Dubbing reviews: Performance Flies SLF and Hends UV blend

I got a package in the mail from Performance Flies the other day and I was curious to try out the Hend's dubbing for some Czech nymphs. I really like their shellback material and the dubbing impressed me as well. It's got a great blue flash to it, long fibers, and it dubs really well. Instead of a czech nymph, I opted for a modified psycho prince nymph I've been working on with a shaggier appearance and a double set of white wings. The mottled shellback on the top gives it a natural look, but the bright purple is still flashy on the sides and bottom. I tossed a few of these to my buddy who fished the Salmon River in NY over the weekend and he said he pulled two steelies on one of these out of Ellis Cove on Saturday. I think I have a winner.


Next up is Performance Flies SLF dubbing. I also really like this. Long fibers, dubs easy, it's pretty thick so it's easy to taper and build up a body fast. I tried out Craven's Caddistrophic with the SLF and I like how it turned out. Now I just need to fish this pattern.I also wanna try this stuff for some underbody on some big elk hair caddis.


You can pick this stuff up over at Performance Flies for pretty cheap. Also don't overlook the great hooks, and Jan Siman dubbing as well.

Massive articulated streamers? Oh yes.

Lots of material. Some fish skulls. Some 30 lb nylon coated wire. These things are fun as hell to twist up and I can't wait to chase some warmwater fish and maybe some big browns with them.

They are all size 6 2XL streamer hooks. The lower half of them are marabou, some flash, and some rubber legs. The upper halfs are a combination of more marabou, schlappen, craft fur, Senyo Laser Dub, and some more flash. I mixed up the fish skull sizes and eye colors. Click through for hi-res photos.





Want to win a few of these meaty monsters? Become a Dub The Thorax fan on Facebook and follow us on twitter, and keep your eyes peeled for more info soon.

A new brown midge pattern

This is my latest brown midge pattern. I've fished the Al's rat for the last year or so and it's been very effective. It opened my eyes to how well a basic tiny brown midge can be. I wanted to change it up and make it a lot more flashy. I took some wire ribbing, added a tiny bit of elk for the wing, and some flashy dubbing. After a few failed attempts and some minor tweaks, this pattern actually worked for me this past weekend, so I whipped up some more. It was the addition of the hair wing that actually had a fish take it. I fished a heavy anchor fly and had this trailing in the middle of the water column. Tying in hair on a size 22 fly is a little tough, so remember you only need a few fibers.

Size 22 Tiemco TMC2487 scud hook
Uni-Thread dark brown 8/0
Performance Flies Copper Wire (I'm done with Ultra-wire after using this stuff. It's awesome for small patterns)
Yearling Elk Hair - Put it in the stacker backwards and tie it in so the thickest butt section sticks out the back.
Jan Siman Peacock Bronze dubbing
Dark brown glass bead



Also, stop back tomorrow for a stacked foam beetle tutorial that's super easy and makes a great looking bug. More later.

Realistic Worm Pattern and a fly giveaway contest

The idea for this pattern came to me on Sunday. I was fishing for some SUPER SPOOKY stocked rainbows in the creek behind my house. There's about 4 of them left and they dart under a bridge into slack water that's impossible to catch a drift though as soon as they see you.

I crept up and waited the 15 minutes for them to get unspooked and then started drifting eggs and san juans in front of them. I hooked in to a couple on eggs, but didn't get solid hook sets. After that, I was literally bouncing flies off their lips and they weren't taking them. I then tried caddis larva, mayfly nymphs, midges, and even some buggers with no luck.

I was about to pack it in when some guy sets up immediately across from me with a spinning rod and a container of drift worms. First cast and SMACK!, a rainbow takes the worm. He lands the fish (and kudos to him for releasing it) and casts again. Second cast, same thing. He hooks and lands the biggest of the 4 fish, also released.

This made me realize that maybe coming up with a realistic worm wouldnt be such a bad idea. I was at Dave's in Doylestown earlier in the day digging through their clearance bin, and I found a pack of Orvis bright red nymph skin with glitter flakes in it for $1. I bought it thinking I could maybe use it on some steelhead patterns.

