This is a great pattern for targeting Largemouth yellowfish, Bass, and ambitious Smallmouth yellowfish, with this colour combination working particularly well in clearer water.
Materials:
Step 1: Tie the Dumbell eyes on to the bottom of the hook shank:
Create a thick thread base for the eyes to seat properly and leave sufficient breathing space between the dumbell eyes and hook eye. You do not want to crowd the hook eye as you will need that space to tie in material at the end, and optionally attach a weed guard.
Step 2: Tie in the tail:
Take your thread back to just before the hook bend, in front of the hook point.
Take a pinch of sculpting fibre and cut it in half. You will not need the full length.
Tease the fibres to taper the end slightly, then tie down on top of the hook, with the tapered section extending backwards from the hook bend. When tying in the sculpting fibre, do not tie directly in the middle of the section, rather have a ratio of 40 to 60 on each side of the thread, so the shorter part will be the first section that sticks out beyond the hook bend.
You will then take the slightly longer section and fold it backwards over the tapered shorter section and secure in place.
You can now take your scissors and cut the longer fibres diagonally to also create a tapered effect, while still maintaining its slightly longer length.
Step 3: Tie in the body:
Take a wire strand of Crafty Brush and pull off a few of the fibres on one end to expose the wire underneath.
Tie in the exposed edge of wire onto the hook, with the wire running parallel to the shank, and with the wire end pointing towards the dumbell eyes. Secure in place while bringing your thread to a position just behind the dumbell eyes.
You will now start to wrap the crafty brush around the shank. I prefer to wrap towards myself as the thread will secure the wire properly with counter wraps at the end. Make tight almost touching turns, and palmer the fibres backwards with each full turn.
After each full turn you can take a soft brush (toothbrush works well) and gently comb out the fibres towards the back of the hook. This helps to release any strands that may have gotten trapped and to keep them neatly in place. Tie off the Crafty Brush just behind the hook eyes and snip off the excess wire with wire cutters.
Step 4: Final touches:
Bring your thread over the top of the dumbell eyes to just in front of the dumbell eyes. Cut off a pinch of craft fur and pull out the short fluffy fibres at the base so you are only left with the longer straighter strands. For this fly I mixed Golden olive with Dark olive craft fur. Tie the craft fur in just in front of the dumbell eyes, being careful not to let the craft fur spin around the shank. Whip finish and add a dash of Loctite for extra durability. Gently brush the craft fur backwards so it lies neatly on top of the fly.
I then take a very tiny blob of Solar UV Flex and rub it between my thumb and forefinger, and then lightly dab the Solar onto the fly, concentrating mostly on the head and belly, and gently brushing my fingers over the body towards the tail. Be very careful not to use too much, just very, very lightly apply - this is merely to get any stray and wayward fibres to lay flat and shape the body, while still maintaining movement in the fibres. Cure with your UV torch and voila, you are ready to fish!
Colour variations
Extra Notes:
You can tie flash into the tail. However, the Crafty Brush already contains UV angel hair flash and in very clear water it isn’t necessary.
Attaching a weed guard is optional.
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