A while ago I was thinking about how widely used and effective Rapala’s are in spin fishing. Why not make a fly fishing equivalent of those jointed lures? The result of my efforts is the fly you see above.
The lip is made of deer hair soaked with hard as nails nail polish. I think next time I’ll play around with using a plastic bottle segment or something for the lip, as the durability isn’t the greatest with the deer hair lip. The fly does swim as intended though and has a great side to side action.
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Materials
The materials are pretty straightforward.
Material list
- Spinning deer hair in desired colours.
- Krystal Flash
- Marabou
- Size 2/0 Mustad Hook. Honestly, a size 1/0 probably would’ve been better though.
- One Fish Skull brand articulated shank. These are great for making jointed streamer flies. Fish Skull Articulated Shanks (Amazon Link)
can be bought here. This is a great pack as it has a variety of shank sizes, so you can play around and see which works best for your flies.
can be bought here. This is a great pack as it has a variety of shank sizes, so you can play around and see which works best for your flies.Tying Instructions
Step 1
Mash the barb and secure the hook in the vise.
Step 2
Strip the fibers from the stem of a marabou feather.
Step 3
Tie in stripped fibers near the end of the hook shank
Step 4
Pinch off ends of marabou. Be sure to pinch and not cut with scissors. The feather tips look much better when pinched off.
Step 6
Tie in the Krystal flash and pull back fo an equal number of flash fibers are on each side of the marabou
Step 7
Spin deer hair, spin deer hair and spin more deer hair. Continue spinning deer hair up to the hook eye.
Step 7.5
Break the thread halfway through spinning deer hair and lose your goddamned mind before resecuring thread onto the hook shank. Perform a few backward wraps to secure the thread and hair already on the hook, and continuing on as if nothing happened.
Step 8
Whip finish and apply head cement to head of the fly.
Step 9
Attach finished half of fly to the articulation shank. Curse at how “in the way” the rear half of the fly is.
Step 10
Tie gap at the rear of articulation shank closed. Might as well make it a hotspot since I’m using red thread.
Step 11
Start spinning deer hair again. Leaving a bigger gap than you thought you would since the rear of the fly is so in the way.
Step 12
Continue spinning deer hair until you get to the eye.
Step 13
Tie in one final thick clump of deer hair right below the eye (on top in this picture since it’s upside down). This will be the lip.
Step 14
Realize you overcrowded the eye way too much to preform proper whip finish. Proceed to perform a series of half hitches by hand before snipping the thread. Apply head cement.
Step 15
Haircut
Step 16
Apply a ton of hard as nails to lip
Step 17
Continue trimming until you’re happy with it.
Step 18
Done!
The fly below is the original design that was inspired by a lipped spinning lure. It worked well, and the marabou made it move similar to a jointed plug, so I decided to make the version above which is actually jointed.
In the fly above, I had to trim the lip to get it to run properly. Once trimmed, it wobbled side to side just like a wooden lure does. The one above was used to catch sea run brookies. Lets see if this jointed one can catch be a bass in Ottawa. I really hope a pike doesn’t destroy it first thing, but that’s honestly probably the most likely scenario.