FOTM May 2012
Hendrickson
(Bucktail Emerger)
by Paul Weamer from Fly Fisherman Magazine
Don’t you love the look and fish-catching ability of quill bodied dry flies but hate all the preparation and the results often produce brittle flies that can unravel when they are exposed to a large trout’s sharp teeth. Then here’s your answer to all that quill preparation. Use bucktail instead, it’s more durable and you can mix colors along with thread. To get the right color for your pattern it’s pretty cheap and one tail lasts a long time. You can put some floatant in the wing or don’t put any in at all and as soon as the fly soaks up some water it goes down into the water so you can fish it as an emerger rising to the surface as opposed to an emerger sitting on top of the waters film waiting to dry its wings and fly away. Next time you’re on a massive hatch but you can’t get them on a dry use an emerger pattern like this and you may have that twenty or thirty fish a day you dream about all the time.Hook- #12-14 Tiemco 247 (fine-wire scud hook)
Thread- Light olive 8/0 uni- thread
Shuck- dark brown darlon (Antron or z-lon also work)
Abdomen- four pink and two tan bucktail fibers twisted with light olive thread.
Thorax- Hendrickson pink beaver dubbing.
Wing- A clump of snowshoe rabbit’s foot hair.*Note- For the wing I used natural rabbit that had a lot of white and I mixed it with sulphur orange super fine to get the dirty white/yellowish color (pale yellow)
How to Tie
- Debarb hook and mount in vise- start thread about three to four eyelets from the eye and lay down a tight thread base going back just a little bit into the curve of the hook, now tie on your suck ¾ the length of the hook shank but leaving a longer strand to tie down as the underbody keeping close wraps and ending where you started your thread then back to the rear of the hook.
- Tie in four pink and two tan bucktail fibers and align them by their tips. Clip the fine ends making them the same length and diameter. Tie in at the rear of the abdomen and with the bucktail laying down on top of the body wrap forward to your wing location then back again with close wraps in order to get a smooth abdomen.
- Twist the bucktail fibers with the thread to make a rope then wrap forward to your wing location and tie off.
- Cut a clump of snowshoe rabbit from between the toes. Remove the underfur and tie in the wing so that the tips extend toward the hook Bend approximately three quarters the length of the hook shank. Trim the tag ends and bind down the remaining butts.
- Dub behind and in front of the wing. Whip-finish and clip your thread and you’re done.
VERY EASY TIE Now tie up a couple dozen but save your best for the fly of the month for may any questions call or e-mail carl wuebben
