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Article Originally Published in Volume 8 Issue 4
Just For Kids:
Tying The Brown Bivisble
By Chris Marshall
Photos by Nick Pujic
With summer now a memory and fall
rapidly giving way to winter, it’s a good time to shift focus
from fishing to tying flies—unless you’re lucky enough to live
on the West Coast, which doesn’t do winter. In past
issues, we’ve provided instructions for tying a number of |
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simple, effective fly patterns. However, all of these have
been “wet” flies, which are fished sunk beneath the surface.
In this issue, we’re going to make a start on tying dry flies,
which are fished floating on the surface.
There’s a popular notion that dry flies are much harder to tie
than wet flies. This is not really the case, for there are a
number of simple dry fly patterns which are not much more
difficult to tie than the simple wet patterns we’ve described
previously. The only difference is that the dry patterns, take
a bit more care and precision, mainly in winding the hackle.
One of these is the Bivisible. What makes it easy to tie, is
that it consists of just a tail and a couple of hackle
feathers wound on the shank of the hook, and the techniques
for tying it are essentially the same as those you used for
the Wooly Bugger.
Bivisibles are so called because they have a white hackle
wound ahead of the coloured main hackle. This feature makes it
easier for the fly fisher to see them on the water. The bodies
can be tied in a variety of colours, with the most common
being brown, followed by black, grey, and grizzly.
Brown Bivisible Recipe
Thread: Waxed 6/0. Use 8/0 if you can manage without breaking
it.
Hook: Standard dry fly such as Mustad # , size #10 - #16.
Tail: Tuft of brown dry fly hackle fibres.
Hackle: Brown dry fly on rear 2/3, with white dry fly on the
rest of the shank.
Tying Steps
1. Place the hook firmly in the vise and anchor the thread
just ahead of the bend.
2. Select a bunch of hackle fibres for the tail and tie them
in with three or four wraps of thread on the top of the hook
shank. They should extend out beyond the bend of the hook to
match the length of the hook shank. Let the bobbin hang,
keeping the wraps in place and trim the excess of the butt end
of the fibres behind the wraps.
3. Select a brown dry fly hackle feather and pull away all the
webby bits from the thick end of the stem.
4. Tie the feather in by the tip, shiny side up, on top of the
wraps you used to anchor the tail fibres.
5. Grasp the stem of the feather with hackle pliers and
carefully wind it along the shank in tightly-packed turns. The
key here is to keep the winds as close as possible to each
other without squashing the fibres of the previous wrap.
You’ll most likely find this a little tricky at first, but
you’ll find it will become increasingly easier the more you
practice.
6. Once you’ve covered 2/3 of the hook shank make three or
four wraps over the stem to anchor it.
7. Cut off the excess.
8. Now select a white dry fly hackle feather and strip away
all the webby bits as you did for the brown hackle. Anchor it
with three to four wraps tightly against where the brown
hackle finishes. Now repeat the process you followed with the
brown hackle. You should finish the turns just behind the eye
of the hook, leaving enough space for the head. This should be
a much smaller space than you left for the head on the wet
flies you’ve tied, as the head of the Bivisible is tiny—just
enough to tie of the thread securely.
9. Make about six turns of thread for the head and tie it off.
You can use four or five half hitches for this, although a
whip finish is far superior—and we’ll demonstrate how to do
this in the next issue of The Canadian Fly Fisher. It’s best
to secure your half hitches with a small drop of head cement,
but this is not necessary with a whip finish.
Fishing Notes
Bivisibles belong to the category of dry flies called
“attractors”. This is because, rather than precisely imitating
specific insects, they suggest a variety of creatures which
fish like to eat. This means they are extremely versatile. You
can use big ones for smallmouth bass and panfish, or to for
casting to places where large brown rout lurk.
Most of the time, you’ll use them to cast to likely looking
places when there is no hatch and no fish are rising. However,
they’ll work during a caddis hatch, as the bushy hackle can
suggest a fly buzzing on or just above the surface.
You can fish Bivisibles by casting them up or across the
current and allowing them to dead drift downstream. However,
they can be very effective cast across and downstream and
skated across the current, especially when there are caddis
flies around.
Once you’ve got the hang of the Brown Bivisible, try using
other colours, such as black, grey, furnace or grizzly for the
rear end.
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