Snow Day Fruit Salad

I woke up to a half foot of snow Friday morning, so the work I had planned to do outside was put on the back burner.  It was the perfect opportunity to catch up on some fly tying.  I  had committed to tying two dozen nymphs for a fly swap in my local TU chapter (Central Jersey Trout Unlimited) and this was as good a time as any to get it done.  I thought I would share with them a pattern that was a good producer for me this fall, the Fruit Salad.

Small dish of fruit salad.

I discovered the pattern on a fellow blogger's site back in October.  The fly, originally tied as a jig pattern, was designed for grayling and was featured on the blog North Country Angler . You can get the story on the fly's design and take a look at the original pattern here.  I tied and fished this on a size 16 jig hook and had a lot of success on late fall rainbows in my area.  I thought I would include it as my contribution to CJTU's fly swap.  Unfortunately,  I was a little short on jig hooks so I tried the pattern out on a standard nymph/wet hook (a Mustad 3906).  I'm happy with the way they came out.  I'll be looking forward to see if they performed as good as the jig version.

Fruit Salad on Mustad 3906

Fruit Salad tied as I fished it on a Umpqua C400BL jig hook

Pattern Recipe: (mine differs slightly from the original)

Hook:  Umpqua C400BL #16
Bead:  Faceted tungsten sized to hook
Thread:  Olive 70 denier UTC
Tail:  Two strands of glowbrite #1 (pink) over two strands of glowbrite #7 (orange)
Rib:  Fine black wire
Body:  Dark hares mask dubbing
Thorax:  Arizona synthetic dubbing natural peacock #59
Legs:  Dark dun CDC wound as a collar (I like keeping them on the long side)

This rainbow enjoyed a little fruit salad