Designing Flies and Tweaking or Crossing Fly Patterns

fly-patterns fly-patterns
CROSSING TWO OR MORE EXISTING FLY PATTERNS IS A WAY TO DEVELOP A NEW PATTERN THAT INCORPORATES IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF ITS PREDECESSORS. BELOW, THE NYMPH PATTERN ON THE LEFT, LANCE’S X-MAY, INCLUDES DESIGN ELEMENTS FROM HOGAN’S S&M NYMPH (RIGHT) AND MERCER’S MICRO MAY NYMPH (MIDDLE).

Many years ago, when I first started to tie flies, I found that I learned much more from watching a fly being tied live than from looking at pictures in a book. I was fortunate to be around some great fly tyers early in my life: Jay Fair, Arlene Powell, Milt Jensen, Alan Clemens, Denton Hill — the list goes on. Each taught me different fly-tying techniques, but they all agreed on one thing: the basic principles of how to design a fly. These principles involve defining for yourself what the fly is going to imitate, why you need the fly, and how the fly is going to be fished. After that, you will be faced with a series of choices concerning all the other elements that go into tying a fly.

Of course, there may be existing patterns that more or less meet your criteria for the “What,” “Why,” and “How” of fly design, but that you believe can be improved upon. Sometimes just tweaking an existing pattern is all you need to do, but it’s also possible to create a new one by combining elements of others — what I call “crossing” existing patterns.

Designing a Micro Leech

Recently, stillwater anglers who have had success fishing full-sized leech imitations have started tying and fishing micro leech patterns. Leeches look the same from the time they hatch until they reach maturity, and small leeches are as available to feeding trout as the older, larger ones. So let’s say you want to tie a really small leech imitation, and the reason why you want to design a new fly is that you’re unhappy with all the existing micro leech patterns you find in shops or on the Internet. Many are tied with marabou, a great material that swims well in the water, comes in a wide variety of different colors, and is easy to work with, but that also is fragile. You’ve seen fish chew it off Woolly Buggers. Other leech patterns are tied with fur strips, which also swim well — Landon Mayer’s Micro Leech is one — but the dyed fur on the squirrel strips he uses seems too uniform — real leeches actually have a more complex coloration, not to mention a different profile. Plus, both marabou and fur strips can foul around the hook when these patterns are fished. You want to tie a leech that is truly “micro” — size 14 or 16 — to fish on your favorite lake when the chironomid hatch peters out using a sinking line or a long leader on a floating line, but you probably will swing it in moving water, as well.

You’ve just checked the “What,” “Why,” and “How” boxes. Choosing how you will construct the fly and which materials to use will be your next decisions. Here, your experience with different techniques comes into play. For my micro leech pattern, I decided to use striped squirrel fur, as Mayer does, but instead of tying a strip of fur to the hook’s shank, I used the high-tie technique, in which successive bundles of fur are tied from back to front, ending near the eye of the hook, and all on top of the hook. The high tie makes for a durable fly, the soft, striped material swims beautifully in the water without fouling the hook, and because I can tie my high-tie micro leech with different colors of striped squirrel, the imitation will have a more textured and mottled appearance — as I tie, I can blend different colors of squirrel fibers into each of the high ties to achieve the color combination I am looking for. I also can tie each band of squirrel fur fibers shorter as I work up the shank of the hook to achieve a flatter look. And because I like using wire to secure materials to the hook shank, and I also like making bodies just from thread, that’s what I decided to do on this fly, too.

The method and materials I decided on determined what kind of hook I chose. Marabou micro leeches tend to be tied on traditional hooks, such as a down-eye hook with a long shank. High-tie patterns, though, can work well on short-shank hooks, and for my high-tie micro leech, I decided to use the new competition hooks with a short shank, bigger gap, and a supersharp point that is barbless — a TMC 2499 with a round bend, straight eye, 2X heavy, 3X wide, and 2X short. It’s a forged, barbless hook in bronze.

I usually don’t add weight to a leech — I use materials that soak up water to help it sink or use a sinking fly line to get the fly to the desired depth. On this fly, though, because I might be swinging it on a spring or freestone creek and want the fly to get down faster than just the hook and materials allow, I decided to add a little weight to it — just five to seven turns of .015-inch nontoxic lead wire. Attaching the weight at the front of the shank helps the fly jig up and down while being stripped.

