Red Butt Spey
A Syd Glasso style spey fly tied in the color scheme of the very popular Red Butt Black Bear salmon fly.
Tying instructions:
- Attach the thread (hot red single strand floss) behind the hook eye and tie in a length of mylar tinsel gold side down (so the silver will be visible when wrapped).
- Wind the tinsel toward the bend of the hook and back to the thread, forming an smooth underbody of silver tinsel.
- Wind your thread back over the tinsel, almost but not quite covering the entire body. It helps to occasionally untwist the thread by spinning the bobbin, which will help create a smooth body. Leave about a sixteenth of an inch of silver mylar showing, to act as the tag. Wind the thread back to the eye and switch to black 6/0.
- Double a couple strands of the hot red floss around your thread and wrap your thread back toward the bend, binding the floss to the top of the hook shank to form the veil. Stop around mid shank.
- Tie in your hackle by the tip on the far underside of the hook shank.
- Tie in your ribbing tinsel immediately in front of the hackle.
- Dub the front half of the body with SLF, leaving room for a wing and collar.
- Wind the ribbing tinsel forward to the eye (three turns are enough).
- Wrap the hackle foward, following the tinsel, to the hook eye. Fold the hackle as you wrap, trying to keep the barbs slanting rearward.
- Tie in a Gadwall flank feather by the tip and make a couple wraps, folding as you wrap to form a collar.
- Select a pair of matched chinese neck hackles. At this point, I measure them to length and strip about a sixteenth of an inch of stem. I crush the stem flat with pliers and put a little "crimp" in it so the stem kinks downward, which will help keep the wing flush with the body.
- Tie in the wing and whip finish you thread.