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This fly harkens back to my good buddy and fly fishing English professor Joe Cambridge.  He always used it for the landlocked salmon runs here in the upstate NY’s finger lakes region.  It’s meant to imitate a sawbelly or alewife, a species of baitfish common to these parts.   I’ve had good success with it for stream trout, bass, and even pike and lake trout in larger sizes.

Materials List

Hook:  #10-1/0 3x streamer hook
Thread: gray 6/0
Tail: flashabou
Body: flashabou
Underwing: flashabou
Middlewing: gray bucktail
Wing Topping: peaock herl
Throat: red saddle hackle fibers
Cheeks: small mallard flank feathers
Eyes: 3D stick on eyes

Ready? 

Step 1

Insert the hook into the vise and coat it with thread.

Step 2

Take a quite long length of flashabou and tie in a
short tail at the rear.  Leave it so most of it is
laying back over the hook shank towards the front.

Step 3

Now take the part laying over the shank and fold it
back over the tail tying it down.  Make it look like
you have two tails, a short on and a long one

Step 5

Wrap the body with the flashabou.  It doesn’t hurt to
put a little head cement or nail polish on the body
once you’ve wrapped it.  That just makes it a little tougher.

Step 6

Now again kind of like before, fold the remaining
flashabou back over the hook and tie it down making a
flashabou wing.  Trim it off even, or almost even with
the tail. 

Step 7

Select a sparse clump of bucktail and tie it in so
it's about as long as the flashabou.

Step 8

Select a few peacock herl stands and tie them in on
top.  Make them about the same length as the bucktail. 

 Step a9

In selecting the feathers for the cheeks make sure you
get the smaller sized flank feathers.  You can make
the bigger sizes work.  However it's easier and just
looks better with the smaller ones.

Step b9

Prep the feathers by stripping off a lot of the under
fluff and garbage from the stem. 

Step 9

Set the feather up onto the fly and measure.  If it
looks too big strip some more fibers off.  Then
position it and take a few loose wraps.  Then very
carefully pull the feather by the stem so it begins to
move up towards the eye.  Wrap a couple more times.

Step 10

Once you have it positioned how you want it, wrap down
good and tight securing the feather.  Repeat the
process on the other side.

Step 10a

Just a reference on how the feathers should look when
they’re secured down.

Step 11

Select a small bunch of red hackle fibers and tie them
in for the throat.  Afterwards you can build a head,
whip finish, and cement.

Step 12

A word about gluing eyes.  They come with sticky stuff
already on them, but 99% of the time they fall off.
You can use superglue but if you make a mistake you
could possibly glue your fingers together or ruin the
fly.  So I use fletch tite.  It is tough, nasty stuff!
 It’s nice and pliable when first squeezed out so
unlike superglue you have time to work.  However when
it dries you basically have to rip the fly apart to
get the eyes off.  Which to me is a good thing cause I
don’t want them coming off in the first place.

Step 13

Something you can do to make things a little easier is
apply the eyes with your bodkin.  Scrap the eyes off
the paper they come on with the bodkin and then apply
the fletch tite right onto the eye; then stick the eye
where you want.   That makes it easy and you haven’t
got any on your hands. 

The finished fly!!! 

And from the front...

Max Root ©2008

About the Author... Max Root, Who uses the handle “Flashback Max,” grew up and still resides in the tiny Upstate, NY town of Scott; just a hop, skip, and a jump from Skaneateles lake. Max’s tying and fishing preferences are as varied as the waters that are available to anglers of the Fingerlakes region. He loves fishing for stream trout, but could never say no to a day of popper fishing for smallmouths, but then again the salmon rivers only an hour away. Max has been involved in fly fishing for over 20 years and tying for just about that long.