It was the summer of 2000 that I first became involved on English style Loch Style fly fishing and slowly I accumulated an arsenal of techniques and flies. I really enjoy tying flies and so as I have seen various patterns I have tied them and tried them. Most have been discarded and just a few have won a place in my Loch Style fly box – this is one of the keepers. Although I have never seen a natural of these colours if I could only carry one top dropper fly this would be it.

Materials

Hook	Thread	Tail	Rib	Body	Hackle	Wing
Medium shank wet fly (Tiemco 3769)	Black	Yellow hackle fibres	Copper wire	Orange seals fur	Orange	Ring neck pheasant feather fibres or bronze mallard

Process

A	Wind the thread in touching turns to the bend of the hook. [member Link=”p=10018″ Title=”Understanding hooks”] Tie in a tail of yellow hackle fibres about as long as the shank of the hook. [member Link=”p=1734″ Title=”Tails on flies”] Tie in a length of copper wire

B	Dub on a cigar shaped body. [member Link=”p=2683″ Title=”Single strand dubbing”] Tie in a hackle behind the eye of the hook at the 95% position.

C	Wind the hackle two wraps at the front of the fly and then Palmer the hackle all the way to the bend of the hook. [member Link=”p=2148″ Title=”Palmering hackle”] Whilst holding the hackle with your left hand wind the copper wire forward locking the Palmered hackle in and creating five or six segments along the body of the fly. [member Link=”p=2656″ Title=”Body segments”] Break the excess copper wire off and trim the excess hackle off with a blade.

D	Select a clump of the wing hackle fibres and tie them in on top of the fly at the 95% position. The tips of the wing should finish above and just behind the back of the hook. Build up a neat head of thread. Whip finish the thread, trim the thread and varnish the head.