Genner Bug
There's absolute nothing original or innovative about this fly. On the contrary: it's super simple and has probably been tied in a gazillion variations before. It was inspired by some nice mallard feathers brought to one of our fly-tying and fishing trips.
The name of this fly comes from the name of its birthplace, Genner Bugt or Genner Bay, in the southern part of Denmark. It was obvious to just shorten the name to become a bug.
There's absolute nothing original or innovative about it. On the contrary: it's super simple and has probably been tied in a gazillion variations before. Actually, when I posted a picture of it on our common internal web site where we put in all our trip reports and images, another good friend and GFF contributor, Ken Bonde Larsen, immediately commented that he had seen this fly on the web just days before.
No, when in comes to fly tying as so much else, there isn't much new under the sun.
Nevertheless this fly was invented, uninspired by anything I had seen, during a nights fly tying session after a fishing day at exactly Genner Bay. A good steak dinner, wine, coffee and a Tallisker or two, set the fantasy off, and the beautiful mallard feathers that Paul brought had to be used for something.
I remembered the Kevin Kleinman's Double K Reverse Spider, a radically different fly, sporting a dubbed body and a couple of forward pointing hackles, one of them mallard, and thought I'd do something as simple but a little more streamlined. I always loved mallard feathers, and Paul's stock of large and regular feathers called out for something with a long and sweeping hackle.
...as with so much else, there isn't much new under the sun.
So hook in the vise, a little weight, dubbing and a hackle, and voila! I actually liked what I saw. A few more tied with different colors of dubbing and thread, and I had a whole collection.
Step 1 - weight
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Step 2 - secure
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Step 3 - dub
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Step 4 - body
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Step 5 - mallard feather
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Step 6 - prepare the feather
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Step 7 - tie in the feather
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Step 8 - feather ready
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Step 9 - prepare for wrapping
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Step 10 - hackled
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Step 11 - pull back the barbs
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Step 12 - head
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Step 13 - a rough treatment
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Step 14 - varnish
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Step 15 - ready
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The next day I was fishing from the beach casting over a deep part of Genner Bay, and lo and behold! A fish liked the green variation, and the fly was baptized.
As I said: nothing that will shatter the fly tying community and nothing that will go down in history as a classic, but a fly that I have already produced more of and will happily tie on my tippet on many coming coastal trips. I have done a number of variations with different colors, and keeping the natural mallard and varying the thread and dubbing gives you an endless but very simple way of subtly changing the appearance of this fly.
Varying the color
It's not exactly rocket science, but here's an example of a copper/red variation.
Red thread
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Red dubbing
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And mallard
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The red variation
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Comments
THANKS A GREAT FLY,
THANKS A GREAT FLY, I just picked up some of These feathers on my riverbank and used them to bind a handfull of variations . They look great they jigg great and I will try them as perch flies
thight lines
pit
Thanks Martin:-)
Thanks Martin:-)