The Yellow Dancer is a relative newcomer on the fly fishing scene. It is a ‘sport’ of the original Woolley Bugger devised by our friends north of the border. It has proved to be a ‘must have’ fly on most Scottish still water trout fisheries. As is always the case it has spawned the usual derivatives, Black Dancer , Orange Dancer, and I expect in the fullness of time we will have the Highland Dancer. I had to resort to my favourite fishing magazine , Fly Fishing and Fly Tying to get the dressing. It is a straight forward tie if you do the proper preparation.
The Dressing
Hook – Kamasan 175 or similar , sizes 8 / 10.
Tail – White marabou with a few strands of pearlescent micro flash.
Over the years there have been many sedge patterns, some complicated and some simple, which have all been successful in their way. The palmered patterns like the Soldier Palmer or Zulu being the best known. Recently I read an article by Neil Patterson in the Fly Fishing & Fly Tying magazine in which he described a sedge pattern he called the Hotchpotch. It is simple to tie and I, and friends I have given samples to, have had great success with it. This pattern sits better in the water and either static or moving it does behave like a sedge. I even found that when it was gunged up with slime and sunk it still caught fish. I suggest you tie some up in 10s and 12s and and keep them ready in your fly box. I only wish I had some of these when I went to New Zealand earlier this year.
The deer hair patterns are more complicated to tie and create a mess when you trim them up and I feel are less effective.
DRESSING
Hook Lt. wt. L/S 8,10,12,14. (kamasan 830.)
Thread Brown.
Hackle Blue Dun/ Red Game. Trim off the all the hackle fibres projecting downwards.
Body Cream dubbing ( possum under fur) tied meaty.
The crane fly is a land based insect which features in the fly fisher’s armoury because it is an ungainly flier and regularly finds it’s way on to lakes and rivers by accident. They usually appear about August time and can be quite an abundant food source for the trout either on the surface or as they get caught up in the surface film and drown.
Their long legs make them very distinctive and all the imitative patterns are based on this feature. They can be tied with a detached body on short shank hooks or wool body tied on a long shank hook, there are even gold bead versions.
The most common and certainly an effective pattern is tied with hackle point wings and knotted cock pheasant tail fibres for the legs on a long shank size 10 hook. The most trying part of this fly is tying the knots in the pheasant tail fibres. Try to acquire the centre tail feathers from a mature cock bird. These fibres will be longer and stronger. I also tie two together at the same time, it saves time and the trout do not seem to notice.
A variant of the daddy long legs is the hopper. For this pattern just do not give it wings and tie a seals fur dubbed body with lurex ribbing.
Hook – Long shank size 10
Tying thread – Brown
Body – Brown wool or floss
Rib ( optional ) – Fine copper wire
Wing – 2 brown grizzle hackles over back
Legs – 2 pairs of knotted cock pheasant tail fibres each side of the body
The Klinkhamer was originally designed by Hans Van Klinken to copy the fly emerging from its shuck as it made the change to a flying insect. There are ‘puritans’ among us who refuse to accept this fly as a true dry fly because the fly has not been airborne. To those of us who just enjoy fly fishing it is a dry fly which often doubles up as a support or sight fly with a nymph attached New Zealand style underneath.It is not the easiest of flies to tie but is well worth persevering with.There are several ways of tying this fly, all based on using a yarn post to achieve a horizontal hackle which looks like a parachute. The hook used is a lightweight buzzer hook. I use Kamasan KB100s sizes 10 and 12.I hope you will find the lesson easy to follow. You can use exactly the same technique to tie parachute dry flies, on which you use a straight hook with tail fibres to keep the tail end up in the water. Hopefully this satisfies the purists.I use Kamasan KB400s. For both of these patterns you will find that the better the quality of the hackle the better it floats. If you prefer to dub the body keep it as sparse as possible, it stops the fly getting waterlogged.Give it a try and let me know how you get on.
Materials
Hook Kamasan B100 ( or similar ) sizes 10, 12 or 14 if you are brave.
The Booby is a relatively recent addition to the flyfishers arsenal. The original patterns were tied using polystyrene balls tied together in the mesh from ladies tights and tied in at the eye of the hook. The way they wobbled about was how the fly acquired its name. Their other main disadvantage was that if you applied varnish to the head and some got on the polystyrene it was only a question of time before either one or both ‘deflated’.
The fly had proved so successful on the stillwaters, particularly for rainbows, that some enterprising angler came up with booby tube which could be supplied in various lengths and was not damaged by varnish.
That is the material we have used on the demo.
The variations on colour of head, chenille, cactus chenille or the marabou tail is limited only by the imagination of the tyer. Green and white and orange and white are favourites.
The ‘fly’ is usually fished with a sinking line. Once the line has settled on the lake bed the booby will be floating above it at the height of the leader. You can be lazy and sit there and wait for a rainbow to cruise by and take the fly, or you can retrieve your line in long pulls, allowing time between for the fly to lift back up to its original height. As you pull the line the booby is drawn to the lake bed.
In recent years the competition fishers use boobies to fish the ‘washing line’ method. Usually, I believe, with an intermediate line. The booby is fished on the point and 2 droppers with nymphs or buzzers on the cast. This method is used to explore different depths where the fish are feeding.
I do not believe our American friends have discovered this ‘fly’ yet despite their Dolly Parton probably being responsible for its name.
If you like sitting on the bank and taking it easy this fly might be worth a try. It has accounted for some big fish.
Materials
Hook long shank 10 / 8
Body orange chenille fritz
Tail orange marabou
Head plastazote tube orange or white
Tying silk orange
Tail flash optional
Please note color variations are optional ( white /green - black / green )
The original Muddler Minnow was introduced in to this country from America in the late 1960s.It was tied to be an imitation of the sculpin minnow. The original pattern enjoyed great success on the Midland reservoirs when it was first introduced. British reservoir anglers, as always, have this shameless habit of ‘improving’ everything that they try. It was not long before the Black muddler, black body and silver rib, was the in fly quickly followed by the Texas Rose and the Orange muddler, orange body and gold rib. The one thing they all had in common was the deer hair head. This was achieved by using spun deer hair and clipped to form a bulky bouyant head. Hook sizes from long shank 6 to 10. It can be quite an exciting fly to fish when you strip it through a big ripple when the trout are high in the water. You wont get as many as you miss but it can liven up a days fishing.Once you have mastered the tying in of the deer hair and trimming it to shape there is no end to the patterns you can tie.This lesson has already inspired a line of thought with muddlers which I have not yet seen tied and I think they are looking promising.
Posted by David Cammiss 