Well, something made me try it tonight. I took a 4X streamer hook and bent it, Vladi worm-style. I made a fat clitelum with some .30 lead wire and built the body with some 3/0 monocord. I tied in a strip of the nymph skin and some 5X mono tippet. I made loose wraps with the nymph skin, and then ribbed it with the mono. After whip finishing, I colored it up with a brown Prismacolor marker, and hit the fattest part with some bright orange. Then I slapped on a coat of Hard as Nails and that's it. I think I need to find maybe a lighter colored tan marker instead of the dark brown, but I think this fly is gonna work.



Now I just need a name for it, so here's the deal. Post your name suggestions in the comments and I'll mail out 3 of these patterns (and some bonus surprise flies) to the person who came up with my favorite suggestion. I'll let this run for a week before announcing the winner.

So yeah, back to Sunday. I didn't catch anything, but my god, it was a gorgeous day on the water. I walked away with some nice pictures.

Chasing the toothy critters

I've decided to hunt for pickerel and pike this weekend. I'd also say Musky, but I don't have a few spare years to catch one.

The lake I fish for pickerel contains a ton of small bass that are a bright emerald green color, so that's where I started. I call this one the Wes Mantooth.

Size 4 3XL streamer hook

Marabou - olive (tail and collar)
Orvis crystal dumbbell eyes
Sili-Legs - chartreuse
Crystal Flash (tail)
Grizzle neck hackle (sides)
Hare Ice Dub - olive green (body)
Schlappen - olive (palmered over body)
Cut up zonker fur wrapped in a dubbing loop (head)



Also, I checked out Whitakers.com today and noticed that they uploaded one of my king salmon photos that I submitted the other day. Pretty cool.


By the way, don't get Wes started on his mom, or he'll kick your ass.

My new favorite way to tie a spinner: Wally Wing Style!!!

I've mentioned before that I take a fly tying class every Tuesday night. I don't usually post the pattern that I learned at class because I like to take the time to perfect it first. This one was so cool, that I have to share it.

I watched Bruce Corwin tie spinners with Wally Wings before at Somerset and it amazed me. Basically, you pull back on the barbs of a wood duck feather, tie it in, and split it. This lets you use one feather, and have extremely detailed wings.

George actually showed us how to tie this in class tonight and it was easier than I thought. Check out the detail in those wings and keep in mind that it was just a single feather for both of them! (Full disclosure - the tail and body are sloppy as hell on this fly because my vise was mounted to a table that doesn't like C-clamps, and it was in the middle of an LL Bean store with really awful light. The wings still kick ass though).This is my first attempt at ever trying to tie this, so the wings aren't' perfect, but I'll get there.

Size 16 dry fly hook
Wood Duck feather (wings)
microfibbets (tail)
stripped brown hackle feather (body)
Superfine dubbing (thorax)

Pheasant Tail Jig Flies - Adding hot spots

I'm going to miss fishing dry flies. I've really fallen in love with it this summer and after the BWOs start to taper off, I can only hope to get lucky with some occasional surface action on midges.

That being said, I know it's time to start getting ready for a long winter of nymphing. I've had some major luck on pheasant tails with hot spots (mostly orange) and I've caught quite a few fish on jig patterns over the winter so making pheasant tail jigs is a no-brainer.

Incorporating some orange to your PTs can be done a few ways. Here are 3 different variations.

All flies are tied using:
Dohiku barbless jig hook, size 16
Ringneck Pheasant Tail
UTC Ultra Wire
Jan Siman Peacock Broze dubbing
Tungsten Bead

First up, the easiest way to do it. Add a colored tungsten bead and call it a day.


Next up, try adding a collar. Finish your fly with the natural colored thread, and have another bobbin waiting with some neon thread to add a color. For this, I used Glo-Brite hot orange floss. I like to size down the bead when adding collars, I just think it looks cleaner.


Finally, here's a variation where I swapped out the gold ribbing for some orange UTC.


It's also time to chase Salmon and Steelhead again. I'll be heading to SRNY in 14 days. Here's a sneak peak of an upcoming steelhead stonefly post.

DubTV: Micro Egg Video Tutorial

Put this together really quick last night because I've had a few people ask how to tie them so small. Here's a quick video on tying size 18 eggs. I slaughtered the bows on these this morning. (More on that later..)

No hackle needed

As we all know, hackle has been hard as hell to come by. I've been getting around it by tying very basic comparadun and spinner patterns. here's some basic hair comparaduns that have me covered for sulphurs, light cahills, and whatever the hell that bigger light colored mayfly is that I keep seeing coming off around 8:45pm that I have yet to identify. I call this one MFX (Mayfly X). I've pulled fish with it this month so I know for sure that it works.

