SAWBELLY SPECIAL

Courtesy of Max

AKA

FlashBackMax

 

SAWBELLY SPECIAL INTRO

  This fly harkens back to my good buddy and fly fishing English professor Joe Cambridge. He always used it for the landlocked salmon runs here in the upstate NY's finger lakes region. It's meant to imitate a sawbelly or alewife which is a species of baitfish common to these parts. I've had good success with it
for stream trout, bass, and even pike and lake trout in larger sizes. I'm sure a dolly or a rainbow wouldn't mind having it for a snack.

 

MATERIALS LIST

Hook: #10-1/0 3x streamer hook
Thread: gray 6/0
Tail: flashabou
Body: flashabou
Under-wing: flashabou
Middle-wing- gray bucktail
Wing Topping- peaock herl
Throat- red saddle hackle fibers
Cheeks- small mallard flank feathers
Eyes- 3D stick on eyes

 

LETS GET BUSY!!

Step 1

Insert the hook into the vise and coat it with thread

Step 2

Take a quite long length of flashabou and tie in a short tail at the rear. Leave it so most of it is laying back over the hook shank towards the front

Step 3

Now take the part laying over the shank and fold it back over the tail tying it down. Make it look like you have two tails, a short on and a long one

Step 4

Tie the folded flashabou down tight

Step 5

Wrap the body with the flashabou. It doesn't hurt to put a little head cement or nail polish on the body once you've wrapped it. That just makes it a little tougher

Step 6

Now again kind of like before, fold the remaining flashabou back over the hook and tie it down making a flashabou wing. Trim it off even, or almost even with the tail

Step 7

Select a sparse clump of bucktail and tie it in so it's about as long as the flashabou

Step 8

Select a few peacock herl stands and tie them in on top. Make them about the same length as the bucktail

Step a9

In selecting the feathers for the cheeks make sure you get the smaller sized flank feathers. You can make the bigger sizes work. However it's easier and just looks better with the smaller ones.

Step b9

Prep the feathers by stripping off a lot of the under fluff and garbage from the stem

Step 9

Set the feather up onto the fly and measure. If it looks too big strip some more fibers off. Then position it and take a few loose wraps. Then very carefully pull the feather by the stem so it begins to move up towards the eye. Wrap a couple more times

Step 10

Once you have it positioned how you want it, wrap down good and tight securing the feather. Repeat the process on the other side

Step 10a

Just a reference on how the feathers should look when they're secured down

Step 11

Select a small bunch of red hackle fibers and tie them in for the throat. Afterwards you can build a head, whip finish, and cement

Step 12

A word about gluing eyes. They come with sticky stuff already on them, but 99% of the time they fall off.
You can use superglue but if you make a mistake you could possibly glue your fingers together or ruin the fly. So I use fletch tite. It is tough, nasty stuff!
It's nice and pliable when first squeezed out so unlike superglue you have time to work. However when it dries you basically have to rip the fly apart to get the eyes off. Which to me is a good thing cause I don't want them coming off in the first place

Step 13

Something you can do to make things a little easier is apply the eyes with your bodkin. Scrap the eyes off the paper they come on with the bodkin and then apply the fletch tite right onto the eye; then stick the eye where you want. That makes it easy and you haven't
got any on your hands

Finished Fly!!!

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