Week 5 of my step by steps of some of my favourite and most productive river flies, this week I’ll be tying you a Purple & CDC jig fly. With just a hint of purple UV dubbing on the thorax the Grayling go mad for it! this fly has brought me great success on them days when your stood scratching your head wondering what you’re doing wrong!

Without rambling on too much I’ll get underway, the materials I’m using this week are as below!

Hook – Fulling Mill Jig Force Size 16

Bead – Lathkill Fly Tying Silver Slotted Bead 3.0

Thread – Semperfli Nano Silk

Tail – Coq De Leon

Body – Pheasant Tail Dyed Black

Rib – Semperfli Bright Silver Wire

Hackle – CDC feather

Thorax – Purple UV Dubbing

See below my tying sequence to how I tie this fly!

Step 1 – place the bead on the hook and pop the hook in the vice.

Step 2 – Start your thread and secure the bead so it doesn’t move around the hook. when secure, trim away the waste piece of thread.

Step 3 – take your thread down the hook towards the bend, take a bunch of Coq De Leon fibres and tie them in, I like to use around 5/6 fibres if your unsure! when you’re happy trim away the waste pieces of tail fibres.

Step 4 – grab a piece of silver wire and tie in, once tied In I like to just tidy up the body of the fly with the thread to make a nice smooth tapered body to fly fly before adding the body material.

Step 5 – when your happy with that take your pheasant tail. To achieve a nice slim looking body I use no more than 3 fibres. Catch in at the tips.

Step 6 – at this point before winding up the pheasant tail to maximise the security of the fly add a dab of varnish over the hook shank, then wrap the fibres around the hook, stopping a couple of mm behind the bead. Trim away the waste pieces

Step 7 – take your wire and take even open turns up towards the bead, on a fly like this I would expect to make around 5/6 turns to make the rib. Tie off the wire but Don’t cut it, just wiggle it about and it will just fall off! This will save your nice sharp scissors from becoming blunt!

Step 8 – to make the nice buggy cdc collar there are a few ways to achieve this. You can do it with tools however I like to do it all manually, holding the cdc at the tip and brushing back to get it where you’ll tie it in. It should look something like this below!

Step 9 – tie in the cdc feather at the point in which you have exposed the core of the feather. securing it with tight thread wraps. When happy, trim away the tips of the feather

Step 10 – take your hackle pliers and carefully wind the cdc feather around the hook cratering a nice buggy looking fly. In terms of how many turns to take typically make 2 full turns and then tie off. Trim away the waste piece of CDC

Step 11 – take a small pinch of purple UV dubbing, not too much just a little bit to add that little bit of flash to the fly, dub on to the thread and dub it round just behind the eye.

The finished fly –

This is definitely a fly pattern I always have in my box when out targeting the grayling. I tie it in sizes 14 down to 18 too! Have a go at tying it your self and test it out on some grayling near you!

Keep safe and tight lines!