Kick the grass, shake the bushes. September is the month of the Daddy-Long-Legs. Or ‘Crane Fly’, as entomologists choose to name it. Why ‘crane’?
With all those dangly legs and that big fat body strapped on a large hook, you might need a crane to lift it out of the vice?
Daddies are landlubbers and can’t swim. But they don’t sink. And neither should your imitation. To ensure it stays afloat, the body of the Foam Ranger is a strip of cell-foam that extends beyond the hook bend. It also points over the weighty hook eye where so often the sinking begins.
This way your Daddy won’t be legging it down under in a hurry.
Vice a #12 Fulling Mill Nymph Special (31710)
Tie your own:
- Tie brown Uni-Thread 8/0 a third the way down from the eye
- Here, bind in a strip of brown closed-cell foam clipped to body length and size of natural. Allow to extend over bend. Don’t clip foam at head
- Tie a knot in eight brown pheasant tail fibres for legs. Tie in as a bunch, – along with two small brown grizzle hackles as wings, sticking out from the side, pointing backwards to the bend
- Tie on three turns of a brown grizzle hackle at the head. Secure. Clip excess
- Pull remaining foam over wings, hackle, and legs to divide them four-a- side
- Whip finish. Varnish