How to Tie a Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear Nymph Fly

Okay, I am going to tie now a Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear Nymph, and what that is, is actually a very standard pattern. The Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear is pretty much standard I would say in most fly fishers boxes, because of the fact that it does imitate a wide variety of insects. It can be thought about as being either an attractor pattern or also as sometimes used to do specific imitations of various subsurface insect.

What the Nymph actually is, is an immature stage of a insect. They live underwater for a long time, aquatic insects, most of them do. The fishermen and fisherwomen that are actually out there pursuing fish usually are going to be using Nymphs most of them time, unless there is going to be some emergence going on of adult insects. So you really want to get used to using Nymph patterns, and having a wide variety of sizes, and even some variation style of the Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear is a great way to begin.

I am going to tie this on a size 12, because of the fact that it's a good size to begin with for the beginning tire, but also, it's a pretty average size for a lot of the small streams that people fish in, in the United States.

I am going to put that into my hook, in my vice. I forgot, I want to do one more thing before I do that. I want to say that every time that I begin, I am going to start out by pinching down my barb.

Now, I did say before that you could actually go ahead and smash these down with the pliers, if you are not worried about wrecking your vice, which I have never had it happen yet, but it could happen, go ahead and use your jaw, I am going to do that very quickly. Again, I don't condone this necessarily as something that's a great practice for all size hooks, but a small enough hook, it should be okay not to hurt your jaws.

So I have got that pinched down, and you can see now at this point I have got a barbless hook, which is actually very much a standard fly hook to be using, because of the fact that most of the fish you are going to be catching, you will probably want to release. I am not saying that you have to release all your fish, but a lot of fishermen do that, and if you catch smaller fish, you are able to let them go without injuring them.

What I have here, size 12, a pretty standard length in my shank, I am not going to use a very long shanked hook. You could do that if you wanted to, but at this point I am going to use a pretty much the standard proportions of the Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear.

It's called the Hare's Ear, because of the fact that the hair that we are using to try this fly comes from actually the mask and the ear of an English hare, which is a rabbit, but its called the hare of course. Basically what we have is a very, very soft fur, the underfur on the rabbit is very, very soft, and also has a good variety of color and texture.

There are some very stiff kind of modeled guard hairs, and in certain parts of the hare's mask, and actually you can see, it is a rabbit's or hare's face, it is kind of a strange thing. But there is so many things you can get from this and it's very standard.

What I am doing is I am doing a combination of parts of this. I am going to mix them and show you how to do that right now. First thing is, to begin with, I am going to turn this over, and I am going to clip off some of this kind of tannish fur that's around the bottom part of the ears, the back ears, I am going to cut some of this out. I am going to clip that out there, I will set that aside. I am going to show you now how to mix dubbing, because you have to actually have a mixture here.

But I am going to go to the front. I am going to get some from the front base here. Some of this darker stuff here we can see from the base of the ear. So I have got that.

Then I am actually going to take my scissors and I am going to scrape some of the hair off of this hare's ear, from the ear, and I just use my scissors and scrape it. You can see what I am getting now is a batch of a little tiny small guard hairs. l am going to do a few more of those. This is why it's called the hare's ear, because you do take some from the base of the ear and you can also scrape some right from the ear itself. The scraping works quite well to get these nice little loose hairs.

I am not quite satisfied with that, that under base colors. I am going to take some of this lighter stuff right here too and mix some of that in. So I have a real nice sense of modeling to the color of that fly body.

Okay. Set that aside. Now, to mix this up, I am going to take the whole batch all at once like this, and I am going to carefully turn it over in my fingers and pull and separate, so I am blending. Now, you can actually use a hair blender. They sell a tool that does that. It actually is very much like a food processor, you just throw it in there and the blades chop up the hair and mix it up. You can even use a standard kitchen blender, it does work, but it's something again you probably don't want to do in your everyday use blender because it's going to be kind of a mess to have that hair in there, but people do that.

I have always found this works well, if you don't mind just spending sometime and actually you can do your own mixture, you can have some parts that are lighter some parts that are darkest by stopping at certain points.

So I have got this nice mixture here. You can see there is a lot of guard hairs that are left, and the guard hairs are those stiffer hairs that sit on top. I will show it one more time, it is this stiffer fur. Outer hair is almost like -- you could find like on a dog or a cat, its a harder hair, and then the underfur, and I am mixing those together. I am going to set that aside, because I don't need that, I am going to set that aside.

