i'm going to tie the mouse pattern that that i came up with and i call it the hantavirus
it's a pretty effective fly probably the the great attributes of it is is that it's
mostly synthetic so it doesn't absorb any water i like to use a kind of a light wire
partridge hook salt water shrimp tie it in various sizes you can you can kind of
match your hatch if you will as far as colors and stuff go the other material that i'll be using is
just a rubber bracelet material you can find this like a walmart or something
this is this is a pretty important feature in this pattern because
one of the problems with a lot of mouse patterns is is the tail material has a tendency to to wrap
around the shank of the hook and that's what makes this material nice is because
it may get wrapped under there but it'll kick itself back out and so it's it's very effective
the other material that i'm going to use as as the hair and the underbelly is a large crystal hackle
in this particular case i'm going to be tying a brown mouse and then for the
legs on it i'm going to use magnum predator grizzly bar root beer colored rubber legs
this is five millimeter foam you can get it at a craft store or at your local fly shop if you're
going to tie a bunch of these you know i just buy it in big sheets cut it with a fabric roller
you know i've kind of figured out over time the width that i need to have to make this pattern
work and as i tie this fly you know i'll go through some of the little idiosyncrasies of
of creating this flying to get your consistency the other thing that i'm going to add at the very
end is a little bit of dyed chocolate browned arctic fox fur and it it just adds a little
bit more realism to to the pattern i like to use a flat wax nylon thread when i tie this
you know there's probably smaller diameter threads that you can get out there but what i like about
this and uh is that it's strong and it lays down flat when you wind it on um you you know if you
don't have much experience with it you you might have a little bit of problem getting some build
up of thread so you know that's my only warning if you will so i'm going to place the hook in
first thing i'm going to add in is the tail
i run my thread start it in the middle of the shank and run it to about the point of the hook
then i'm going to tie in the tail material and i just want to give this a stretch
as i tie it in and i'm going to want to check this so i'm going to go ahead and cut this tail
ordinarily i i run a long piece of this material and i just run it back through
the spring and and it stays out of the way um the next material that i'm gonna
going to work with is this foam and i make several cuts on this and i wind up with a
tapered point and it's you know not absolutely critical that they be even but it doesn't hurt
leave kind of a square you don't want necessarily a sharp point here
so i'm going to add this loctite glue to the to the shank of the hook
and run my thread forward get it on there and i'm going to give myself a little bit of room
behind the eye of this if there's uh if you're going to run into a problem tying this pattern
it's going to be crowding the eye it might take you two or three flies to to really learn
the little tricks of of not crowding that eye and as i come back throughout the body winding
this i'm just making sure that my flat that my thread stays flat and i'm gonna i'm gonna
check and make sure that i run this foam all the way back to where the tail material was tied in
once i've done that and i can't see any thread where the where the tail is tied in i'll go ahead
and give myself plenty of room this stuff's fairly cheap when you buy it at a craft store
so i don't mind having a little bit of waste there the other thing is is i'm going to use
that excess to help build the head and use it as a handle so i'm going to cross back over these wraps
so you should wind up with kind of a diamond appearance if you will across the back i don't
want to mash this down i want i want to leave that foam in there as much as possible because
it'll you know in theory it should help you with your floatability so i'm going to take some of
this crystal hackle and i like the the large because the the nap on it is longer it comes in
comes in large and then small i'm going to eventually wind up trimming quite a
little of this off but if you use the small you may not be able to fill that body out
like you want to so i tie it in just catching it right at the back end in spite of this being
a pretty good size fly i'm still trying to reduce the bulk of this and i'm not going to get
too wild with with tightening that thread down because like i said i want to keep that
that air in that foam as much as possible so when you wind this this this crystal hackle has
the hackle on one side of the thread so you can you can do yourself a favor and line that
up and you don't have to make successive wraps you can build this up and you can kind of you can kind
of hop forward a little bit but you just want to keep brushing and stroking those fibers back
as you wind that makes a nice smooth appearance on the belly of this fly
and again you don't want to you don't want to wind this all the way up to the eye
because that's a that's a potential crowding point so once i have that there i just
trim that out and i'll go ahead and take a brush you can use an old toothbrush or they sell
brushes you know fly shops and stuff like that just want to pick up all that
nap that i can out of that so once i've got that picked up and out of the way
