Sawyer's Killer Bugs

[william anderson 0]

Anyone else tying killer bugs for the upcoming season?

 

[flytire 0]

yes

[FlaFly 0]

Why so many? You lose a lot of flies? Break a lot of tippets?

[Adam Saarinen 0]

Yep, excellent grayling fly! But i tyed mine with a white glo bead at the eye & really funny thing is, when i showed them to my friend that works in my local fly shop, he said wow, where did you get those white glo beads? I laughed & pointed to where abouts in his shop! :-):-):-):-):-):-)

[william anderson 0]

FlaFly, I've tied these flies with a number of different yarns for a few years and recently went on a bender of trying to work out a particular technique and combinations of materials. Not that it matters, they all work and it's always fun to fish these. So I filled a box, and I share, so by the end of the season, there should be a nice dent in this group.

 

Adam, I can relate to that. Not unlike when you get a sweet cape and go to put it away to find it's the third one. =)

I have a buddy in Holland who uses those beads on a lot of his nymphs and swears by them. Killer Bugs are about as simple as a fly can get, but everyone still ties them a little differently.

 

William

[Chase Creek 0]

Nice lookin' herd, William.

[SilverCreek 0]

When I was tying at the this years (2015) Badger Fly Fishers Spring Opener last month I was able to see an actual card of Chadwicks 447 yarn.

 

You see the real deal and discussion of substitute yarns here:

 

http://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/general-fly-tying-discussions/361929-frank-sawyers-killer-bug-chadwick-477-a.html

[moucheur2003 0]

I am tying these for the first time, using several different substitute yarns. I posted a pic of some of them in the thread Silver Creek linked. What substitute yards did you use, William? Have you found a favorite, either for matching the original Chadwicks 477 or for fooling the most fish?

[william anderson 0]

The contemporary substitutes are easy to find. Especially the Jamieson Shetland Spindrift yarns. The original Chadwicks are around but much more difficult to source. I have a couple cards of the original and several samples from generous friends. There are differences even within the original 477 as there is with any yarn.

 

This link might be helpful. http://www.williamsfavorite.com/killer-bug-gallery.html (if sharing my sites link here is unacceptable please delete it. The link to my site in my signature is as useful.)

 

Thanks for the inquiry.

[SilverCreek 0]

I had never seen a card of Chadwick-477 until I was tying at the Badger Fly Fisher's Spring Opener 2 in February. I sat next to Phil Anderson from the Wisconsin Fly Fishing Forum and he had a card of Chadwick-477 that he got as part of sale of misc knitting yarns for ............ $8! Here I am examining the yarn and Phil with the yarn

Phil has spent several years finding a perfect match to Chadwick-477. Phil told me that he thought he had found a match to the original and indeed he has if you want to match the original killer bug pattern.

The yarn is "Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine", color #1214 ("Steel Cut Oats"), dye lot #2J9711. Phil Anderson sent me card of the dye lot #2J9711 which is identical to the yarn I ordered and received. Phil even compared the two yarns under UV light and they look identical.

You can read the original post here:

http://www.wisflyfishing.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1427852159

Here are his comparison photos:

A comparison of Chadwick's yarn (bottom) and UAF1214 (top) as each appears on a card:

The 5 flies on the left with the red tag are Chadwick and the 5 on the right are Berroca.

Here is another example of the color match. Three Killer Bugs tied with Chadwick's on the left and three with UAF1214 on the right:

Close-up views of Killer Bugs, both wet and dry:

[Crackaig 0]

Once found a card of this similar to the one shown. Tied one Killer Bug from it and framed it with the history, if anyone is in the Fly Fishing Shop, Bakewell, Derbyshire, you can see it. The card cost me £1, a real bargain.

 

Cheers,
C.

 

[EDIT] No its not for sale!

[william anderson 0]

Silver Creek, that's a great shot of you and Phil and I love the show series of pics showing his own exploration and mild obsession with the pattern. I have pics of KB's using real 477 and my results are quite different from Phil's and I hope maybe to reshoot them or just come to terms with the variations, but I would feel more confident in my conclusions if our results were closer. Maybe a matter of him sending me three of his using the real 477 and I would send him three, each of us using our standardized shooting set up and see if that's the issue or if it's something else. I feel the mire beginning to pull me in until this is resolved. Nothing in the world to do with fishing the flies, that's all resolved, just the fun of exploration and trial. Something I won't try to defend. =) I do have the "Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine", color #1214 ("Steel Cut Oats"), dye lot #2J9711 on the way.

 

w

[msbp 0]

I would love to make some of these. What length and size hooks are the best choice to make these with?

[william anderson 0]

msbp, I don't think you'll find a consensus on this question, but I would fish a few and see what your species prefer or think of them in terms of a local food item, or just find the tapered/topedo shape that you find appealing. They will all work and everyone tied them differently. Many tiers use a curved scud hook, not a bad choice as this is a good scud imitation. Others use a short straight shank hook when tying them squat and chubby as cress bug imitations for spring creeks. I like the slight curve, wide gap and large eye of this Orvis beadhead nymph hook. The large eye helps keep a tight turn of yarn at the eye from coming undone over the eye after a few fish. I used this hook for all the "comparative" versions to eliminate the variables so we could just look at the yarns/wire combinations. I do like this hook in general as it serves the purpose of most larva or other "food stuff" profiles. These can be deadly in a #10 or #8 nymph hook as a crane fly larva. Sawyer was imitating a small tannish gray shrimp in the Test, his local stream and used a variety of sizes, but all on a standard straight shank down eye hook. It's an adaptive pattern, so your hook choice is going to have to coincide with what's effective for you and what you imagine them to imitate.

 

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[moucheur2003 0]

Sawyer was imitating a small tannish gray shrimp in the Test, his local stream

The Test is in Hampshire. Sawyer was the riverkeeper on the Avon, in Wiltshire. He designed it to thin the grayling population in the Avon.