The Tail of the Bunny Leach Fly in Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"This is Jeff Wilkins for Expert Village. The tail was a piece of rabbit strip, or zonker strip, that's what it?s normally called. I cut a piece. I'm going to cut according the hide, not the hair. I'm going to cut a piece from the hide that's about as long as the distance from the hook eye to the hook bends. So, we'll cut a piece off. The hide is just about like leather. Let's stroke it back, get rid of any loose hair that's there. Now, we're going to tie so that the hide faces down, hair faces up. I'm going to angle the hide toward me a little bit. Come around the material with a loose wrap. Do that twice, three times and I'll begin to apply pressure as I go forward, wrapping over the material, and then, once I wrap forward, I'm going to return to the original tie-in point, which is just above the hook barb. Right here. Now, just for some insurance, I'll put another drop of cement. That's a thick piece of leather-like hide, so we want to make sure that it's secure. That cement will help take care of that. Now the next step is to add a little bit of flash. We want to have some sparkle to this fly, so we're going to take about three strands of pearl flashabu. Pearl is a great color. It will match most colors. I'm going to take, again, about three or four strands, and I'll lay these strands on the side of the hook shank, on my side first. I'm going to let the pearl flashabu stick back about as long, maybe slightly longer than the tail. Hold them on the side, my side of the hook shank and we'll come around them about three or four turns. That way what we have is the three or four strands of flashabu that lay alongside the tail. The next step is I'm going to let the excess hang out here over the hook eye. I'll wrap up about just beyond the hook point, and I'm going to double this left-over material back alongside of the fly. That will save me a step in having to cut two different sections, and it just so happens the length on that one just about perfect. I'm going to let the come back to the tip end of the tail."