Search the Community

After tying this PTN the other day I took it for a swim and noticed upon dropping it into a glass of water an unusually large air bubble was clinging to the body just under the thorax. At first I just thought is was from the initial dunking but it kept appearing dunk after dunk and stayed there. The back of this bead has a huge hole, bigger than any other beads I have and as a result I didn't get it all completely covered. From the rear you can see inside the bead. This is what was trapping air and giving me that great bubble. Once the fly was wet for awhile the bubbles stopped and I forgot about it……until I fished it Saturday. The water was still and gin clear without a cloud in the sky when I tied this on . When this thing hit the water for the first time that bubble formed, the sun caught it just right and I could not believe what I was seeing. The bubble lit up like a disco ball that could be seen from outer space!! My first thought was sparkle pupa X a million. I want bad to make this bubble happen every time. I tied one up with a 1mil gap between body and bead hoping to trap more air get a bigger, steadily reoccurring bubble… I got nuthin. Either the bead opening gap was too big with out a body material covering most of it or the lack of a body material left nothing for the air bubble to grab onto. I think the fine hairs on the pheasant tail is what holds the bubble initially and once the fibers are saturated the bubbles gone. Does this sound right? I'm still very new to tying and this is probably way too much to be thinking about at this stage but does anybody have any ideas as why the bubble stops forming and how to make it continuously appear?