Materials:
- Hook: #8 4XL straight shank (I use Togen Streamer #28528)
- Thread: 70 d black and red (I prefer Ultra)
- Tail: White marabou, with black antron (Phentex) over
- Underbody: Unflavoured dental floss
- Body: Mylar static bag strip (2 – 2.5 mm wide)
- Back: Black Antron (can sub any black or very dark green fibre; could even paint a black streak with nail polish)
- Bead: 3mm white opaque plastic
- Finishes: Black and clear nail polishes
Tying Instructions:
1. Crush the barb and string on the bead.
2. Tie the black thread on the rear of the shank and fasten on 10 or so marabou fibres, such that the majority of tips are 25mm from the front of the bead; if there are too many, too long, clip the excess to length.
3. Spiral the thread forward to bind down the marabou, until you reach the bead; add a couple of wraps and cut off the marabou butts, behind the bead.
4. Spiral the thread back to the rear-most turns of thread and tie in the antron (I use one strand of the old-style, three strand Phentex). Have the antron butt even with the end of the marabou tips.
5. Secure the antron with a few turns of thread then bend the long end over the back end of the hook and secure this with a few turns of thread. Place the antron in your material keeper.
6. As close as possible to the antron butt, tie in the mylar strip and place it in the material keeper; then tie in the dental floss, with the butt extending to the bead and secure with spiral wraps to the bead.
7. Tie off the black thread and start the red just behind the bead.
8. Wrap the floss in tight turns to the front of the fly, and then spiral back to about ¾ and wrap forward again to the bead. Repeat the spiral back, now stopping about ½ the length and wrap forward. Repeat, stopping ¼ length and finish with a turn or two close to the bead. Tie off.
9. Wrap the mylar forward in overlapping turns and tie off behind the bead; remove the excess.
10. Bring the antron forward and secure with thread; making sure the antron is secure, cut off the excess, whip-finish the thread and coat all the red thread with head cement.
11. Coat the entire fly with clear nail polish; use the black polish to continue the black over the top of the bead. Finally, VERY CAREFULLY, put a small black dot in the centre of each side of the bead.
Notes:
1. I am fussy about the size of the fly; a paper reference of mine states that a pink fry is 30mm long. This was not observed in the 65,000 fish that I helped release 6 March; they were more like 25mm and that is the length I have chosen to copy. I measure the length of each fly as I tie.
2. I chose a hook length that will allow some tail to overhang and thus impart a little action to the overall effect.
3. The red thread, visible behind the bead head, represents the gills. I start the fly with black because some coloured Ultra threads appear to be prone to break; black does not.
4. Unflavoured floss, because I don’t want trout to reject the fly. [Mint? Says the trout, it doesn’t look like lamb!]. The floss is there to prepare a smooth, tapered base for the mylar.
5. I suppose that any shiny material could form the body, but static bag mylar is really shiny. In addition, pink fry have tiny scales with no parr marks, so they look like little silver bars in the water.