Bitch Creek Bugger

By John Nason

This is a standard wooly bugger tie with two exceptions. The first comes from A. K. Best's book Production Fly Tying, in which a few stiff moose hair fibers are added to the tail so that the maribou tail is less likely to twist around the bend of the hook when you're casting. The second is to weave the body of the fly with two colors of chenille as in the style of a Bitch Creek Nymph. It's more work than winding on a single color of chenille but the woven body is interesting to tie and gives a lifelike, dark over light colored, segmented effect.

The tying instructions below are taken largely from Dave Hughes' excellent book Trout Flies. Of course the weaving process would be easier to describe with addition of the pictures Dave provides for tying the Bitch Creek Nymph. Once you get started, however, you'll begin to see the pattern to the weaving and, as Dave suggests, begin to work out your own quick way to do it.

This past summer I fished southeast Minnesota a lot and in October spent a week in Wyoming working various areas of the N. Platte and Encampment Rivers. In both regions this fly accounted for my largest fish, especially when dressed in black over olive. I usually use a darker shade of olive chenille for the underbody but chose a brighter color for your sample so that you can more clearly see the result of the weaving. The color combinations are endless.

Materials:

Hook: Standard streamer, 3X or 4X long, size 4 or 6.

Head: Black glass craft bead, 6/0 (optional)

Weight: 25-30 turns of lead wire, diameter of hook shank

Thread: Black 6/0 nylon

Undertail: Black moose body hair

Tail: Fine marabou fibers, olive below, black above

Tail flash: Pearlescent Krystal Flash or Flashabou Accent

Abdomen: Large black and medium-olive ultra-chenille, woven

Hackle: Black, poor-grade rooster, long enough (4-5 inches) to palmer over body

Tying Instructions:

Step 1. De-barb hook, slide glass bead onto hook, fix hook in vise, wrap with lead wire, slide wire against bead, and lock wire in place with thread. Bring thread to hook bend, tie in eight or so moose fibers, top with olive and then black marabou, and then tie eight or so strands of krystal flash to each side. The tail should be about the same length as the hook shank.

Step 2. Clip 3 inches of olive and 4 inches of black chenille and on one end strip fuzz from the core threads. Prepare a hackle feather with fibers two times the hook gap by stripping the fuzzy fibers from the butt. Tie in the black chenille on the top of the hook at the base of the tail. Flare the fibers from the hackle stem and tie in by the tip, concave side down, on the top of the hook a chenille width in front of the black chenille. (As an option, fine gold or copper ribbing can be tied in with the hackle feather and then later counter-wound forward over the palmered body to reinforce the hackle stem from the ravages of fish teeth). Tie in the olive chenille just in front of the hackle. Work your thread forward to the glass bead.

Step 3. Weave the body. Keep in mind that the black chenille will always wrap over and the olive chenille under the hook shank, and that you want to avoid trapping hackle fibers under the chenille. Start with a full turn of black chenille at the base of the tail, first away from you then under the hook so that, with your off hand, you end up holding it directly towards you. With your tying hand bring the olive chenille towards you, loop under, around, and over the black chenille, from back to front, then down under the body and straight out away from you to the other side of the hook. Hold both strands of chenille tight.

Step 4. Take the black chenille over the top of the hook shank and pull it directly away from you so that both strands of chenille are on the far side of the hook. Switch hands, taking the black chenille in your off hand, the olive chenille in your tying hand. From behind, bring the olive chenille up and over the black chenille, then back down, under the fly and directly towards you on the near side.

Step 5. Bring the black chenille over the top of the hook shank to join the olive chenille on the near side. From behind, take the olive chenille up and over the black, then draw it down and under the fly to the far side, switching hands as you do. Take the black chenille over the top again, weave the olive chenille over it, and repeat weaving to the back of the glass bead. Try to keep the pattern of segmentation even on both sides of the hook. Tie off both strands of chenille and clip off the excess. Evenly wrap the hackle feather forward to the glass bead and tie off so that the excess is clipped from the underside of the fly. Whip finish, apply head cement, and clip the strands of Krystal Flash so that they extend just beyond the marabou tail.