Size 14-18 dry fly hook
Cream microfibbets
Spectrablend dubbing - pale yellow
Comparadun Elk Hair - bleached cream




I also whipped up some rusty spinners, but I have yet to fish these. I kept them very simple with a thread body. Dubbing the body seemed to make it look too bulky and natural spent mayflies always look thinner to me so I did without it. These can be tied in about 45 seconds once you get the hang of x-wrapping the wings.

Size 14-18 dry fly hook
Uni-thread 8/0 (rust)
Dun Microfibbets
White Antron Wings

The hunt for Chrome is getting closer...

It's mid-august and I already have visions of fresh chrome steelhead on the end of my 8 weight. I saw a post on the PAFF forum asking for volunteers on a steelhead fly swap so I jumped in. Here's a sneak peak at the pattern I'm tying. This one is called simply "root beer". I learned it last fall on the Salmon River. The fish were taking natural nymphs patterns, and caddis. The brown nymph color combined with the caddis larva shape give you the best of both worlds, with just enough flash on the collar and glass bead to get their attention. Fish it in faster water where the fish don't have a chance to take a second look.


Size 8 Mustad 2x strong caddis hook
Lagartun French Mini-Flatbraid in olive brown (abdomen)
Petite Estaz in brown (collar)
Killer Caddis glass bead in pearl brown


I've also bee working on big stoneflies for Salmon, Steelhead and Browns. Here's one that I'm not quite happy with yet, but I like how it's starting. I'm calling it the Grandaddy stone because of all the grey hairs. Going to make a few tweaks to it. I'm digging the tiny bit of flash in the dubbing.

Saber Stonefly Nymph hook size 8
Black Goose Biots
Uni-stretch body material in black
Swiss Straw in black (wingcase)
Dubbing - Black Hare's ear plus mixed with some cut up Sparkle Organza




And I'm that note, I'm going to catch some sleep. I didn't get around to posting any more about the beach trip over the weekend because the fishing was awful. We did however find out that we're having another boy! Michael is excited to have a little brother. Still working on names though. If it was a girl, it would have been Brook (you can guess why!) but she shot down the names Grayling, Char, and Smallmouth so far. Any other suggestions?

My favorite fly of the year so far....

I've mentioned in quite a few posts that the AZ mini-hopper has been killing it for me. I'm serious. I've probably caught at least 200 fish so far this year on this fly. It's taken largemouth, smallmouth, bluegill, crappie, bows, and a brown. At first I had trouble with the bass on it. It was a little small for them. I decided to tweak the original to make it work. First, I double stacked the foam. This made it look like a bigger meal, and it floats much better this way. I also went bigger on the hook size. Bass started to get more peirced lips when I moved down to sizes 8-10 from the 12-14 I was doing well with for panfish and trout. Finally, I was watching Craven's video on tying the Charlie Boy Hopper and I liked how his hair stuck up high on the top of the fly. I started stacking the deer hair above the foam, also increasing the size of the fly. That's about all that was needed. The contrast of the orange foam and legs against the green ice dubbed body seems to work the best for me.

I'm not sure what the bass take it as, but it sure as hell does work. These are really easy to tie and since I primarily use them for bass, they can be sloppy.

Size 8 Mustad Standard Dry Fly Hook
2mm Craft Foam, stacked using spray adhesive
Orvis Caddis Green Ice Dubbing
Deer Hair
3/0 Brown Monocord

The Graphite Ganster

I came up with this pattern tonight at the vise. It was spawned from two patterns that worked well for me over the weekend. I caught fish on WD40s, and a CDC midge emerger. The WD40s I was tossing had a tiny bit of flash in the ribbing and the midge had a CDC puff for the wingcase which popped up over the eye of the hook. I went with UV quill for a little shine, and dark dun CDC.

I had the most luck with grey patterns on Sunday. Not sure exactly what the fish were taking it for. I was catching them in a deep, fast run so I'm thinking it more more sillohuette than color. Most likely a baetis emerger.

Size 18 Emerger hook
Orvis grey thread 8/0
Dark Dun CDC
Hareline Hare's Ear Plus dubbing - black
Fly D&K UV Quill body - xtra-small graphite


Try trailing these types of flies behind a heavy nymph through deep moving water. The trout have been loving them.

