Bodkin / Patterns

Orange Extreme Skater

Dry Fly · Salmon/Steelhead · Topwater · Steelhead · Salmon · Advanced · 1 version

Joe Penich

  • Hook Kamasan B940, straight eye wide gape, 1
  • Thread White, red at the finish Semperfli Nano Silk

Materials

  • Faux bucktail, synthetic White bucktail (tail, a shank length)
  • Deer hair Orange deer hair (2 clumps, rear cone)
  • Rubber legs Yellow with orange tips (4 strands each side)
  • Saddle hackle, folded Cree saddle hackle (1 palmered, plus 1 large for the collar)
  • Foam Orange foam strip (casing cut with a frog-shaped foam cutter)
  • Deer hair Dark yellow deer hair (spun body)
  • Deer hair Natural deer hair (spun body, front section)
  • Calf tail, dyed Yellow calf tail dyed (divided wing, 1.5 hook gaps)
  • Moose mane Natural deer hair (throat, tips even with the hook point)
  • Foam with black dots Yellow mm foam (small cut disc on the casing)
  • Lead wire (used only to hold materials out of the way)

How to tie it

  1. Start Nano Silk behind the eye and wrap a base along the straight part of the hook. Stack a half-pencil clump of white faux bucktail, measure it a shank length, and trim the butts on a taper before tying them in a section at a time. Tapering and stacking the butts is what gives you a smooth underbody instead of a step.
  2. Flare two clumps of orange deer hair at the base of the tail with two soft wraps and a cinch wrap each, compress them, then trim the whole thing into a cone shape starting at the tail and working forward, squaring off the ends.
  3. Tie four strands of yellow-and-orange rubber leg on each side of the cone with a soft loop and a cinch wrap, then tie in a folded cree saddle hackle by the tip and leave it.
  4. Cut a foam casing with a frog-shaped foam cutter and thin it with curved scissors. Tie it in tight to the trimmed deer hair, fold it forward to measure a point just past the eye, then bind the remainder down. Wrap lead wire around the casing, tail, hackle and legs to hold everything back out of the way, and cement the wrap.
  5. Spin dark yellow deer hair from the casing forward, one pencil-width clump at a time, packing each with a compactor. Trim it at the base of the casing first, then the rest with long curved scissors, and finish with a curved razor for a smooth body.
  6. Stack dyed yellow calf tail twice as thick as the deer hair clumps, tie it in one and a half hook gaps long, divide it with figure-eight wraps and wire the wings together temporarily. Add natural deer hair in front, packed and trimmed flush with the yellow, right up to the wing base.
  7. Release the lead wire, palmer the cree hackle along the body burying the stem in the trimmed hair, then wrap a large folded cree collar. Fold the foam casing back over the hackle and body and secure it, add a moose mane throat from underneath with tips at the hook point, whip finish in red thread, and epoxy a small yellow foam disc with black dots on top of the orange casing.

Tying videos

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