Fly #4 in the Series
So far we have tied a series of streamer style flys, imitating aquatic life that resides below the surface. Today’s fly, the Bivisible, is a dry fly pattern, fished on the surface, the pinnacle of fly fishing dreams, a big trout sipping your fly and then dancing the battle to your net.
Tying the Bivisible
This fly consists of a hook, thread and two colors of hackle feathers. A short list, a simple fly, as long as you take a little care. Color variations are easy to accomplish with this fly, but keep the white, or at least the lightest feather color at the eye of the hook.
Difficulty Level: 2 out of 5. According to the Fly Tying Bible this is a 4 out 5 for tying difficulty. That rating is a little baffling. If you get the hang of working the hackle pliers, you can crank these flys out in under 5 minutes each.
Materials:
- dry fly hooks, #8 to #12. if you go to big, the trout ignore it. Too small and it’s very hard to get the second color of hackle feather onto the shaft.
- black and white or brown and white hackle feathers as well a hackle tip matching the darker feather
- black thread
After you pinch off all the hook barbs, place the hook in the vice. Starting just behind the eye, build up wraps of black thread all the way down the shank to opposite the hook point. Trim off and wrap in the hackle feather tip for the tail.
Select a dark hackle feather with the fibre length about twice that of the hook gap. Catch it in at the tail of the hook. Wind your tying thread 2/3 of the way back up the shaft towards the eye. Use your hackle pliers and wind the hackle to the thread in tight turns.
At the thread, tie off the dark hackle and catch in the butt of the light hackle feather. Wind your tying thread to the eye. Wrap the hackle using your pliers to the eye and use the tying thread to catch in the end of the light hackle feather.
Build up a head with more turns. Cast off and add head cement.
In the flybox, you can see a few color variations. Black main feather with tan color hackle feather. Black with white, and tan with white. In the bright light of a summer day, the black / tan will show much more contrast than the pictures suggest.
