#32 Pheasantless PTN (Beadhead)

Bob's notes

Pheasantless PTN (Beadhead) #32

Hans Weilenmann

ANTICIPATION
When I first received the invitation from Hans to join his "Small Fly Page" experiment, I had no idea how many people were involved, who was involved, or what was involved. I had a general sense that a #32 hook was small, but I had no idea how small. Then he posted a scan of the hook next to some pretty darn small Vince Marinaro midge hooks and a US dime. I held a dime up to my display only to find to my chagrin that the image was quite a bit larger than lifesize. That #32 hooks were not small, they were miniscule!

Then I saw a list of participants. A veritable who's who of fly tying, some online and some not. Holy smokes!!

My initial curiosity had turned into a full fledged panic. I had never tied anything smaller than a #22 TMC101, and only a few of those. I'm not what you would consider a small fly "afficionado" by any means. What was I getting myself into?!?

Fortunately for me, I came down with a nasty case of bronchitis and had something else to fret about for awhile, so my panic eventually subsided.

ARRIVAL
Just yesterday, I arrived home to find a letter from Denver. Knowing that Ms. Kreutzer was acting as proxy for Hans, I figured this was the hook delivery. I opened the letter to find ..... a letter.

I looked in the envelope. No hook.

"Oh no", I groan.

But then, I *CAREFULLY* unfolded the envelope over my counter, fully expecting the hook to fall free and get lost forever in my kitchen, but then I notice a tiny little scrap of paper with a piece of tape over the top and the mystery was revealed. Not wanting to remove the hook until necessary, I held the letter up to my kitchen light, trying to see the actual hook. There it is. I show it to my wife, and she is now starting to think we're all nuts.

GETTING READY
That evening, after finishing up some other swap flies, I dig out my little Thompson A vise with the midge jaws. If ever my midge jaws would come in handy, I figured now is the time. Turns out I finally tied the fly on my Renzetti - but that's beside the point.

I get out a razor blade and surgically remove the paper covering the hook in Hans' letter. For better or worse (I haven't decided yet), my small scissors have slightly magnetic tips, so I touched them to the hook and removed it from it's protective sheath. I showed it to my wife and she remarks "What the heck are you going to do with that?!?" and I reply "I have no idea."

Carefully, I seat the hook in the jaws of my trusty Tommy and take a deep breath.

TYING
My first hurdle was a choice of thread. Since the smallest thread I have on hand is Uni 8/0, and that looks like Pearsall's Stout floss when held against the little hook, I knew tying thread was not an option. Somewhere tucked in my "Bins 'o Stuff" I had stashed a couple spools of Lagartun gold and silver wire - XX Fine. I recall this stuff being *REALLY* thin, so out to the garage I go.

I stripped off a good foot of wire to work with and found I could start a jam knot fairly easily. Using a pair of Thompson duplex hackle pliers to hold the wire when I needed both hands free was a big help.

PLAN A
Since I could not use the 8/0 thread as a tying thread, I figured I could use it as a body material. My first thought was to tie a soft hackle type fly, using the wire as thread and ribbing, the 8/0 thread as the body, and a turn of marabou as the hackle.

That didn't work. For one thing, I had a hard time finding marabou that didn't have barbules too long. For another, when I wrapped a single marabou barbs, it would break every time. I scrapped the soft hackle idea and thought I'd go with a nymph of some sort.

PLAN B
What better nymph to tie than a pheasant tail? Since I'm already using wire as the tying thread, it was the perfect candidate. "Honey, I shrunk Frank Sawyer".

So I marched out to the garage and plucked a few barbs from my pheasant tail, as well as a few from a blue and gold Macaw tail, and a couple other odds and ends.

I thought the Macaw would be exotic and different, and I tried that first, but it was immediately apparent that it was too thick for the hook and I could get but one or two wraps and no "fuzzies". Next I tried the ringneck pheasant tail barb. That worked, and I actually finished a fly with a body of a single pheasant tail barb with a gold wire rib and a two turn wire head.

"Ah ha!!!!!" I thought. I'm done.

It was late by then, so I put the fly away in a box to be sent to Hans and I went to bed.

But I couldn't sleep. I kept tossing and turning. I was mentally going over the note I was going to send to Hans describing what I had tied and how I tied it. I got to thinking how Sawyer's PTN had at least a tail, and it started to bug me. Could I really leave it at that?

10pm quickly turned to 1am and it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to sleep, so I went downstairs and got out the fly and tools and a razor blade. Cutting through that wire was a challenge, and I was afraid I was going to ruin the hook, but finally I got the hook bare and was ready to try again.

PLAN C
What to use as a tail material? Certainly not pheasant tail, as that would be far too bulky. I happened to spy a spool of antron yarn and it struck me that I had a medium brown spool out in my tubs, so off I go again to the garage to retrieve it.

Removing two (or three, I couldn't quite see) Antron fibers from a length of yarn, I doubled them around the wire and tied them in. I also switched from pheasant tail, which was a bit bulky for that hook, to turkey marabou. Actually, it wasn't the marabou, but the flat stuff near the tip of a long mottled marabou feather. Not very fluffy, very fine, and quite fuzzy. I clipped three barbs of this feux-marabou and tied them in by the butts.

As I wound my wire thread down the hook shank, I wrapped over the Antron, leaving the tag extending beyond the hook bend to be clipped later. I then twisted the three strands of feux-marabou into a fuzzy rope and gently wrapped them back to the bend. I counter wrapped my thread through the fuzz to both tie it down and form a rib.

Then, being a little silly at such an unGodly hour, I decided instead of doing a simple two turn whip finish with the wire which would leave a tiny head up front, I thought I'd wind a big fat ball of wire and call the nymph a bead head. So it's not funny - sue me. I then trimmed the tail to length and the fly was done.

Thus concludes the story of the "Pheasantless PTN (Bead Head), size 32".

Materials for #32 Pheasantless PTN

Hook: Mustad 577 #32
Thread: Lagartun XX-Fine gold wire
Tail: Brown antron, four or five strands
Body: Turkey marabou-ish
Rib: Gold wire
Head: Gold wire wrapped to "bead" shape

Tier info

Bob Petti - Currently living in Endicott, NY which is located along the NY/PA border about an hour West of the Catskills. There's a tremendous diversity of fishing within day trip range of my home, so my tying habits are a bit on the eclectic side. My interests include steelhead and salmon wet flies, trout flies and streamers, and bass bugs.