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| Fly recipe Hook: 4X Long Streamer Hook (Dai Riki #700) Thread: Brown Flat Wax Nylon Head: Large Gold Conehead Tail: Brown over Yellow Marabou Flash: Copper Krystal Flash Rib: Medium Gold Wire Body: Medium Brown Chennille Hackle: Grizzly Saddle Hackle Legs: Yellow Round Rubber Legs Tying instructions: Start the fly by slipping a conehead over the point of the hook and slide it all the way to the eye of the hook. Insert the hook into your vise and attach your thread to the hook. Some tyers like to add some lead weight onto the hook shank and then they slide it into the gap on the cone so that the cone does not move around on them. Once the thread is attached wrap the thread to the rear of the hook. Grab a piece of Yellow Marabou and a piece of Brown Marabou, you can either tie them on one at a time or both at the same time. The traditional tie of the JJ has Yellow marabou on the bottom with Brown Marabou on top. You can alternate the colors if you would like. One hint for working with marabou is to wet it with water, this makes the material easier to work with. I cut a foam sponge to size so that it will fit in an old coffee mug and then fill the mug with water. The foam will soak up the water and you can wet your fingers on the sponge. If you tip over the cup the foam will hold the water and keep you from having a mess on your tying bench. Once the marabou is secured to the hook add 4 to 6 strands of Krystal flash to each side of the tail. Once they are secured in place attach 4 to 6 more stands on each side so that you can pull them down the length of the body adding some flash to lateral line of the fly. Once this is in place tie in a piece of gold wire to use as a rib on the hackled portion of the fly. Next attach a piece of chennille to back of the hook. In the next step you will have to decide if you want two or three sets of legs. I like two sets of leg for the fly. You will want to divide the length of the hook shank into 3 sperate segments so that the legs are evenly spaced. Advance your thread up the hook shank about 1/3 of the way and attach your rubberlegs using a fiqure eight wrap around the legs. Once the first set of legs is attached wrap your thread up another third of the way and attach your second set of legs. After the second set of legs is secured to the hook advance your thread to the eye of the hook and wrap your chennille forward to front as well. You can use the chennille to help make the rubberlegs stick out in the right direction as you wrap the chennille forward. Once the chennille is all the way to the front of the fly tie it off and trim off the excess chennille. Grab your additional fibers of Krystal flash and pull them forward down the sides of the fly to represent the lateral line on most baitfish. Secure the flash and trim off any excess at the front of the fly. Select a grizzly hackle that you like and strip off the fluffy fibers at the base of the hackle stem. I like to leave about a half inch of bare stem expossed so that my first wrap of hackle is just stem, this allows you to make some adjustments to the way the hackle is wrapped and insure that the indiviual fibers are facing the right direction. Tie the hackle on at the eye of the hook and wrap the feather towards the rear using even spaces between each wrap. Once you get to the rear of the fly grab your gold wire and use it to tie off the hackle. Wrap the wire forward using even spaces and try not to capture to many of the individual fibers as you move forward. Once you reach the front of the hook tie off the wire and form a nice head of thread behind the conehead. Whip finish the fly and apply a small drop of head cement. Your legs and the tag end of the hackle will need to be trimmed from the fly and the best way to trim the rubberlegs is to pull them all together and trim them at once. This will help to keep them all the same length. Trim off the excess hackle at the rear as well and you have a fly that is ready to catch fish. Notes: The JJ Special is one of my go to streamer patterns and in the past several years has accounted for many of the fish I have caught on streamers. The fly was originated in Jackson Hole Wyoming and I believe that the guys at High Country flies were the ones who came up with this great pattern. Give it a try, it will become a fly that you will always want to have in your fly box. |