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Hareline. I purchased one of their cautery pens back at the Somerset show. The thing probably had a total of 5-10 minutes of use and the batteries died. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to replace them since the whole thing is sealed tight. It was a longshot, but I decided to email them anyway to explain what happened, and asked if there was in fact some way to replace the batteries. They replied within 12 hours, gave me instructions on how to basically cut the thing open if I really wanted to replace the batteries, apologized for the inconvenience, and said they would ship me out a new pen for free! It's rare that you get customer service that great these days and I will definitely support them by purchasing their products in the future. Thanks Hareline!

3 things I want in a nymph right now

Anyone within a 50 mile radius of me right now can tell you that the water flows have not been cooperative for fly fishing. Just as it's clearing up today, I currently hear thunderstorms rolling through. It never ends. I'm just going to have to deal with it and make the best of the conditions.

That being said, I wanted to find a nymph pattern that will work in this messy water. I want it to:

1.Be a general representation of a natural food source, but nothing too specific. I dont think it needs to be detailed. The water is fast and murky. The fish aren't going to examine it in detail.

2.Be heavy as hell. It needs to slow down during the fast flows to have a chance of getting a strike.

3.Have some type of flashy attracting characteristics.


I think I found the one I'm looking for. I found a John Barr pattern called a Tung Teaser. He said he based it off a prince nymph, because the fish love the color scheme, but he still wanted it to look somewhat natural. I did a few tweaks to his original, but I can't wait to try it out. I love the flash under the thin skin. It gives it just enough sparkle, without making it look unnatural. I kept the biots a little longer to give it a tiny bit more movement. In hindsight, I might have overdid it with them, but I'll try them out anyway.

Size 16 Tiemco 2XL nymph hook (sorry, I forgot the exact #)
Tungsten bead - gold
.015 lead underbody
Uni-Thread 8/0 in brown
White goose biots
Jan Siman peacock bronze dubbing
Gold wire ribbing
Pearl Flashabou (bottom wingcase)
Mottled turkey thin skin (top wingcase)
Indian hen feathers (legs)
UV Epoxy (over wingcase and part of bead)

(click on the images for hi-res detail)

Back in business with a new caddis pattern

Well, I had a minor surgery today, which lead me to pass out on painkillers most of the afternoon so now I'm wide awake with a very sore mouth. I sat down at the vise to see what I could come up with.

I caught a video a while back of Aaron Jasper tying his cased caddis jig hook pattern so I thought I'd try it out. These turned out pretty cool. I'll let you know how they work.

Dohiku barbless jig hook, size 14
Ultra Chenille - chartreuse
Wood Duck (I actually used real teal flank for this)
Dubbing - mix of grey squirrel and fox squirrel
Copper ribbing
Tungsten black nickel bead



Of course, I'll need to actually fish before I can try them out. Our trout streams are still feeling the effects of the 2 inches of rain we got in about 4 hours on Saturday. This sucks. Although, they are stocking tomorrow again behind my house. Maybe I'll make it out for an evening trip for easy pickings. It all depends on what time this little guy decides he's ready for bed.

A quick and easy tip for terrestrial indicators

I learned this in class the other night. We were tying basic foam beetles, just black foam, peacock body, and whatever you wanted to do for the legs.


It's a great little fly that will get the attention of fish in the heat of summer and into fall. The only problem with it is that it's a tough fly to see on the water. I've tied in extra foam indicators behind the head, but now I know that it's an un-needed extra step. Plus, there's a chance the fish can see it from the side.

Go to a craft store and get yourself some 3D fabric paint. The stuff I got was called Scribbles, and it was $1.19 at JoAnn Fabrics.


Just take a small drop of it and place it right on the back of the beetle. It should almost look like a miniature hersey kiss. Instant indicator with no additional materials to tie on!


The only thing I'll say is that you should be careful when using it. I got a drop on my nice pair of work pants on Tuesday night and I now have a neon circle on my right upper thigh. It doesnt come out of clothing at all. It will also take about 12 hours to fully dry. So tie them at night and let them sit until morning.

Here's a bunch of them with rubber legs. I kept one with a foam indicator so you can see the difference.


Maybe I'll get a chance to test them out if it would ever stop SNOWING! Seriously, it's April 1st. Mother nature needs to get over herself.