Well, welcome back to the fly fishing podcast.
I'm going to show you very quickly how to tie my variations of a John Barr inf.
This is a particularly good pattern for taking trout in the early season.
And also whitefish or chub. We'll take it growling later on as well.
And what's particularly effective about this fly, I'm using UV silicone, which is a Loomis Outdoor Product Wader Repair Kit.
You can get clear coo, goo, etc. to do this, but this seems to be the cheapest way.
It's the most accessible one for me at the moment.
And therefore I'm going to show you how to tie this.
I use a Kamasam 175 hook. I'm going to debar this.
I'm going to debarb it before I tie the rest of the pattern.
I'm going to do that by turning the hook in the vice and you can see if I turn it up, the barb has gone.
Now I think that's better to do that now than later on and break the point of the hook or break the hook completely.
That's a real bummer if you got to the end of tying a fly and you're broken off the hook.
And that's happened to me a number of different times.
175 hook is quite a hefty hook.
That's what I used to use when I was fishing competitions. It gave me a lot of weight to get the hook down when I wasn't allowed to use any weight on the hook.
But if you put a brass bead on, you're great for this particular pattern.
So I'm just pulling a bit of silver wire there. Then I'm going to put some Goose Biops in and those are going to form the tail.
I want a little V in those like so.
Turn them over, put on the top of the hook, bind them in, bind them down.
It doesn't matter how bulky you get towards the bead, that just helps the bead stay in one position.
So those are being bound in.
You can see there's a little bit of V formation there. I'm just going to wind back.
For the body I'm going to use a bit of Amazon dubbing here.
Now this is Bronze Peacock. This is a real killer dubbing.
The blend is superb. You come across particular items which you just know are going to catch fish.
So I'm going to wax my thread. It doesn't matter what colour thread you use. I'm just using a plain white thread here.
I'm just going to dub that on. A bit of Orphous Sticky Wax which is probably a waspy product, quite frankly.
I'm just going to build up the first part of that fly like so.
So that's the end of the area. Then I'm going to put the silver rib for it. Nice and even, nice and tight.
Bring it to the back of that bead, three or four turns in, and then I'm going to wobble this like so.
The only purpose of that is just to break the silver wire off. So that's broken.
And we're looking now to start building up this four-axe area.
I'm going to do this in a couple of different stages.
So first of all, I just want to be taking off a pinch of, again, this wonderful bronze peacock dubbing.
I'm just putting that on a little bit at a time. I've waxed the thread.
I also find licking the fingers helps apply the dubbing.
Dub that on, nice and tapered. There we go.
Before I tie that in, what we're going to do is we're going to catch in a bit of this wonderful pearl ribbing.
This is just a normal thick bit of pearl.
And it's going to fall on the wing case. So what we want to do here is cut ourselves a little snip, tie it in, just like that.
Give it a bit of a catch. It doesn't matter if there's a bit going at the top.
I'm going to double mine and we're tied in a bit there.
Then we're going to put the legs in.
Now, the fact we've tied a little bit of a dubbing in for the four-axe means the legs will spray.
I'm just going to take that behind the back of the bead and you can see those, they spray out.
It's a very sort of naturalistic impression of legs.
I'm just going to wobble those slightly so a little bit shorter.
You can see that in the shortened bit. And then we're going to clear that from the bead, keep it nice and clean, snip it off.
I'm going to do exactly the same on the other side.
Once we've finished doing this, we're going to put a bit more dubbing over the base of those legs, just a wee bit.
That wee bit of dubbing does a number of different things. It helps hold the fly together.
It keeps the beads in place.
Make sure the legs are caught within there.
It also gives a buffer. When I go over to catch in the pearl, it gives something for the thread to actually sink into.
I'm just going to snip that off.
It doesn't matter if it's a bit over the bead and it gives you a little bit of padding for your final set of wet finishes to go in.
So they disappear.
I'm just going to put two on here because I've put quite a few underneath.
I'm using this white nylon microfoss.
Once you've got a head cement or varnish on top, it will just disappear very easily.
What I'm going to use is this Loom-Way to Repair.
I'm just going to squeeze a little bit on.
Take it from the back of the smudge it in onto the bead.
Once you've got that onto the bead there, it makes it very, very secure, the whole top of that forex.
What I'm going to then do is use a UV light.
It can be any UV light.
I'm just going to shine it on over the top there onto the sides, rotate that fly.
I'll show you the dark as well. Turn the light off. You can see the UV's picking up there.
I'll just turn it around.
Now this cures very, very quickly.
It's probably cured already.
It goes not rock hard, but it goes nice and hard and holds you fly together.
I found the Loom-Way to Repair probably the best to use.
You can hear that.
No tack in this.
That's taken it from the back of the forex all the way into the bead.
We've got one unit there.
It's helped hold the legs and the profile of this fly.
That little pearl hotspot really does increase the amount of tack you're going to get.
If you're going to take the pull and dry it up, try not changing the pattern.
Keep the pattern the same, but just vary the tail.
Different biops in that tail will give you different results.
They get locked into the pattern, the actual shape of it.
You can bring a slight change.
You put an orange biop or an olive biop into it.
These are just plain old, all these biops I've bought.
Those will change your fishing for the day.
You can find out what sort of size they're after, 10, 12, 14, down to a 20, 22.
As long as you vary the tail colour, each time you present that fly,
it will seem to be different to the trail.
You'll keep on catching a pull which seems to have dried up.
You just change your fly, give it a go.
Especially when fishing over wild fish, you'll find out.
One cast, they're very, very keen on, they want to know.
The next, you know, you miss the fish, they're just not interested.
Change something slightly, not just the size, but just the tail colour.
The colour of the legs.
Even if you're tying this hotspot at the back,
put a bit of UV floss in there.
Give it a UV hotspot rather than the pull hotspot and see what they think about it.
I guarantee you if they're on that particular fly and it dries up,
just that minute change will bring you back onto the takes.
Come and see me at the Fire Fishing Podcast,
like me on the Facebook site,
and just let me know that you're out there.
Tight lines, see you soon.
