I can see that post on this thread has dwindled over the last few days so il post one up to get the ball rolling again!
As the season has started in most places, boobies are (I dare say) normally the first plan of attack on most reservoirs when the fish are deep and you don't want to hook the bottom, this is possible because the ethafoam eyes give a bit of buoyancy. But, boobies are also great when fished across the top to provoke a chase and a take.
The eyes are seen to be (to many) the hardest part of the fly, not getting the sort of symmetrical with the rounding off, or the sizing of the eyes when lashed onto the hook, i.e one eye being bigger than the other..
So heres how I do mine - I know there are a variety of ways of tying the eyes onto a hook, but this is the way I find to be the easiest and neatest.. Hope this helps..
Take your foam cylinder and cut roughly the same length as the shank of the hook, obviously this wouldn't be the way if you was tying on a long shank 6, but I feel it does work with hooks of size 10 and under..
To start off take away the first edge of the side of the cylinder you cut, that's the most square edge.. these cuts can be made quite large, I normally aim for around 5 cuts - keeping the scissors at an angle of about 45o, this starts to help shape the eye..
Then, once that cut has been made, another two have formed as you can see by the above picture.. one smaller edge on the outside of the eye, and one larger on the inside. Take the inside edge away with smaller finer cuts than the previous.
and then take away the outside edge with small fine cuts, as shown by the remains of the foam..
Once these three cuts have been made, if your left with any roughness just tidy it up with a few cuts to take the roughness way, and then apply the same process to the opposite side if the eye.
I then cut a few of these eyes in a batch, surprisingly this method doesn't take very long at all once you get into it.
To tie the eye onto a hook I use a dubbing needle, tie on about 3-4 turns of thread just to secure the silk, here I have used 140 UTC white.
Place the ready cut eye onto the top of the needle, and move the eye accordingly positioning the the thread in the centre of the foam.
Two or three tight turns over the eye, half hitch off and remove the thread. This give you a platform to tie the eyes on.
Once the thread has been removed, gently twist and pull the eyes around and off the needle, and you should be left with this.
The tag is actually the thread which was tied onto the needle.
I prefer to tie the eyes on last, because I think the fly looks alot neater and none of the foam is going to be crushed with extra thread wraps when tying in a wing or bulky fritz.
Bored yet? There's more..
To tie the eyes on, complete your fly, leaving sufficient room, about 7-8 turns of thread from the eye.
Small dab of super glue on the thread on the fly and place the eye onto it. Figure of eight the silk between the eyes and over and under the shank of the hook securing them on. Whip Finish and you are complete.
I feel the best thing about this method is that you can use a thinner thread to what you create the eyes with, to tie the eyes onto the hook, as you do not need the strength to pull through the density of the foam to form the eyes. Here I used 8/0 thread, which alot of people snap when trying to tie booby eyes down.
Hope this wasn't a waste of tying time and someone learnt from it! Cheers, Kieron.
Booby eyes
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