March Brown Spider
(The materials are listed in the order they are tied in. Instructions assume righthanded tier.)
Tying instructions:
- Prepare partridge hackle by stripping one side of the stem bare. (This is a fly in the north country, England, style where dressing a sparse fly is taken to the extreme) To prepare the feather hold it in front of you, butt towards yourself, tip facing away, looking down on to the concave side. Strip the fibers left of the stem, stopping a little short of the tip.
Attach thread immediately behind the eye in three touching/overlapping turns.
- Tie in the partridge feather by the butt. Lay the feather on top of the hookshank, tip facing over the eye and concave side up. Tie down with a pinch and loop, then run thread down the shank towards the bend. (Trim hackle ste at mid shank)
- Even the tips of a few fibers taken from a brown partridge feather and tie in a fairly short tail. Trim butts where they meet the trimmed hackle stem. This will leave you with an even underbody. (Not so critical here because of the dubbed body on this fly, but good practice and doing this routinely will pay off when you tie tinsel or floss bodied flies)
- Tie in yellow thread for the rib.
- Make a thinly dubbed rope with the hare's ear and wind a thin, somewhat tapered body. End with the thread just behind the partridge feather we tied in earlier.
- Rib body with yellow thread in an evenly spaced spiral. I prefer to counter-wrap my ribbing, i.e. wrap over the body towards myself, for two reasons:
- I feel it re-inforces the body material.
- the ribbing does not sink into soft body material as much and as such remains visible better.
Trim leftover ribbing thread. - Clip hackle pliers on to the tip of the partridge feather. (I like to use the plastic EZ-pliers for tying soft hackles where the feathers used typically have fragile stems) Wrap two touching turns of (single-sided) hackle, winding away from the eye. End with the hackle pliers pulled straight up. This will give you two complete turns and an even distribution of fibers.
- Trap the hackletip with one wrap of thread and make the second one turn of thread through the hackle to the eye.
- Trim or snap (if you feel brave) the hackletip.
- Finish the fly off with a three turn whip finish, cut thread and apply a touch of head cement