Stephen Chatterton 
Spinner tails are typically quite long and very fine and if you incorporate those characteristics in your flies you will find that the tails look very life like when you firstt tie your fly but once the fly has been in your fly box for a while the tails get damage and broken and the fly looks ugly. I think its better to compromise on the length of the tail and to add a couple of extra hackle fibres so that your fly will stand the test of time.
Developed in New Zealand to represent a small fish Matuka style flies were originally tied with feathers from a kind of heron called a “bittern” or in the Maoris language “Matuka”. They work well as a stripping fly in situations where bait fish may be on the menu and the most popular colours in Australia is black / red and brown / brown.
Dahlberg Diver tails are generally equal in length to between the length of the hook shank and two times the length of the hook shank. Avoid making tails too long because sometimes the fish will hit the movement of the tail and miss the hook completely. This is often referred to as a “short take” or “taking short”. Good marabou tails are a real bonus to a big dry fly because the marabou hangs in the water and has a lot of movement.
When we think of tails on dry flies hackle and hair tails are very common. There not so common on wet flies but they certainly have their place. Nymphs and English wee wets in particular make use of this flexible tail representation technique.
You may recall that in my recipe for fried honey and soy trout that I suggested that ” any left over trout should not be wasted. Using your fingers (after washing) flake the remaining trout and carefully remove the bones”. If you want to turn the left over flaked trout into great trout rissoles this is how you do it . . . they are very moreish. Preparation time less than 15 minutes.
Whilst a lot of the things we seek to imitate with flies don’t in fact have tails we still tie what are commonly referred to as tails into most of our flies. I am a firm believer that in some flies realistic eyes are a trigger that elicits a response from fish. There are many ways of adding eyes to a fly.
In most cases tails are tied into dry flies as an extension of the body and are generally incorporated in the fly design to give the fly some additional movement. If a tail is incorporated in a wet fly it is generally of much softer material than would have been used for a dry fly and for full tails as apposed to tags are generally equal between the length of the hook and these days up to 5 times the length of the hook shank.
The Woolly Bugger is perhaps the quintessential streamer fly and has its origins in America ….. there is also an English fly with bead chin eyes called a Dog Nobler that is very similar. Whatever the name or origin this style of fly is a great fish taker in a wide range of conditions. There are probably more variations to the Woolly Bugger than I have had breakfasts. Some are over-dressed some under-dressed, some weighted other not, on all sorts of hooks and in all sorts of colour combinations. I carry black, brown and olive versions.
Most fly fishers will have one or more flies that they use to represent Mudeyes and these include Craigs Night-time, Tie Happy Tickler and Micks Mudeye. An alternative Mudeye representation is set out below. It incorporates many of the features of the flies mentioned above and utilizes two of my favorite fly tying materials, Peacock herl and Ring neck Pheasant (Church Window) feathers.
This fly imitates the poddy mullet and is easy to fish. I like to dredge it with regular strips over sandy bottoms. Hits are generally pretty hard and can be from flathead hardly bigger than the fly right up to monster lizards.
