Hi! I'm Charlie Piette from Tight Lines Fly Fishing Company. Today, I'm going to be tying the Winter Sculpin. This is a big articulated baitfish pattern that works particularly well during the colder months. It's a big profile fly that moves a lot of water.
This fly is going to be tied on two Daiichi 2461 hooks, the Long Shank Aberdeen hook. The back portion of the fly is pretty simple. It's just an olive wooly bugger. Just start with thread. Tie it a little tail section of this, Mottled Marabou.
Next, I'm going to be putting a piece of the Grizzly Olive Schlappen. Tie it in tip first, pull the fibers back, and then the Olive Wooly Chenille for the body. Next, just palmer that hackle forward. We'll finish that and that'll complete the back section of the fly.
Being that this is an articulated fly, we're going to have to attach two hooks together here. And I'm going to do that using some power pro. You can use backing, backing works just fine too. But, all I did was cut off the section about 8 or 9 inches long, formed a little loop, and I'm going to bring that through the eye of the back hook, and then bring the tag end beck through. And take this guy up a ways, and put the front hook in, same hook.
Here, I'm going to start the thread on the front hook. Then we're going to take the two tag ends and run them through the eye in the front, and then secure that on with some thread.
What I like to do is just make a layer of thread going up a ways and then bring the tag ends back down and do a layer thread over the two. Then, we can trim the two tag ends of the attaching line, and then I'm going to coat that whole hook with some Zap-A-Gap, and just wait for that Zap-A-Gap to set up. Now that Zap-A-Gap is dry, we're ready to complete the front hook.
I'm going to start out by tying in the eyes. We will just do some figure figure-eight wraps. We are going to bring the thread back to the end of the hook and tie in the olive UV polar chenille. Fill it by some more olive wooly chenille.
I am going to palmer forehead this UV polar chenille. I would like to make two or three wraps at the back just to kind of cover up the junction. This material is pretty easy to use, but you have to make sure to continue will it be sweeping those fibers back with your fingers.
I am just going to stack two clumps of this olive deer hair, one for the top and one for the bottom. I am going to pull some of that hair back and trim it off, but not trim it quite flush to the hook. It's going to help some hackle stand up a little bit.
Next, I'm going to put in the collar of some more of the olive schlappen. I like this collar to be fairly long. We're putting one final collar, just a piece of gadwall flank stripped on one side. Again, pretty long.
The final step is fishing ahead of this schlappen, and I am going to do that with some olive arctic fox. What I'll do is make one big pectoral fin on each side, by just twisting up a big long clump, both sides about like that, and trimming it off, and putting it on each side.
And just do it, all the materials in the front-end of this fly. The head will get a little bulky, but that's what we're going for here. To finish the head, I'm just going to take some of that soft under fur of the arctic fox, and just dub it on the thread, and figure it around the eyes.
The very last step is cutting off the top hook. This can be done with any stout wire cutters. Now that the front hooks cut off, fly is ready to fish. It's a true articulated fly that will swim, that in the current. It's heavy. It'll get down deep in the colder water and a lot of times that's what we need to move cold Great Lakes winter fish.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services