These are my latest attempts at fly tying . The top two on the left are Claret Bumbles, and the rest are various tyings of my favourite fly , the Bibio, which is supposed to be a representation of the Heather fly. It's origins are Irish, but also works very well on Scottish lochs. On my last visit to Scotland I only took two Bibios (along with lots of other flies) and had a trout on within the first few casts before losing one of them on a very shallow reef. This left just a blue variation which also fished well and better than all the other flies I tried. So this next visit I plan to take quite a few. I'll also make a muddler version .
The tying is quite simple . Hooks size either am size 8 or 10, run fine black silk down the shank, tie in some fine silver tinsel, twist onto the thread a small amount of black seal fur and wind on, followed by a small amount of fluorescent red seal fur, then another patch of black seal fur. Then tie in a small black cock hackle and palmer down the shank, and then secure this by winding the tinsel up the shank. Tie off the tinsel and then tie in another hackle at the head, of black, blue or red, with three turns. Tie off this last hackle and form the head etc.etc. For a less dressed version of the black, I just used the one black hackle with three turns at the head and the rest spread down the body. And the top right fly is a claret bibio, as an experiment, with claret hackle for the body and a black one at the head.
These are less bushy than the ones I tyed last year but I'm more confident that they'll catch.
