Bodkin / Patterns

Hot Legs Damsel

Nymph · Stillwater · Trout · Advanced · 1 version

BCFlyguys

Materials

  • Eyes (1 pair, an eighth of an inch behind the hook eye)
  • Bead (1)
  • Marabou (tail, one and a half shank lengths)
  • Wire (rib)
  • Rabbit dubbing mixed with pheasant tail Ice Dub (body, dubbing loop)
  • Palmer chenille, small Orange finesse chenille (legs)
  • UV resin (between the eyes)

How to tie it

  1. Start the thread just behind the hook eye and tie the eyes in about an eighth of an inch back. Do roughly ten figure eights on the top side, flip to the bottom and do another eight or ten, then wrap the thread under the eyes and over the shank eight or ten times. That last step is what stops the eyes rotating on you. Finish with a couple more figure eights and a touch of UV resin on the thread between the eyes.
  2. Tie the marabou in right behind the eye and wind the thread back down holding it on top of the shank so it cannot spin around. Leave the tail a full one and a half shank lengths. Plenty of people scoff at a tail that long because it can wrap the bend, but it catches a lot more fish.
  3. Take a couple of wraps of thread under the tail and above the shank at the bend, which helps stop the tail wrapping the hook.
  4. Wind the thread back up behind the bead, tie the wire in and lash it all the way down to the tail.
  5. Blend rabbit dubbing with a little pheasant tail Ice Dub, load it into a dubbing loop, wet your fingers to make it behave, and wind it forward to just behind the eye. It takes very little dubbing.
  6. Cut a quarter of the length off a piece of small orange Palmer chenille, strip about an eighth of an inch of fibres off the end for a tie-in point, and tie it in about three wraps behind the eye. Cut the excess.
  7. Cover the remaining thread and whip finish, then rib the body with the wire last, after the whip finish, because it goes on easier when nothing is in the way.

Tying videos

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