Tail Woolly Bugger Marabou, shell pink (one tip section, plus a second for bulk)
Hackle CDC, pink cahill (one long feather)
Body Ice Dub, fluorescent shell pink (one tapered noodle)
How to tie it
Mount the size 10 jig hook with a 4.0mm light pink slotted tungsten bead.
Start light pink 70 denier thread behind the bead and wrap rearwards in touching turns to build a thread base down to the hook bend.
Take a Woolly Bugger marabou feather - Stephen prefers it to blood quills. He thinks it has better movement. Grip it by the tip in your left hand and pull everything else backwards to separate the tip section.
Measure the tail at roughly one and a half times the shank length. The shank is short, so the tail is longer relative to the hook than it looks.
Secure with a couple of pinch wraps, wrap forward a few turns and trim, leaving enough marabou running forward to build a little bulk into the body.
That first tail is deliberately sparse. If you want more, trim the used end off the same feather, which leaves you clean fibres again, and repeat exactly as before. On a micro bugger this size you can get two or three flies out of a single marabou feather.
Tidy the butts with thread wraps and come back to the rear of the fly.
Prepare a CDC feather. Pick a long one for this. Grip the stem at the tip with hackle pliers and pull all the fibres rearwards, which leaves a neat triangular section standing out to tie in by.
Tie the CDC in at the rear, wrap forward and back again.
Dub fluorescent shell pink Ice Dub into a noodle and wrap the body forward, tapering slightly from rear to front. Stephen prefers Ice Dub to chenille because he can control the bulk and so the sink rate, and the colour range is much wider.
Grip the CDC stem with hackle pliers and palmer it forward, preening the fibres rearwards as you go. CDC is a buoyant feather, but tied this sparsely it actually sinks faster than a traditional saddle hackle, and the movement is better.
Trim the stem out, pull all the fibres back towards the rear and build a thread collar in front of them to hold everything swept back.