The Body of the Bunny Leach Fly in Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"This is Jeff Wilkins for Expert Village. Now it's time to tie in the cross-cut strip. Now how you tie this in is crucial, because that's what determines the direction that the hair lays. We want all the hair on this fly, any, really any rabbit strip pattern for that matter. All the hair should angle toward the rear. So, in order to achieve that, when I tie it in, if I'm looking at it, I'm going to tie it in by the tip of the hide, but I'm going to but I'm going to let the fibers will point toward the tail. So with the tip of the hide and the fibers pointing toward the tail, I'm going to point the tip of the hide down towards the table, on my side of the hook. I'll tie it in with several tight turns. After tying it in, I'm going to wrap all the way up to the cone. Position the thread there. That's going to be the tie-off point for the rabbit strip. Now, before we go forward, again, I'll take a little head cement and just coat the shank of the hook. This will make the fly a little more durable than it might otherwise be. Now with this fly, don't be afraid to use a little extra cement, because it will actually soak a lot of cement up. I'm going to start wrapping forward, and as I make a wrap, I'm going to actually let the material overlap itself just a little bit and I as I do that, I?m going to stroke the hair, or the fur, backward, so that what we get is a fluffy body where all you see is hair and fur going toward the rear. And with the cone, I'm going to wrap all the way up against the back of it, and then hold the rabbit strip right against the edge of it. I'm going to hold with the right hand and tie-off with the left. I'm going to make about half dozen tight turns. Now, we can get rid of this excess rabbit strip. I'll cut pretty close to the cone. Be careful not to cut the thread."