Bodkin / Patterns

Burkus Green Drake Cripple

Dry Fly · Trout · Intermediate · 1 version

Classic Recipe

  • Hook standard/emerger dry-fly hook (e.g. TMC 100 or 2487), 10-12
  • Thread Olive 8/0 (70 denier)

Materials

  • Trailing shuck Brown/amber Antron or Zelon (small clump)
  • Abdomen Olive turkey biot or olive Superfine dubbing (1)
  • Wing Olive-gray CDC or poly yarn (1 clump)
  • Hackle Grizzly dyed olive hackle (1 feather)
  • Thorax Olive/dark-olive Superfine dubbing (1 pinch)

How to tie it

  1. Tie in a brown Antron trailing shuck at the bend, one shank length long, angled down to sit in the film like a struggling emerger.
  2. Wrap a segmented olive biot abdomen forward to the 60% mark.
  3. Tie in an olive-gray CDC or poly wing tuft standing forward/upright at the 65% mark.
  4. Wind a grizzly-olive hackle 3-4 turns through the thorax and clip the bottom flat so the fly sits low. Why: a cripple rides half-drowned, so the flat-bottom hackle and dangling shuck imitate a stuck-in-the-shuck drake.
  5. Dub a dark olive thorax and whip finish behind the eye.

Tying videos

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