How to make and paint heads for Dog Nobblers

The Dog Nobbler fly was designed by British all round angler Trevor Housby, after inspiration from American spin fishermen using ultralight tackle and small jigs. That happened way back in the 70’s.
Trevor converted the small jigs, to small streamer flies (lures in UK) that were useful on a fly rod. He also named the fly. Apparently the large reservoir rainbows were called dogs, and the fly nobbled (lured) those dogs.
I learned about these cool lures from my late friend Jens Ploug Hansen, who brought a selection of Trevors original Dog Nobblers home to Denmark after fishing with Trevor.
This is one of the world’s most effective streamer flies for large rainbows and browns – and I have had great success using it for char and perch as well.
Needless to say, it’s great for panfish, bass and other species as well.
In this video I will show you how I make and paint the heads on these flies.

First I bend the front part of a standard streamer hook slightly. Then I crimp a (lead free) split shot around the shank. Adding a drop of super glue, before closing the gap with a pair of pliers.

If the pliers make unwanted dings in the head, I use a teaspoon to smoothen out the heads.

After that I add a base coating of matt white hobby paint. And let it dry on the rotating fly dryer.

Then I add the next layer, in the colour I want (black, red, green, yellow, brown or whatever). And it goes back on the spinning wheel.

I use matchsticks sharpened to different sizes (using a scalpel) for the eyes.

First drop typically yellow for the eye, and next drop black for the pupil. I let the different layers of paint dry the recommended time before adding the next (typically 4 to 6 hours).

So it takes a bit time to make these heads, but in my opinion there are much more interesting than a tungsten bead head. Here are a bunch of heads ready for tying. Lots of opportunity to match the tying materials to the different head colours.

You might also want to check out my other videos on Dog Noblers and Mini Jigs. Especially the underwater action clips. These flies swim, wiggle and dart!

Cheers, Ulla and Michael

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