polka palace party

While I was cleaning out my morbidly obese fly tying cabinet this morning, I came across an old altoids tin stuffed with a bunch of carp flies from an old fly swap. I typically keep the originals from a swap, so that I can clone them at the bench. The temptation to take a tin of swap flies down to the river after snatching them from the mailbox is too great; if you loose a hot fly, all you have left to recreate the pattern is your memory. For some of us folks, that's not something we'd like to rely on when we get back to the tying bench. We can hardly remember what we ate for breakfast, let alone recalling if that nymph body was dubbed with antron or angora.

I found a mega San Juan Worm pattern in that altoids tid; it was supersized. Tied with regular ultra chenille, it was about two inches long and tied with a 6mm gunmetal bead. Where the pattern gets interesting, is that the tyer wrapped some dubbing on the body, in behind the bead. Definitely a unique and intriguing technique. I tried identifying the original recipe and author of the fly, but it was to no avail. Never fail, I set out on my own mission to manufacture the roughfisher version.

[Editor: the creator of this wonderful pattern has been identified as none other than the brilliant Wendy Berrrell]




Size 6 O'Shaughnessy salt hook, two inches of ultra or micro chenille, 6mm gunmetal bead, glimmer flash chenille for the thorax (replaces the dubbed section). Rather than settle for the plain-jane tan colored brown, I took it upon myself to diversify my portfolio, and added a plethora of colors to the array. Taste the rainbow.

Dance to the worman polka, yip, yip, yip, yip! Dance to the worman polka!