Southern Oregon Fly Tyers
Meeting on Tuesday, December 11, 2018
6:00 PM
8401 Old Stage Road, Gold Hill
The Brazilian is a clean design summer steelhead fly from Tom Larimer. It looks good and is simple to tie. Tom says it is a consistent producer on the Clearwater.
Directions:
Start thread and tie down the back of return wire, laying a base of thread to just short of point of hook. Prepare a natural golden pheasant shoulder/breast feather (golden red) or a dyed red golden pheasant rump feather, by trimming out the stem down from the tip. This forms a “v” in the feather. Clean sides of the feather of shorter barbs and place it concave down on the shank for a tail. Make two loose wraps on the quill next to the barbs, and over the hook point. Folding the feather and lifting it with the left hand, pull the feather forward with the right until the tail extends to or just beyond the bend, and tie down. Tie in rib wire and secure. Form a dubbing loop about 5-6 inches in length, placing dubbing in it, spinning it until you have it in the form to make light spikey body, and wrap the body. Tie off, leaving approximately two head spaces. Wind the wire to form five ribs, tie off and trim.
Stack hair for the wing and place it, extending to about midway of the tail. (I normally trim the wing before tying it in.) Tie in the wing with about 5 tight wraps (2-3 thread widths) and place a drop of head cement on the hair ends, continue securing the wing. Secure 4 strands of Krystal Flash in front of wing tie-in, pulling them back on either side of wing, trim to length of wing and tie them in place.
Prepare the guinea feather and tie in by tip where the wing is tied. Fold feather barbs and groom them back as you wrap the collar, ending just forward of the wing tie-in. If stem is thin enough, wrap the bare stem 1-2 times around the shank under the head and form a head that pleases you. Finish.
Materials
Hook: AJ or other steelhead 5
Thread:6/0 black
Tail:Golden pheasant rump dyed red
Rib:Wine colored wire
Body:Claret STS trilobal dub
Wing:Arctic fox dyed black
Wing flash: Copper Krystal Flash
Tied by Ed Morphis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
I love tying simple clean design flies. Tying flies is just about as close as I get to fishing anymore, so I haven’t proven the effectiveness of this fly myself, but it is well attested. Also, it has two traditional steelhead attractor colors, chartreuse and purple. The pattern was developed by Tom Larimer.
Here is how I tie it. Start by laying down a base of thread from headspace to the halfway point of the shank, secure the end of the tensile underneath at that point. At the same point, tie in the chartreuse floss and form the abdomen by wrapping back to just shy of the hook point (keeping tensile under shank), then forward to the tie in point. I tie the fly on a nickel hook, so the chartreuse does not need a base. If I were to tie it on a black hook, I would want a base of white thread under it.
After tying off the floss, form a dubbing loop about three inches long and place the rough dubbing into it, twisting it to form the dubbing as I want it, then wrap the front half of the body fairly full. I don’t need to pick it out, but you may want to. Groom the dubbing away from the back half of the body and wrap the tensile to front of the dubbing. Tie in a sparse wing with tip ending just ahead of the bend, and before wrapping fully, use a drop of head cement. Tie in a few sparse strands of angel hair on either side of wing and trim to length. Tie in by tip a purple guinea feather, fold and wrap to just beyond wing tie in. If feather shaft is small enough, flatten with thumbnail and wrap 1-2 times around hook under head. Form a head that suits and finish.
Ed Morphis
Tied by Ed Morphis |