Welcome to our Fly of the Week page. Here you will find a new
pattern every week and details of how to tie it. We
will especially try and bring to you flies which we
are finding successful on our local waters. You will
notice that there are a lot more steps being included
these days. We are trying to cater to tiers of all skill
levels so we have to include the extra detail. Use the
following menu to find previously featured flies. Enjoy! To
go to previously listed Fly of the Week pages simply
use the pull down menu:
Egg Sucking Bugger 
Hook: Heavy gauge 1x 2 x long Wet Fly
Thread:
Brown 6/0 Uni-Thread
Tail: Olive Marabou
Rib: Copper wire medium gauge
Body: Superbrite dubbing green/burnt orange
Hackle:
1/2 stripped brown cock palmered
It's been a long time since I tied a fly, not only for the site but for my own boxes! We have just been getting busier and busier in the past few years and as a result I very rarely tie flies in my spare time, preferring to walk out the back gate and fish when the opportunity arises. My flies arrive in boxes of twelve from the bench of some full time tier who can knock 'em out one after the other like a machine. This has been an amazing time-saver for me and means a lot more fish caught.
This has caused me to lose track of this part of the site for a long time, I only just realised how much as I looked back through the pages in recent days. We do weekly reports, video reports, podcasts, articles etc, but the fly of the week had not been updated for at least eighteen months. This is set to change. Maybe not to the extent that it will live up to its title, but enough to give you the some new patterns to tie.
To start with I have picked a variation of an American pattern that does so well for us early in the season when the rivers are high, flooded and/or discoloured. The Egg Sucking Bugger is simply a take-off of the Egg Sucking Leech and variations of it exist world wide in every size and colour configuration. Read on to learn to tie the fly that may just land you your biggest fish of the season.
Regards
Antony
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| 1/ The hook used for this fly is not ultra-important. Heavy gauge helps to make it more durable as you are fishing subsurface with snags etc. Weight is an issue as you want it to sink, but this can be added with lead or extra heavy copper. I choose to lightly weight mine as I am not fishing in fast/deep water. If you were going to prospect the edges of the Rubicon you would want a few heavier ones as well. Anyway, secure your hook in the vice and wind a base of thread from behind the hook eye back towards the hook bend, stopping level with the barb of the hook. |
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| 2/ Take some marabou and measure it off against the hook shank. With these Woolly Bugger variants we want a tail approximately equal in length to the hook shank. I personally tie them slightly longer, 25%-50% than the hook shank, but the LAW of proportions says to make it the length of the hook shank. Break off a small clump, dont use scissors, and double check that the length is correct against the hook shank.
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| 3/ Transfer the feathers to the left hand (for right handed tier) and carfeuly hold them on top of the hook shank with the feathers extending out beyond the rear of the hook. When you are happy with the positioning, tie them in with a couple of tight turns of thread and then take maybe three to five turns along the hook shank towards the front of the hook/eye to secure it properly. Cut off the excess feather stubs. If you click on the photo for this step you will see that my turns of thread and cuts were quite rough (I'm out of practice!) but this doesn't matter with a big wet fly like this. |
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| 4/ Now take a piece of copper wire and secure it to the hook. I like to tie mine like this, at a 45 degree angle upwards and back from the hook as it keeps it out of the way of the steps yet to come. You can use whatever wire you choose. I have a number of old transistor radios that have been broken up and the wire retrieved giving me a heap of colours and sizes. More info on this later. Tie this wire in and then remove the excess. Never cut this wire with the tips of your scissors. Always use the deepest/thickets part of your scissors to carefully cut wire and the like.
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| 5/ Ok
dubbing time. I am deliberately non-specific about
the type as the millions of dubbings out there are
confusing to the new fly tier and it is often assumed
that you cannot tie a fly without material x or
y. Well that is garbage. You can use anything that you have handy. I am using some super brite dubbing for this but it can be anything you like. Want it a more natural colour? Use base coloured chenille's or furs. As I am intending to fish this in dirty/coloured water, I am going with some sparkle. Dub a chunky rope of dubbing as per the photo. |
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6/ Start
wrapping the dubbed rope up the hook to
build the body. Wrapping in a clockwise direction
if viewed from the front of the hook (looking along the shank from the eye of the hook back) slowly wrap
and tease the fibres with your spare hand until
you have the start of a nice body forming. Dont worry if you have not used enough dubbing in this step as you can wrap as much of the body as you can and then simply add more and keep building the body. There is no science to this, although you will get better at your estimations as you go. Just play with the materials and if you have add more or remove some dubbing as you go.
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7/ Once the majority of the body it completed (approximately 3/4 of the shank used up) start to dub your secondary colour which is supposedly the egg that the leech has a hold of. In our case it is merely an attractor. Dub an equally chunky section of dubbing onto the thread and move on to Step 8.
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8/ Simply wrap another section of body, stopping just shy of the hook eye but being sure to leave yourself enough space to tie off and finish the fly. Wrap this last section of body so that it is equal in size to the rest of the body. When you are happy with it put in a quick half-hitch to secure things a little.
