How to tie a Spider fly!

Sitting at my tying bench I was inspired to tie something a little different.  I came across a spider pattern in one of my books and modified it so that it was easier to tie and was more fishable than the original.

Take a curved scud hook (size 12) and place it in your vice.

Take 6/0 white tying thread and dress your hook.

Take some white deer hair (not bucktail) and tie it on top of the hook.  If it slides down the sides that's ok.  Don't pull the thread to tight.  You want the deer hair to retain some of it's hollowness.

Fold the deer hair back on top of itself and tie it down on top.  Stop tying around the half way mark on the shank between the bend and the hook eye.

Fold the hair back one more time and tie it down.  Cut the remaining hair tips off so that your scissors lay across the back.  The cut will blend with the body and effectively hide the cut.

Body with tips cut off.  Now start wrapping your thread around the body to smooth out the deer hair and form the correct gastor of the spider.

Here we see the proper shape of the spiders gastor (body).  When I'm satisfied with the shape I colour the threads with a pale yellow marker all over.  I then colour the different surfaces with brown, amber, olive or black sharpie markers to give some realism to the body.  Here we see a yellow belly with a black back and sides.  The white thread is shown for contrast here.

Here we see the inverted fly having a 1 1/5" piece of 15lb mono being tied on to the shank in front of the gastor.  Do this with cross wraps and a drop of super glue.

Here we see the mono legs.  To get them into this position take your bodkin (needle) and heat it with a lighter on low flame for 4 sec.  Bend the legs and touch the leg with the heated needle. 

Here we see all four sets of legs tied in.

The legs are all now heated and bent.  All that needs to be done to complete the fly is to cover the thread wraps all with sally hansons hard as nails (this will smoothen out the body and secure all the thread wraps on the body), and to use a black sharpie to colour the monofilament legs.



These flies would be most effective on calmer water in a stream.  They would also be great if used in a dapping manner much as the Japanese Tenkara method.

Peace
Nevin