From a young age I started tying flies, mostly for still water trout. I really enjoyed fishing with natural looking patterns such as Papa Roaches and Damsels and so on. The one day I was fishing along a weed bed and saw a massive Dragonfly Nymph swimming along the weeds. I took my net and scooped it up to inspect further as I knew the trout obviously liked them. That morning after the fishing session I went to my vice and tied my version of the Dragonfly Nymph called the Tasty Dragon. After some good success on the fly, I started incorporating it into my fly-tying business called Flies Unlimited.
Material list:
Hook: SL12S Short Shank #6
Eyes: Bead Chain or dumbbell eyes
Thread: 6/0
Tail: Olive Marabou
Tail: Olive Magnum Strips
Body: Olive Hare’s Ear Plus Dubbing
Wing: Olive Deer Hair
Wing Casing: Swiss Straw Olive
Legs: Grizzly Flutter Legs Black Barred Rootbeer
Tying the fly:
Step 1:
Tie on the Dumbell or the Bead Chain Eyes.
Step 2:
Tie in a mono leader loop on the hook shank to prevent the Zonker and Marabou from wrapping.
Step 3:
Tie in a piece of Olive Marabou to the hook shank over the mono loop, cover the tie in section with some Olive Hare’s Dubbing.
Step 4:
Tie in a strand of Magnum Zonker, the piece should be about 2-3 times longer than the hook shank.
Step 5:
Over the tie in point of the Zonker strip, apply dubbing to the thread and cover the area to build a nice fat body.
Step 6:
Cut a small amount of Deer Hair and place over the Zonker strip, prevent the Deer Hair from spinning as we are trying to imitate a wing casing.
Step 7:
Tie in the silicone legs. Use around 4 strand, fold it over to the other side and tie in.
Step 8:
Tie in the Olive Swiss Straw over the Deer Hair to start forming the wing case.
Step 9:
Fold back the Swiss Straw and build a dubbing body over the folding part of the Swiss Straw.
Step 10:
Build a layer of dubbing layer over the dumbell eyes and fold the Swiss Straw forward over the eyes. This will form segments over the body of the fly.
Step 11:
Take a black permanent marker and form lines over the zonker strip to imitate segmentation for the fly.
