Woven Body Damselfly Nymph

I like going to fly fishing shows.  Recently I attended the Annual Sowbug Roundup in Mountain Home, Arkansas. The show usually occurs in late May. I have demonstrated fly tying at this show for years.  It’s a chance to see old friends, make new friends, and invariably I learn something new.  This year was no exception.

Bruce Whittle was there demonstrating a Woven Body Damselfly Nymph. Bruce is a Veterinarian from Trenton, Missouri.   He has been tying for years but he hasn’t been to the Sowbug for a while. He specializes in tying woven body flies.He showed me a technique for imparting a swimming motion to the Damselfly Nymph.

Most Damselfly nymphs cling to vegetation waiting for prey to feed on. They can swim and frequently do to other vegetation or to the surface where they migrate to shore to hatch into an adult.  Their swimming motion is unusual. They propel themselves with lateral undulations of the abdomen much like a small minnow. Both Dave Whitlock in The Fly -Tyers Almanac and Gary Borger in Designing Trout Flies noted that adding motion to their Damselfly imitations increased the effectiveness of the flys.  Both  accomplished this by weighting the thorax and fishing with a striptease retrieve to cause the fly to undulate in the vertical plane with a jigging motion. Although this improved the effectiveness of the fly it still did not mimic the natural swimming motion of the natural fly.

Bruce solved this problem by adding a sequin to the fly just behind the eye of the hook.  With a slow retrieve the fly wobbles back and forth in the horizontal plane swimming much like a small minnow.

Here is my version of his fly, The Woven Body Damselfly.

For a  hook I am using a Lightning Strike SE13 size 10 hook. This is a scud/emerger hook with a curved shank. Place a sequin on the hook and place in the vice.

Sequins are round plastic disk with a hole in the middle, They are used as decorations for clothing. They have a slight curve with a concave side and convex side.  Place the concave side toward the eye. The ones Bruce gave me were about 1/4 inch in diameter and were clear. You can probably buy different sizes and colors.

Once the hook is in the vice, attach the thread, black 8-0, and build a small thread dam to keep the sequin from slipping over the hook eye.  Whip finish and cut off the tying thread.  Reattach the thread behind the sequin and repeat the process. At this point, again whip finish and trim the tying thread. Place a small drop of superglue on the thread wraps and set aside to dry. You can tie up a number of these ahead of time before proceeding to the next step.

The next step involves making the braided body.  This is the mot difficult part of making the fly, not because the technique is difficult but because the materials don’t want to cooperate. This is especially true using old arthritic hands.

Select an olive green marabou feather and stroke the fibers so that they are perpendicular to the stem. Attach a material clip.  With the clip attached, the feather should look like this.

Cut away the stem.

Slightly loosen the pressure on the clip and bunch the fibers together.  There may be other ways to do this but this method keeps the tips relatively aligned. Hold the ends tightly together and place in hackle pliers.

Stroke the fibers together gently to bring the tips together in a point. It helps to moisten you fingers. Use tying thread and place an over hand loop of thread around the tips about 3/8 inch from the end and tighten to complete the knot. Use a bodkin and add a very small  amount of super glue to the thread knot. Excess  glue will wick into the fibers ruining the action of the fly.  Cut off the ends of the thread knot.

To braid the body, place the body fibers in your vice at the knot previously tied.   Remove the hackle pliers and let the loose fibers hang down. Use a bodkin and divide the hanging fibers into roughly three equal size bundles. Bruce attached hackle pliers to each bundle to make the braiding easier. This worked well for me. Braide as if you were braiding hair.

Here is the finished body.

To complete the fly, place one of the hooks with the sequin in your vice. Attache the tying tread and wind to a point opposite the barb of the hook.  Attache the detached body using a soft loop. Tie down and trim the excess.

Tie in a small piece of turkey feather for a wing case dull side up.

Dub a dark olive thorax. Be sure to leave enough room for the eyes.

Pull the wing case over the thorax and tie down. Trim the excess fibers.

Attach dumbbell eyes, mono size medium, using figure of eight wraps. Place a small drop of superglue on the thread wraps.  Dub a short length of the tying thread with the same dubbing used for the thorax. Wrap the eye again in figure of eight wraps to form a wide head. The head of the Damselfly is often wider than the thorax. Whip finish to complete the fly.

In his book Designing Trout Flies, Gary Borger noted that for a fly to be effective it must meet several criteria. These include size, shape, color and movement. This fly checks off all four  boxes.

I have not fished this fly yet, but my good friend Michael Ames has caught a bluegill on one I tied for him. I am looking forward to fishing one this summer.

Thanks Bruce Whittle for showing me this flyand giving me some sequins to play with.

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