First thing I am going to do is I am going to fix my thread. Now, I have selected for this fly, I am going to use black, just a black thread, and its a 6/0 thread, which is a littler bit stronger thread. You could use a lighter thread, but I think if you use this you are going to be better off when you have to pull down tight to fix things without snapping it off halfway through the process.

I am going to begin it just like I always do, just by starting at the front, then I am slowly pull this thread back so it lays against the hook, and I wrap back over it. I am going to wrap all the way down to the bend of the hook. Because this is a Nymph, I can actually go a little further into that bend than I would for a drive slide; just a little bit further, not much, but I am right above where the hook starts to bend, that's where I want to stop.

Okay. Now, there are a lot of ways of tying to this fly. First of all, you can go ahead and use pretty much everything you use, because they pretty much come from the mask, there are always of doing that, where you don't even have to use much extra material aside from the ribbing, which is the gold rib part. A lot of people just use the guard hair for a tail. I prefer to use a partridge feather for the tail.

So I have got also next to me here a great partridge, which is also sometimes called the Hungarian partridge. You can see I have got the whole skin, and you can see that I have got the wings, I have the back section. Different, again, variations in color and pattern. This is sometimes refereed to as being soft hackle, because it is kind of like a hackle itself, very much like we see on a chicken or a rooster.

I am going to try to find one that's very soft. So I am going to go down in here. I also want one that's a little bit darker, so it kind of matches the color that I saw in the hare's hair or the hare's mask. So I have selected now a gray partridge feather. I am going to strip away this extra fuzzy stuff at the barb. But now, unlike dry fly hackle, this is all very webby and its also very, very soft, its not stiff. Its not going to serve any function in terms of it helping it float. Its supposed to impart movement. So I want to pick one that's actually soft and also absorbs water. So that's why we use the partridge, because its really not meant to be something that actually is used as a dry flying material, it sinks.

So I am going to take this now and I am going to rip of a section here to do a tail. What I do, instead of cutting, I am going to pinch. So I am going to come in like this with my index and my thumb, I am going to pinch down the amount that I want. Then I am going to grab the stem and I am going to pull away.

Now, if everything works out right I should pretty much have aligned up straight batch of fibers. It worked out pretty well. It doesn't have to be perfect when you do this, but you do want to make sure they are relatively even on the ends.

I tie in my tail by laying it on top. I am pinching it and I am laying it on top of the hook, and letting it sit on top of the hook. I am not going to smash it down on them, I will let it just sit. I take one nice loose wrap around that batch, and I let it run off my finger, down on to the hook. So I kind of begin on my finger and come down onto the hook. Now I can wrap. I am pulling back slowly, away from that wrap to get my tail to come out.

Now, this is a very short tail. I tend to tie them with a little bit shorter tail, it's a personal preference, but the reason I do so is because of the fact that it really is only a back there to imply a sense that there is some kind of movement at the back of the fly, and also to imply that it might be some actually breathing living body parts on that fly. You could tie them longer if you would like too, but it doesn't really serve much of a purpose except for a little more movement, which some people really like to have on the fly.

Now, I am going to wrap up -- actually I am going to do one more thing, there is two ways I can approach this, but I am going to tie in my rib first. So the ribbing, the gold-rib part of this fly relates to the use of gold tinsel to rib. I am going to use a flat, small gold tinsel at this point. You could use oval if you wanted to, but I am going to use the flat, because I think it wraps in tighter, and it has less bulk if I do that.

So I take my piece of tinsel. This length is fine. I may not need to have that much but if I use a short piece, it's hard to hold onto in wrap, so I am going to use longer than I think I should. I will tie that in. Lay on the side of the hook, you can see I pull that in on the side towards me. Again, kind of a loose wrap to begin with, and then wrap it down tight. I am going to wrap back in so it sits right in there, tight up where that tail was.

Now, I have a little material clip on my vice, you can actually purchase something like this if you wanted to, but this one happens to have one right on it, so I can just go ahead and stick it in. Now that pulled out, let me start again. I will wrap back again. The first one in is kind of a loose wrap, I wrap back. See if I can get that material clipped, here we go.

So I can keep that out of my way. I don't have to worry about that piece of tinsel coming around and getting in and messing things up.

Now, this fly is tied in both the weighted and in unweighted version. I am going to weight this fly, because of the fact that I want it to go down to the bottom quickly. I usually fish this close to the bottom, and I am usually fishing with the dead drift, so I want it to sit right down, low across the bottom, sometimes even drag it across the bottom. So I am going to put some weight in here. I will show you how I put my lead on.

