March Fly of the Month- Wooly Bugger
I'd like to introduce a new monthly topic here on the ReelCamo Girl site, a fly of the month! Each month I will present a beginner fly and go through step by step on how to tie it along with some tips on how to fish and variations on tying it. As the months progress I'll be adding a bit more advanced tying, but nothing you can't tackle!
This months fly is the Woolly Bugger. A standard for every fly box this fly can imitate a leech, small fry, worm, anything tasty to a hungry trout. It can be tied in a variety of colors, most common are olive, black and brown. But I have also tied yellow, red, white and orange. The varieties are endless with the different materials available. Fish it with a slow drift or strip it in short lengths to give it a nice up and down swimming action. The fluff on the tail will provide and enticing movement for a strike. Let it bounce off the bottom of a stream or sink deep in a lake (you may need to add some weight to the fly) and strip it in. You can fish it shallow with a floating line or deep with a sinking line.
Here's the recipe for an olive Woolly Bugger:
Materials:
Hook: Mustad 9670 or similar long shank heavy hook size #8-10
Thread: Olive
Tail: Olive marabou (optional-add a few strands of crystal flash)
Body: Olive chenille
Hackle: Olive saddle hackle
Start by tying in a few strands of crystal flash (if desired) and the tip of an olive marabou feather. I like to wrap the whole length of the feather along the hook shank to build up the body a bit and make it a little thicker.
Next tie in an olive hackle, shiny side toward the back and strip or cut the barbs along the hook shank. Then tie in the chenille. You can strip off the fuzz or leave it and build up that shank a bit more like I have done.
rap the chenille forward, tie off and then wrap the hackle forward. Sometimes the chenille comes of it's card twisted and doesn't look good on the fly. Just untwist it as you wrap it to make a nice symmetrical body. Be sure to leave enough room to make the head of the fly. Wrap in a nice tread head, whip finish, add a few drops of head cement and your done.
This is one of those flies that can be tied in numerous different ways. As I mentioned earlier you can use crystal chenille, add some wraps of lead wire to give it more weight, add a bead head. Sometimes I get lazy and don't bother adding the hackle, I just tie in a few clumps of leftover marabou near the head like a collar. All of these methods have caught fish for me!
Tight lines!
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Erika Forsythe
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