don't copy this thats just a little mistake i made but when the fly is finished you won't see that anyway.


Step 6. Deer hair time. Select a good bunch of deer hair, use a small comb to remove the under hair and place the deer hair in the hair stacker. This will be your hackle. Once you have the tips of the deer hair level, you can turn the hook upside down to avoid messing up the wing. The deer hair should not go past the barb of the hook, spin the deer hair and your result will be a total mess but thats fine.


Step 7. Now you have to finish off the head, select two more bunches of deer hair and trim off the pointy tips, Spin both bunches and you should have a result like this,


Step 8. Its time to do some hairdressing. You can either use a blade or a pair of scissors to do the work but for smaller flies i'd stick to a pair of scissors. Trim away all the deer hair but do not trim off the hackle. Trim the head to whatever shape you want and whip finish.

and.. here we have a mini muddler minnow.


Hope you all enjoy this.

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Cromie

Great fly and instrcutions. The pics by the way are brilliant. It's just amazing how much progress you have made

This one really looks the business.

Excellent.

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"A bad days fishing beats a good days working"

Nice one Matt,keep them coming

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Come when the leaves come,angle with me,Come when the bees hum,crossing the lea,Come to discover the angling delights,of the Melvin with me.

Matt

not knowing what camera you're using I could be wrong but... It looks like you have your aperature set on too low a number, this gives lovely 'bokeh' or depth of field and means you can get well exposed shots in lower light conditions but it does mean that your field of focus is very very narrow. This works on shots where you want that blurred out background effect, but on a subject like a fly it can mean, that if dialled low enough, you end up not getting the whole of the object in focus.

At f1.8/f2 you're going to get basically a few mm of the image in focus, at f22 you'll have everything for about 20 miles in focus Try dialling it up somewhere around f8/f10 or so if you can, you may find you need a good tripod and good light to get the best being indoors but the whole fly and vice should be in focus then. Of course, you may have been intending to have the parts of the deer hair or tail out of focus, in which case, I'll shut up. Just thought I'd let you know.

Anyway, this granny is retreating now, complete with eggs!

Malcolm

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