One thing that's a difficult situation that comes up with this, if you put lead on the fly, you get a big bump, you get sometimes a very difficult bump to work around. So you want to be careful not to get too much on there for one thing, and also to make sure you minimize what happens with that tinsel, this kind of bumpy unevenness that comes with wrapping lead.

The first thing is, just like tying in that tinsel, I will take a piece of lead. Again, you are probably going to have some waste, but that's just the way it is with this material, because if you cut it too short, you have nothing to hold on to. I am going to tie it in, about mid shaft or mid shank, and I will wrap first back, and then I will wrap forward, and I have got to fix down.

Now, there are other methods you can use. You can just pretty much just wrap the lead on there if you would like to. I prefer to lash it down there so I can get a nice even wrap around that space.

Now, I wrap it up here in this part of the fly because this will help me actually keep the fly laying down in the water somewhat in an even fashion, it won't tip to the front or the back. So I keep it somewhere close to the center of the fly, as opposed to having it go right up to the head or in the back.

Now you can take this and you can actually just break this up with your thumb if you want to, but you don't want to use your good fly tying scissors for that. So I have got some extra scissors I am going to use for that. I just come in and clip that out. But you can usually just get that off with your thumb, it's just that, that one wouldn't snap for me so I decided not to do that.

Now, I will wrap back over that a couple of times just to make sure its not going to slip. The biggest thing that, that happens, usually when you have a big piece of lead on the hook is that, it tends to want to rotate around the hook. So you want to make sure it's well affixed on there. I would even suggest putting a bit of head cement on there, before you go any further. So I am going to do that right now.

So I will take that, get my bodkin out. Just a little drop of head cement on there. Not 100% necessary, but it is a nice thing to keep in mind if you want this to be a fly that holds up. You begin by doing that and you have a lot better chance of it not slipping around and breaking out and coming out of this, out of the fly, which does happen sometimes after fish bite the fly.

So now I am going back to the back of the hook again, and I am ready to start dubbing. Dubbing simply means that I am going to be fixing fur onto my thread and then wrapping around like its a piece of yarn, I am creating a piece of yarn. So I am going to take my dubbing wax. I fold the thread out straight at me like this, and then I go up and down with the wax. I want to able to see some wax on that thread. I don't have to put a lot on, but I tend to overdo it a little bit, because I always like to have a nice sticky undercoat, so I don't have to actually worry about getting that dubbing too twisted up and too sweaty with my fingers. I can pretty much just put it on, I can leave it kind of lose if I have got the wax on there.

Again, there are different ways of applying dubbing. Some people like to put on a very, very tight rolled up kind of effect with their wax, others like to keep it kind of lose, almost like you just got these soft fibers just clinging to the thread. Either way is okay, but I would say when you build up the abdomen, which is the back part of the fly, you don't want to have it be too bumpy or too rough, because you want to have a more of narrow tapered abdomen.

So I am going to start out; I am getting some sweat on my fingers so I have to make sure that I wipe off my fingers now and then. A small end, and then I come up into a thicker body of that dubbed section. I am going to thin out again towards the front of that dubbed section.

Relatively tight twist that I have got on my dubbed section there. I am going to start rolling. I am going to get this back so my thread starts right in, right next to that tail. I fill in that section. If I see any gaps, I can go back over it again. Okay, that's enough.

For what I am beginning with, I am going to make sure that I stop short. If I have too much on, I can just take that off and I can use it again. That's also a good point that when you do take off your dubbing or you have some extra, you might as well keep it. What I will do is I will blend up the further I want it to be and then I would actually save it in a little container. I have got all kinds of premixed dubbing that I have and I can just go ahead and grab that. So I don't have to continuously cut of the mask and put it back on.

Now, the next stage is based on getting the abdomen finished off with the rib and then I add in a wing case, and we will talk about what the wing case is about in a second. But the first thing I will do is I will pull that out, that piece of tinsel. I am going to wrap that little further out of my way and let that bottom handle lower. I am going to lift up that tail, and I am going to rib now that wax section. So I start out with one turn, and then turning now away from me towards the eye of the hook, just straight up and down, but I have somewhat of a diagonal, and this is called ribbing the fly. I just bring it up into that area where I have got that lead. I am going to tie that off nice and tight.

This is also important to get that twisted around. I tried it a couple of times so it's not going to come off, because if that gets a tooth on it, a fish tooth, that's one of the first things that come off. All the flies that I have had torn up from fish, they get a tooth stuck underneath one of those ribs and it just comes off, and you have a strand of tinsel hanging in the water.

