An upside-down latex worm, which is easy to tie and very efficient in high and dirty water
Worm patterns tied with a skin of stretchy latex can be useful things to have in your fly box if you are heading out to a high and coloured river. Vladi Trzebunia’s Vladi Worm requires you to source a pack of pink condoms for the skin. Clarke Pearce’s Pork Poker is a latex skinned derivative of the Pig Sticker worm which is tied with red thread and red wire or red vinyl rib. The Pig in the name of these flies is piscine rather than porcine, referring to the intended quarry of big trout.
These and other worm patterns are tied with wraps of lead wire to add weight and the dark wire is disguised by covering with thread or floss. I prefer to use the added weight to give some visible internal structure feature to a worm rather than just being a dead weight. My 74-Worm has a metallic pink tungsten bead glowing inside the latex skin.
Metal bead chain is another way to add weight to flies. It’s usually used to add eyes to streamers and saltwater flies where it adds a little weight and turns the fly point up in the water. The Chain Worm is tied with a length of stainless-steel bead chain along the top of the hook. This serves two purposes, to flip the worm point up and to shine out through the translucent skin.
The version I use is about 3cm long, but the great thing about bead chain is, well, it’s a chain. You can cut it to any length you want with a pair of scissors (not your good ones) or pliers, and it comes in different sizes. So, you can easily scale up a Chain Worm to make a bigger heavier one should you need it.
Nick Thomas
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