i'll come in here and the next feature that i'm going to going to make is the neck on this fly
so i've got this crystal hackle brushed out i'm going to fan that all out
and i want kind of a flat spot with with no hackle running down the spine of this mouse
so i'm going to just put a line of loctite glue right down the spine
and it doesn't take a lot of this but here's here's the real trick of this pattern once you
once you have that lock tied in you lift this foam up and you start stretching it
and you stretch it forward check make sure that all that fiber is back and you just
pinch that and hang on to it for a second gives that glue a chance to set into that
foam a little bit and if you notice i just took two wraps there i didn't get too carried away
i just let it kind of get settled in and once it's it's there then i just mash this down between my
thumb and forefinger and it kind of flattens that back out on that on that mouse so i've i've
already got a couple wraps and i'm going to check and see where i'm at up here i want to make sure
that i have plenty of room to finish this out so i know that i can come forward a little bit
and still not crowd anything these are your safety wraps there now i can get part of that out of the
way and i'll just snip it off come back through here and kind of fan that out roll it over on
its belly and see if if i like what i've done here make sure that i didn't spill a bunch of glue by
having too much excess on there and pinch it down one thing about the loctite is is as long as you
don't touch it with your hands it'll dry clear if you touch it with your hands
the oils will cause it to turn white so you have to be careful about that kind of stuff
do i think it matters as far as catching a fish goes probably not so much but if you're if you're
going to try to sell this fly you want it to have a nice crisp clean professional appearance so
the next thing that i need to do and is is get some rubber legs on this
and these are the magnum barred legs uh i'm going to take a pair of them and what's important here
is is that i'm going to double these back and i'm going to make sure that they're they're over
over length if you will they're going to stretch way back i'm i'm not worried about that i'm going
to trim those off later on when i finish this fly i much rather have them short or long than short
you know i'll make it i'll make them fit into the perspective of this whole fly so once those are
tied in you can see how long i've left those when i finish this i'll i'll clean them up
and get them trimmed down to size okay the next thing i'm going to do is come back forward here
and get this get this thread moved to the to the throat area
i'm going to turn this completely over on its belly
and take just a little dab of this arctic fox it doesn't take very much
and i'm just going to lay it lay it in there
and i'm just going to just let it find itself
make sure that i don't pick up a leg and get a bunch of hair trapped underneath there and if i
like the looks of it i'll just brush it back out of the way and tie it in a couple little
wraps behind it makes it makes that throat stand up just a little bit to where i can trim that off
and now i'll i'll go ahead and tie that thread down so once i've done that the the easiest way
to do this is just take your your loctite glue and just put a line of glue right down your thread
instead of taking the glue and and possibly having a wreck by squeezing it in there i'm
just going to put a line of it on the thread and that way i can put it exactly where i want it
i'm going to come around like that roll it back up get those legs pulled around where i want them
takes a little adjustment in your vise sometimes to get this where you want it
catch it with the whip finisher and brush everything back out of the way five or six wraps
suck it down just trace your thread right back up and don't make a snip just run it in so now this
is the head needs to be cut so basically with the exception of the tail i'm going to make this fly
into thirds you know here's the back third middle third and so now here comes the head is is the
front third and i'm going to come in back of these of this area from the neck and i'm
not going to try to make it come to a point i want that to be kind of squared off you
know so if you don't come out exactly even you can come back in and reset that line
so you you don't want it necessarily to be a point just a little bit squared off so let's talk
a little bit about these legs what are we what do we expect them to do we want those to flutter
and and be peddling if you will because if you know anything about mice they're not very
good swimmers um you know they're not a baby muskrat they're not a baby beaver they're you
know they're land mammals so even though they know how to swim they're not strong swimmers
so what are we going to do with this with this crystal hackle now that we have everything there
a step that i would normally take would be to trim this off before i put the legs on so i don't
accidentally trim a leg off but in this case i'll just come in here and clean them up a little bit
when it's finished what what i'm looking for is is for this crystal hackle material to all blend in
and come back and form kind of a little v around this tail so as this pattern is wet and you're
looking at it from the underside this comes back and takes away this hard edge of this foam so it
makes it a fine point if you will where the base of the tail would be but that's the haunted virus
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