So now I have actually pulled out -- I have got this clipped off, and I removed this section from the quill. You can see that it actually has some nice little striations down the side, at least very nice for imitating a wing case on an insect.

What I am going to do now is I am going to apply; I will set this side for a second, I am going to apply some head cement. So I am going to open this up. It didn't work out so well. I had a big glob of head cement last time and it got stuck. I have just got to dip this into here. Get a fairly large amount on that needle. I am going to lay this out like this. I am going to put this on the both sides. You can see that I am doing is I am actually applying it, almost like I am painting it on. This is going to sink down inside of those fibers. Flip it over. You might get a little bit of stickiness on your fingers, but it does evaporate very quickly. So this is going to be a major mess within a few seconds.

Then I am going to let that sit aside and let that dry a little bit. I have got one that's already been somewhat hardened up from earlier. So I am going to take that now and I am going to tie that in. Now, this might be a little bit wide for what I want to do, so I can easily go and take off just a couple of little pieces from the edge here and couple of these little strands, just take them off. I don't pretend to like too large of a wing case because it gets to be too bulky looking. I like a more streamline looking fly.

So again, you can see how it curves -- just like we talked about hackle, it curves in that direction. I am going to tie it down so that I have a shiny side. Have that out. You can do it the other way if you felt like it, that's not a big deal, but it makes it easier to pull this over at the end.

I am going to lash that down. I have got a pretty big bunch of material there, you can see at this point. I am going to clip off all the extra little pieces that came out towards the head there. I want to keep that section relatively clean if I can. So you have a nice neat head at the end. You have to be very careful, they cut your thread, because that can happen. You put it in there with those scissors and you don't see it.

I am back on my head cement. I am going to wrap back now to where that wing case started. I am going to roll this out, I am going to put some more dubbing on it now. So I want to take this dubbing wax once again. Put some on there. I am going to get my hare's ear, hare's mask mixture again. I will take that, pull this out. I have been putting on quite a bit this time, because I am going to try to really fill in that area up there, that thorax area.

I tend to like to put it on kind of a series of dubbing, I don't like to put it all at once. I just kind of put it in, make sure it fill in okay, then I can get some more on there. At this point I still have some wax on there, so I can just keep on going. So I put kind of a fair amount of wax. You notice I am wiping on my shirt. What I am doing is I am getting some sweat on my fingers so I am just wiping it away, because if it's get wet, the dubbing tends to want to slip out of my fingers.

I can put this quite loose. I have got quite a bit of room up here. I will show you why that is, because I am adding in some legs. So at this point, I can turn my fly a little bit and make sure that I have got things filled in. This looks pretty good at this point.

I am going to add in some legs. Now, a lot of people will just go ahead and say, forget it, we don't need to put in legs in, we will just pick out some of these guard hairs. That's perfectly acceptable for this. But I like to put in some partridge legs as well, so I have more of a sense movement and getting more of a sense of a silhouette of an actual Nymph.

So I am going to go in and pick one of these feathers again and see if I have that piece leftover. There it is, okay. So I can use the one that I was using earlier, not a problem. Actually it's a little bit short, I am going to grab another one, the one has a little more fibers on it.

So I got this up here again, looking through, I am going to find some long soft fibers for the legs. I am going back here. These look pretty good. That should be all right.

Now, you can use grouse feathers for this, you can use pheasant body feathers for this, you can use pretty much any kind of an upland game bird feather for this. Even some of the softer hen hackles work from a regular chicken, if you have got a model kind of effect. People even use wood duck feathers for this, it's fine, wood duck flying feathers. But I prefer these because they are soft and they have a nice modeling and the brown is very similar to what we see in the rest of the fly.

I am going to tie this, this piece, this is what we have right now as a little clump of feathers, very much like when I set up my tail. I am going to lay that in on the other side of this blob of dubbing, and using my index finger here, I am going to hold that on to the backside of the fly there. Then using that soft method I talked about, the soft loop, not a hard loop, pull that down and then kind of stitch it up tight. I have got that laying in first. I can kind of work that back, kind of push it back, so it lays flat down. Clip the extra.

I can get some more from the other side of this thing. Usually they are pretty much with the smaller pieces, like I have got anyway, you are pretty much limited to one legging situation, you can't move them over again.

Another clump, to make sure I got the right length. I can lay it next to the other clump, lay it on the side just like I did. It's relatively even, because if the one side is off it makes the fly look pretty lopsided. Again, it's an aesthetic thing, doesn't matter with the fish much.