The fly’s initial design is complete. But that’s just the beginning of the design process. After tying a prototype or three, you need to fish the design, refine it, or discover that you need to go back to the vise and start over from scratch. You can also give your creation to others to fish. Tuning your pattern can be as simple as adding a slight amount of flash material, tying it sparser or heavier, or just tying the fly in a single solid color.

Tweaking a Fly

Of course, there are plenty of fly patterns already out there for which their designers claim success. However, fly tyers are inveterate tinkerers, and I’ve never met one who hasn’t thought that they could improve an existing pattern by tweaking it somehow — taking another tyer’s fly and adapting it to match their style of tying or to make it work better in their fishery. Tweaking an existing pattern is in effect the same as fine-tuning a design you’ve created, adding flash, tying the fly larger or smaller, using a different hook, or maybe changing the color of the fly. Many fly patterns have been tweaked over the years. Just don’t be tempted to rename a classic pattern the “[Your Name Here] Special.” You’ll get well-deserved snark from purists.

Crossing Fly Patterns

A different way to design a new fly is to “cross” two different flies, combining the best attributes of each into a hybrid with enhanced fish-catching attributes. Crossing flies is one of my favorite things to do, especially if it creates a pattern that is easy to tie. In fact, I have made a name for myself doing just that.

One of the flies that I developed by crossing two existing patterns is Lance’s X-May. It relies on Mike Mercer’s Micro May and Hogan Brown’s S&M. I liked Mike Mercer’s dubbing of the thorax in a different color than the stripped peacock herl that he used for the abdomen. I also liked that Mike made his Micro May a flashback. Hogan, on the other hand, made his S&M with a great profile using a thread body, and he added flash by incorporating Krystal Flash fibers that served as legs extending back along the fly’s body.

What I did was simple. I took the thread body that Hogan used and put it into the X-May. Both Hogan and Mike had pheasant tail fibers for the tail, and so did I, but I used wire to attach the pheasant tail to the thread body, forming a strong, tough abdomen. This is a fly that will not come undone, even after the fly has been chewed on by many fish. I also used pheasant tail as the wing case of the fly, but like Mike, I varied the dubbing color combination with the color of the pheasant tail. For example, I used olive brown dubbing with olive pheasant tail, giving the fly both depth in color and texture. I added Mercer’s flashback to mine and Hogan’s Krystal Flash legs. I tie this fly beaded and without a bead. I also tie it on both short-shank and longer-shank hooks, depending on which mayfly I am representing. Crossing these two patterns has produced a fly that combines the strengths of both. The fish agree.

Designing flies or tweaking and crossing existing patterns all differ from just sitting at the vise and tying flies from recipes developed by others. They require creative thought and entail putting in time on the water testing and refining what you’ve created. However, the reward of catching fish on a fly you’ve designed or improved upon is unparalleled. Even better is watching other fly fishers catch fish on your fly. So sit down at your vise and tie a fly using your tying skills to meet your needs. Experiment. Customize. See what happens. The results might surprise you.


Designing a Micro Leech

designing
DESIGNING FLIES REQUIRES THE TYER TO MAKE EXPLICIT CHOICES WITH REGARD TO MATERIALS. FOR THIS MICRO LEECH, THE AUTHOR DECIDED TO BOTH TO USE A WIDEGAP COMPETITION HOOK AND TO BUILD THE BODY USING BUNDLES OF SQUIRREL FUR THAT ARE TIED SEQUENTIALLY TO THE SHANK, FROM BACK TO FRONT. THIS DESIGN STRATEGY ALLOWS THE TYER TO EASILY MODIFY BODY SILHOUETTE AND COLOR.
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SHOWN ABOVE ARE THE FIRST SEVERAL STEPS IN THE PROCESS USED TO CREATE THE MICRO LEECH PRESENTED IN THE TOP IMAGE. WHETHER TO ADD WEIGHT IS ONE OF THE DECISIONS FOR DESIGNING SUCH FLIES. HERE, THE AUTHOR ADDED WEIGHT TO GIVE THE FLY A JIGGING MOTION WHEN RETRIEVED.
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THREE-QUARTERS OF AN INCH IS NOT TO SMALL FOR A MICRO LEECH.