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| 9/ Now that we are almost completed comes what is perhaps the only real finicky part of this fly! Those of you new to flytying, please do not despair at this remark. You will soon be dubbing, palmering, half hitching and spinning your life away. Trust me. Anyway select a hackle from your cape. If you can hold the cape against the fly to get an approximate measurement before removing the feather even better. You want the barbules of the feather to be at about 1.5 x the length of the gap between hook shank and point (the hook gape). Carefully strip one half of the feather of barbules. |
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10/ Tie the feather in at the front of the fly as per the wire. Angle it back and up at 45 from the hook shank. Make sure that which side you have stripped of barbules is tied facing inwards as you are going to be wrapping it around the body of the fly and if the barbules are on the inside of the wrap they are going to crush. If you ensure that they are on the outside of the wraps, they will be sure to stand out from the hook and give you the body that we want. Secure the feather to the hook well and trim the excess feather stub.
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11/ Now leaving the thread at the front of the hook near the hook eye, take hold of the feather and start wrapping back towards the rear of the fly and the copper wire. Use 3-4 even wraps to reach the wire. Make sure these are even and that the barbules of the feathers are standing out at right angles to the hook. You must be firm and not relieve the tension to ensure you get the desired result. Once you reach the wire, hold the feather in place with your left hand and take three or four turns of the wire under tension around the feather. Once it is secure, trim the feather.
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12/ Take your wire and wrap it forward to the hook eye using approx. the same number of wraps as you just did with the feather. Wrap in the opposite direction (to the feather) around the hook and carfeully work the wire in a slight zig-zag motion as you go, to try and minimise the amount of feather barbules that you crush. When you reach the hook eye you can simply tie off with the thread and then trim the excess if you prefer. I actually wrapped the wire a number of times to give me a little more weight. I then used the thread to tie off and secure the wire. Add a couple of half-hitches to complete things. Trim the wire and thread and VOILA.
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13/ Here you have the completed fly. While nothing too difficult, it does require a certain amount of skill in the latter steps so those new to flytying be patient. If you are having any trouble drop by the shop one day and I will run you through it.
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The
Pattern
I was going to have a rant here about theft of intellectual property and how so many flytiers change the colour of the elbow joint on an existing grasshopper pattern and claim it as their own. Suffice to say that there is very little that is new in the world of flytying and beware of those continually claiming to be 'inventing' things. You can probably tell that I get a little annoyed with people continually claiming things as their own, when in fact, someone much more innovative preceded them, often by a century or more! MINI_RANT OVER....
This fly is called an egg sucking bugger because it is a variation of a pattern known as the egg sucking leech. The egg sucking is the descriptive part of the name with the leech or bugger describing the pattern style. Leech patterns incorporate lots of fur and have a wonderful swimming action. Trout in North America/Canada eat leeches and this style of fly is responsible for a lot of great fish each season. You have to say though when you see these leech patterns in the water, they could represent everything from yabbies to baitfish and everything in between. Wonderful actions that fool fish.
In our part of the world we tend to use Woolly Buggers rather than leech patterns. And when all is said and one we fish much smaller versions of the flies in Australia. As this fly incorporates the successful elements of the Egg Sucking Leech into the Woolly Bugger I have titled an egg sucking bugger.
But what's in a name. In essence this is a Woolly Bugger variant particularly good in early season discoloured waters. As the water gets clearer we tie them in smaller sizes and more subdued colours. Beige or olive head with dark brown body, black body/brown head, olive head/dark green body. The options are limited only by your own desire to experiment. We dont actually tie it with an accurate egg imitation on the head as per the northern hemisphere fishers. As such it is more of an attractor Woolly Bugger pattern.
This pattern can be tied on a variety of hook configurations. Geoff ties them oversize by at least 2-3x long in the hook shank and Dave ties them on large dry fly hooks with normal shank lengths. Short squat little buggers! I tend to use something closer to a traditional wet fly hook. The point is that they all work equally as well.
Colours are another thing that many of us worry about when trying match a fly pattern. Don't be too concerned about this. Shades of Olive of brown or BLACK are not critical. I will be brutally honest here, many flytiers are not good fly fisherman. They spend far too much time tying flies in their studies and reading books or magazines or flytying catalogues. They therefore over emphasize the importance of a colour or hook weight or shank length. If they have some success on something they take it that it means it was that special alignment of the starts that caused such a cosmic result (i.e. they caught a couple of fish).
Stick with the age old rule of thumb of clear water = smaller, more subdued colours, dirtier water = larger, brighter colours. Use mostly olives, blacks and browns for the main part of the body with a small amount of colour at the head as an attractor and you will be right.
This fly can be fished without any weight in very shallow water e.g. Goulburn edges in early September. With a wrap of lead on the hook shank you can take it down into the strike zone on a fast flowing Rubicon River. I like to fish the rivers like the Rubi/Acheron with this when it is flooded. Working the margins of the floodwaters (lagoons and billabong's) with the unweighted versions and the seams and backwaters with a little more weight to get it down to the fish immediately.
So there you go. Another fly pattern in the archive and one worth tying for the coming spring. It might be a wet one this year and if it is, this could become one of your favourite flies in a matter of a few sessions.
Enjoy your tying and dont forget that it is a means to an end and not the end itself!;-)
Go fishing.....
Antony
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