Tailwater and Spring Creek Favorites

If you live in an area that has spring creeks or tailwaters, you likely live in an area that has scuds. You also are likely to have a lot of midges in the streams, especially in fall, winter and spring. Unless you’re a dry fly purist, you’ll want to have a few of these goodies in you fly box.

Before we start on the flies, it would be a good idea to discuss dubbing a minute. Dubbing is what we call the stuff you twist around the thread to make fly bodies. We’ve already used some pre-packaged dubbing, but we haven’t created any of our own. It’s easy to create your own dubbing though. All you need is a coffee grinder or a blender and some fur or yarn. You might also find a little good dubbing in your clothes dryer screen after you wash a throw rug or wool coat or sweater. Just remember, cotton is not a good type of dubbing.

If you set out to make your own dubbing, first you need some raw materials. Macramé yarn, sparkle type knitting yarns, animal under furs, carpet yarns, poly yarn, dacron, antron and rayon all make good dubbing materials. For fine dubbing, the under fur of some animals is a good choice. Mink, beaver, muskrat, opossum and rabbit fit this category. For coarse dubbing, yarns (especially the course type), short hairs from the ears, feet and face of certain animals, antron, krystal flash and wool are good sources.

Experiment a little and you’ll open up a whole new arena of materials you can use in your tying. A good example of what I’m talking about is the scud pattern we’ll tie this week. The dubbing is a coarse macramé yarn I cut into short pieces (about 1/4 to 1/2 inch) and toss in the blender and mix with sparkle yarn from the fabric store. I keep adding yarns until I have the right color and texture blend for what I want to tie. Stop by a few yard sales for an old blender and some macramé or knitting yarns and give it a try.

On to this week’s flies.

Scuds are not flies but rather crustaceans of the amphipod family. Their closest relatives are beach fleas you might find on the coast somewhere, but they belong to the broad family of crustaceans that includes crayfish, lobsters, sowbugs, crabs and shrimp. They are often called freshwater shrimp because they resemble shrimp in many ways. If you care to count, (the fish never do) they have seven pairs of legs and swim with a short, jerky sideways motion.

Al Campbell - Thanks
Ron