Last summer Mark and I did well with copper johns on the Loyalhanna fly project. We were on the lower stretch, parked along route 30 and fished down towards the bridge. Mark had several colors as I remember, copper and green. I have a green one left over and I thought I’d try and tie up a few for next summer.
To start with, I didn’t have a howto guide to follow so I knew my efforts had a high chance of being less than satisfactory. I don’t tie often enough to remember exactly how to tie this or that fly without having a book in front of me that tells me the order to add things to the hook and gives me tips etc.
My example copper john has a split tail (looks like some type of biot material), the body is thin green wire. It has a shell back over a peacock herl thorax with wings coming out the sides that look like they are made of fibers from a grizzly hackle. It has a copper bead head and the hook looks like it is a size 16 nymph 2XL, 2X.
I didn’t have any green wire but have copper wire that is a bit thicker that my example fly. I tied two for starters and am not satisfied with the result so far. The conical wire body is not even, my bead head is a bit too big I think. I tried two different fibers for the tail, black feather fibers and brown pheasant fibers and neither is split correctly. I’m not satisfied with the side wings either; they’re not as neat and evenly spaced as my example fly. That said, I still think these two beginner flies will catch fish, but I always think that…