This is a very good heavy nymph pattern which is a generic pattern imitating all manner of aquatic nymphs and caddis larva.

It may be fished in the Czech nymph style or by more traditional upstream nymph or down stream nymph techniques.

A comprehensive explanation of the weaving technique can be found on this web site under the title 'Shuttle or Parallel Weave'

Materials:

Hook:    Size 8 or 10 Kamasan B175 heavy wired hook.

Underbody : Lead wire.

Tail:  Red Game Cock Hackle fibres

Body: 6 strands of dark brown raylon floss and 4 strands of light tan raylon floss.

Beard: Red Game Cock Hackle fibres.

Under body silk: White multi strand.

Head: Black silk varnished.

Firstly wind on the lead underbody in touching turns along the hook shank. Do not wind this on right up to the eye otherwise it will cause you problems later.

Remember that you can use different gauges of lead wire which will effect the ability of the fly to sink at different rates.

Now add a small amount of super glue. For interest sake I used Zap a Gap which in my mind cannot be beaten.

Take you multi strand or flat tying silk. I have used uni nylon here in 70 denier and bind in the lead smoothing the body over and creating a uniform cigar shape of the under body.

It is worth spending plenty of time to get this right as if it isn't the silk floss over body will show up any poor preperation on the underbody.

Tie in the tail fibres. They should point down and effectively follow the contour of the hook bend.

Tie in the darker silk body floss on the side of the fly nearest to you with the hook bend on the  down side.

Invert the fly and attach the lighter coloured silk floss.

Remember you can use any colour combination you like but I do like the contrast of a darker upper body with a lighter under body as seen in so many natural aquatic insects.

Again make plenty of turns over the silk as the last thing you want to happen is for the silk to pull free. At this point fill in any gaps or remove any hollows in the underbody.

Now you are ready to weave your body. I have not included step by step instructions for this as it has already been covered in depth on the shuttle weave article and to be honest if you are attempting this fly with silk you would have had to have had plenty of practise with the chenile before hand.

Take the strands of silk in each hand with the hook inverted. i.e. dark in the right and lighter in the left hand. Before you take your grip of death on the silk I suggest that you wet it with a bit of spittle. this is easilly done by wetting the thumb and forefingers of each hand and stroke the strands with the wetted fingers. This will stop the fine fibres of the silk springing out and will actually help you to handle the material easier.

Start to weave but remember to maintain the same tention through out the tying.

The darker silk goes under the hook shank as you are looking at it and the lighter over the top.

Remember do not let go of the material or try to swap hands.

When you have formed the body keep the silk flosses taught in the left hand and having kept your bobbin close to hand tie it back on to the hook shank with a jam knot.

Trap the silk with the tying thread in front initially as shown below.

Now tie a couple of turns of the tying thread behind the silk floss.

Now remove the waste silk floss carefully.

Do not try and remove both set of floss together but do each colour seperately.

Start to build the head filling in the space between the silk floss body and the eye.

Take your Red Game Cock Hackle fibres and tie them in as a beard.

One of the techniques that you can use to do this with some control is to cut out a small section of the fibres still attached to the stem and then draw the stem back over the eye and this will allow you to see exactly the length of the fibres that form the legs.

Remove the waste and whip finish.

When the tying is completed take a pair of flat nosed plies that are smooth and gently squeeze the sides. This will allow the silks to cover any gaps and give the fly a better shape.

 Here is the fly at different angles.

A great little pattern. Give it a go.

Tight Lines

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