Sunset fly

by

Properly described as Sloan’s sunset fly after the designer this is a fly that I generally reserve for dawn and dusk fishing of Rainbow Trout waters. I use it as an effective middle fly in those situations generally with something much more sombre on the point and bob. I am confident that my tie is nothing like the original tie, but in my defence many years ago, when I first wanted to tie this fly, a search of all my reference books just didn’t uncover a copy of the original tie. My tie of this fly is however quite easy and delivers a useful and robust fly.

Materials

Hook Thread Tail Body Head
6 to 10 long shank Clear mono Black squirrel Hen hackle dyed yellow, orange and black Black head cement and yellow painted on eyes

Process

A
  1. Wind the thread in toughing turns to the bend of the hook.

    2. [member Link=”p=10018″ Title=”Understanding hooks”]

  2. Tie in a tail about equal in length to the shank of the hook.

    3. [member Link=”p=1734″ Title=”Tails on flies”]

  3. Tie the butt end of the tail material back toward the eye of the hook and trim the butt ends at the 95% position.
  4. Return the thread to the 33% position and tie in a yellow hackle shiny side forward.

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  5. Wind the thread to the 66% position and tie in an orange hackle shiny side forward.
  6. Wind the thread to just behind the eye of the hook and tie in a black hackle shiny side forward.
  7. Return the thread to the 66% position.

B
  1. Wind the black hackle back to the 66% position in touching turns.
  2. Tie the black hackle off with the clear thread and whilst holding the hackle under tension trim the excess black hackle off with a sharp blade.

C
  1. Wind the orange hackle back to the 33% position in touching turns.
  2. Tie the orange hackle off with the clear thread and  whilst holding the hackle under tension trim the excess orange hackle off with a sharp blade.

D
  1. Wind the yellow hackle back to the bend of the hook in touching turns.
  2. Tie the yellow hackle off with the clear thread and  whilst holding the hackle under tension trim the excess yellow hackle off with a sharp blade.

E
  1. Wind the thread forward to the eye of the hook weaving it through the hackles so that no hackle fibres are accidentally tied down.
  2. Stroke all the hackles backward and build up a neat head of thread.

    3. [member Link=”p=2838″ Title=”Neat thread heads”]

  3. Whip finish the thread and paint the head with black head cement or black nail polish.
  4. When the head is dry put a dot of yellow paint on each side of the head to represent the eyes. The original fly is tied with yellow thread and the yellow head has black painted eyes.