Now, I have got a little bit more space than I would like. I mention that might have happened there. It really isn't going to be the end of the world, but what I will often do is I will go in and I will just put a little bit more dubbing in front, just so I make sure that I have that all filled in. I don't want to have any gaps. This is kind of -- I will show you what can happen if you didn't budget to all your space, so this is going to be a way to save that. Again, it has no affect on the performance of the fly, in fact, I have found that most of the times if my fly gets more beat up, more chewed up, its going to be more effective than when there is a brand new, nice and tight. This is almost a better one, it gets more beat up.

Now, when I do this, this also is kind of a nice thing, I can hold those down, those legs, and help to kind of push them down a little more too, so they are not going to be setting so straight up and down.

Now, here is the wing case. There are two ways of pulling wing cases over. You can either fold the wing case and leave a hard crease at the back here, or you can just pull it over. I tend to just do the pullover, because of the fact that if I do the hard crease; so it gets almost like a folded section, and I will show that in another version of a Nymph, I tend to get more of that problem with teeth getting caught in there and it tears and it rips, this way it's pulled straight down.

So I will do it once again I pull it down, pretty tight, I put it pretty far forward, sink it down in there. To loose wrap first, just to get things affixed, kind of position it where I want it, and then I can do a tighter wrap.

Now I can lift this up, this little tag end here. When I pull that away from the eye as I cut, be careful once again to not get that thread in there when I am cutting. I have got a little bit of junk on there, that's easy to get rid of that. Now I can wrap down, and I want to cover up all those little strands without crowding my eye too much thought. You can see, I don't want to get that thread wrapped over that eye. Now, sometimes if you have an unruly bump, you can also take your fingernail and just kind of smash it down. So you can get a nice neat head.

A little piece that I don't like right there too. I am going to pull that just a little bit, and we are going to finish. Pull this out, take away hook and come in, wrap on here, onto that loop, form an x, round and round, do it three times, four times, should be sufficient. Get that to come out of there, pull this up. Nice and tight and snug. A lot of times what I will do is kind of compact even some more now, that head to my fingernail, so I can get it to be nice and tight and make sure that these aren't going to slip off the end, which can happen if you don't have a nice tight connection.

Now, we are almost there. Now, I never cut off my thread before I am totally done with all the procedures that I have to do with the tying. This is concluding the tying section, but I have one more thing I have to do at the very end.

So when I put my head cement on, I will leave the thread hanging; it must be a personal habit of mine, but I think it tends to be easier to grab that bobbin at the very end, so you will see what I mean. Now, whenever I put this on, I tend to put on more coats on top of the wing case and let that come down, and then I make sure I go on top and bottom. So I run that down next to that thread underneath and on top.

There is certainly the possibility of putting on too much, but if you put on too little, it's usually worse because then you got a chance of having some dry spots and again, if for some reason something gets in a way, like a tooth or something, it could start tearing that thread apart.

Now I take my scissors, I come up very close. I am pulling down tension on that thread. That's it.

Now, I was relatively careful at this time to put the head cement behind the eye of the hook, but there is a possibility that you get some cement in there. Just take your bodkin and stick it in there and clean it out. I often will even just let the bodkin sit inside of the eye for a few seconds when I am playing on the fly, and then I know its going to stay clear.

Now, next thing we are going to do, which is almost the end -- you can see now, if I flip this around, you can see the fly actually has a pretty tightly woven body at this point. I do want this to be kind of a scruffy looking fly. Couple of things you can do.

First of all, you can go back in and just take your bodkin and just tease out some of these hairs, just by pulling them out like this, and get that to be a real rough like this. Flip this direction and go in and pull those hairs out. You want them to be scruffy, you want them to be messy, with this little fly as gills, and also again, gives you a great sense of movement with that fly.

You want that front area to be really rough. It traps air bubbles and it give this appearance of this moving, wriggling messy little Nymph, and so you want it to look like it's not a Nymph that should be a real pristine, clean, silhouette. The messier and the more beat up, usually the better with these flies.

Now, what I am going to do, which is usually enough what I just did, but I can also take a piece of velcro, which is a nice system for teasing up the dubbing on a Nymph. I can actually take this -- what I have done is I have attached a piece of velcro to a piece of cardboard, and I can actually run that across that body, and this is the hook end of it of course, not the soft part, and I can just drag that back. That also helps to get a nice rough scruffy appearance to that fly. So that is the Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear.


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