TWISTED HERL EXTENDED BODY CDC MAYFLY in MICRO-PATTERNS.

By Agostino Roncallo

When I realized that the right way to make good artificial flies is pure simplicity, I understood also that the best material for simplicity is CDC.

With CDC I produced all the patterns of my book Magie in CDC, producing effective imitations of mayflies, caddis, stoneflies, Daddy Long Legs, ants, spiders and midges.

I believe small imitations are much more convincing to trout, and because they are so small there is no need to waste time giving them all the anatomical parts of small insects.

Once again all you need is simplicity of construction.

Take a bunch of CDC hackle fibres and twist them in your fingers holding both ends by holding resulting in a detached body.

Twisting yarn or other materials to make detached bodies is not my idea, but I think was the first to use this method on CDC hackle.

I called this procedure Twisted Herls, and it is illustrated in my book Magie in CDC. (Magie in CDC is unfortunately still only available in Italian. It is a brilliant, sumptuously illustrated book where the photographs are pretty well self explanatory. Published by FLYLINE , 2004)

Dressing

1) Use a grub hook size 24 or 28, and wrap the thread next to his eye.

2) Tear fibres off a wide CDC hackle using the lower part of the hackle. Twist them and turn then turn them back on themselves once rolled, so as to obtain an extended body.

3) Place the extended body on the hook shank, judging what length you want, and tie it on by the stem. Wrap ahead of the surplus fibres that will form the wings.

4) Make a few turns of thread around the base of the wings so as to elevate them.

But instead of  lifting up the wings, you can  divide them in half, placing them in a horizontal position to the stem,  with some wraps of mounting  thread in figure of-eight turns, giving the spent version of the imitation.

Inserting a hook through a detached body creates the imitation of a small worm.