tying

Deer Hair Dubbing--The Sequel

By Jeff Morgan

Dubbing with deer hair is hard on the fingers, but hoo boy, do trout love it! Jeff follows up his popular article on deer hair dubbing with some new patterns.

ometime back, I wrote the article Dubbing with Deer Hair for Westfly. In the months since I have showed fly tyers how to use this technique in a variety of fly patterns.

They have proved to be some of my most popular commercial patterns. They also have caught a lot of fish, which for me is what really matters.

I have since added several very effective patterns which I'll describe below.

Tips

Before digging into the new patterns, here are two key tips about dubbing with deer hair.

1. First, select deer hairs that are long, soft, and straight. These are best for spinning hair.
2. Second, fold the deer hair in half with the "V" of the bend pointing up towards the hook shank when you start dubbing it to the thread.

For full details on how to work with deer hair, please consult the previous article (Dubbing with Deer Hair).

Dubbed Sculpin

One of my fall favorites is the Dubbed Sculpin. While collecting sculpins for a book I've been working on, I was impressed with their camouflage abilities. I would have several trapped in ten inches of slow water right at my feet and I couldn't see one of them!

Later I replicated the experiment with the imitations I normally use for sculpins. The uniformly colored imitations stood out in a way that no natural creature could.

The difference between the naturals and the imitations came down to mottling. Most imitations are "macro-mottled," if they are mottled at all. In other words, color changes are both major and predictable. In contrast, real sculpins are "micro-mottled": color changes are both small and random.

Dubbing with deer hair solves this problem. Simply mix 4-5 colors of deer hair, with the dominant color matching the dominant shade of the fly at a 60-10-10-10-10 ratio. This gives you sufficient variability in color, while not giving the fly a weird-colored head.

Dubbed Deer Hair Emergers

While deer hair works great on bulky creatures of the deep, it can also be used to imitate the most dainty of trout foods, mayflies.

Deer hair can be excellent for all stages of the mayfly, though due to its unchangable diameter it works best for flies that are size 14 or larger.

This leaves you with several major western emergences that are suited to this technique:

1. green drakes
2. brown drakes
3. gray drakes
4. hexes
5. flavs
6. some Callibaetis and PMDs

The mayfly emerger is a prime candidate. Real emergers are a jumble of legs, wings, tails, and shuck. This results in a far more complex impression on the surface than we normally associate with the comparatively simple adult dun. To match this "busy" look, you can use dubbed deer hair for either the full body or just the thorax.

For the deer hair to be used to its maximum effectiveness, this fly should be tied with CDC. This lets the fly ride low in the water so that the deer hair tips are denting and protruding through the water's surface. If the fly is tied parachute-style or with a standard hackle, you lose the impression given by the dubbed deer hair, and you (and your fingers) would be better off with just regular dubbing.

The Hey Greenie! is an example of the pattern. It imitates an emerging green drake.

Dubbed Deer Hair Spinners

The other stage of the mayfly I like to imitate is the mayfly spinner. Spinners lie prostrate in the surface, and the fish have long time to inspect them.

The crumpled-leg look of dubbed deer hair sets your imitation apart from the two or three orthodox patterns that pressured fish see all the time. The Dead Drake is an example dressing.

Dubbed Deer Hair Terrestrials

Dubbed deer hair also works great for terrestrials. While I use it on ants, hoppers, crickets, and leafhoppers, my favorite bugs to imitate are beetles. Deer hair dubbing can give you a variety of body shapes and sizes, not to mention realistic legs.

One advantage is that dubbed deer hair adds buoyancy, which allows you to tie narrow patterns. A variety of natural beetles have narrow bodies, and it's difficult to use standard materials and techniques to build an imitation that floats well.

For example, the bark beetle is extremely common throughout the West, especially in areas of clearcuts, but there is no standard pattern that imitates them well. The Ringo (part of my "Beatles" series) is a perfect match. You can change the color of the Body Stretch--or even paint it--to match these brown, black, and iridescent blue insects. The spots on the back are just for aesthetics, of course.

Jeff Morgan has written many articles for Westfly, mostly on entomology and fly tying. He is the author of An Angler's Guide to the Oregon Cascades and Small Stream Fly Fishing. Jeff is currently a graduate student at Stanford University, where he is finishing his PhD in History.

Uploaded 11/24/2002.

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Dubbed Sculpin

Hey Greenie!

Dead Drake, bottom view

Ringo, top view