tying

Tinsel--Not Just for Trees

By Jeff Morgan

Decorate your flies with mylar tinsel--in some surprising ways.

ou see a lot of tinsel during the holiday season. Most of it's on Christmas trees--unless you're at the home of a fly tier.

Tinsel has been incorporated into fly patterns for more than a century, though it gained popularity with its commercial availability in the 1960s. By the late 80s, you could buy fly tying tinsel in a variety of sizes, colors, and textures: medium oval gold, small copper French embossed, large silver flats, etc..

Most of the tinsel used in the 80s was metallic and tended to rust or tarnish with age, whether they were use or not. They also took a skilled hand to use, especially when wrapping tinsel bodies; the stiff metal would accentuate inconsistencies and create unsightly bulges.

Mylar Tinsel

But today's tinsel is far different from that of the 80s. While mylar tinsel became available in the 70s, it made its most radical inroads in the 90s. This material has many advantages for the tier. Notably, each strand is gold on one side and silver on the other, which cuts down the number of spools on your table. Also, mylar tinsel is pliable, so less-than-perfect wraps won't give your fly body tumors.

Tinsel Bodies

Mylar tinsel works well for traditional tinsel applications: bodies and ribbing. Tinsel bodies are useful on a number of streamers, wet flies, and some dry flies. One of my favorite tinsel-bodied patterns is a century old British fly, the Alexandra, a fly so effective that it has occasionally been banned over the past 40 years. This is one of my best brook trout flies, and the flashy color combination is effective for a number species,

Dry flies also make good canvases for tinsel bodies. Some adult insects, especially adult caddis, have tiny hairs that, when combined with fluttering wings, create a flashy effect off their exoskeletons. Tinsel bodies are excellent for small streams; their attractor qualities and durability help them long outlast many standard dry flies. The Black Swan Dun, tied with a stiff moose hair tail and a thick grizzly hackle, is an excellent floater and general attractor.

Tinsel for Emergers

Many western tiers rely on Antron for trailing shucks on emergers, but tinsel can also be used for the same purpose. By ribbing the tinsel with fine copper wire, the shuck can hang below the surface while the rest of the fly is in the surface film.

The Bristol Emerger is typical of this style, but adds a bubble of orange Flashabou to match the flushed wingpads of emergent midges. This fly is best constructed with a fine-wire hook and a brushed out thorax, both of which will keep the fly in the surface film.

This British innovation is an excellent pattern for a variety of angling purposes. The key is to grease the front half of the fly so the hackle and thorax are stuck in the film while the tinsel body hangs down like a shuck. While intended as a surface pattern for caddis emergences, I have found it excellent for a variety of prospecting roles in both stillwaters and rivers. It works well as a shallow-water dropper nymph when tied on a heavy-shanked wet fly or scud hook.

Tinsel Heads and Backs

Tiers have recognized the power of flashy gold heads over the past few years, and it has been suggested that the flash imitates gas bubbles trapped on emerging insects. To me, this has always seemed weakly argued, so I experimented to see if gold and silver tinsels simply had more value as an attractor than an imitation of a pre-emergence characteristic. Over the past few years I found that tinsel-flash nymphs work just as well in the winter (when there are no big emerging insects) as the summer (when there are many emerging insects).

The Flashy Czech Nymph is based on the standard Czech Nymph body style, with the addition of a gold flashback. This fly is best tied with spiky dubbing that is brushed out a bit to imitate legs. The Flashy Czech performs in almost any color that would be appropriate for scuds or caddis larvae; gray, tan, olive, and pink are my favorite colors. The flash of the tinsel shellback makes this fly an excellent attractor nymph when trout are aggressive, though it can still work in cool water situations. Use this fly as a dropper off a larger Pupatator or stonefly nymph in the late spring and early summer in fast riffles or pocket water.

Fly Patterns

Alexandra
Black Swan Dun
Bristol Emerger
Flashy Czech Nymph

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 12/10/2003.

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Black Swan Dun

Alexandra

Bristol Emerger

Flashy Czech