Glo Bug

Materials

Hook

Mustad C67S, size 12 (Orvis); Daiichi 1520 heavy egg hook (Fly Fish Food); Gamakatsu C14S for steelhead and salmon, TMC 2457 or Daiichi 1130 for trout (MidCurrent)Our sizes 6 to 16. Short shank, wide gap, heavy wire.

Thread

Uni-Thread 6/0 orange (Orvis); GSP such as UNI Cord 8/0 or Veevus 100D white compresses the yarn harderLoren Williams and Cheech both reach for GSP because it lets you cinch the yarn without breaking.

Egg

Glo Bugs yarn (The Bug Shop), one strand about 1.5 in long for a sparse trout egg; two doubled strands for a big steelhead eggBug Shop colour names: Oregon Cheese, Apricot Supreme, Peachy King, Golden Nugget, Cream Delight, Chartreuse, Cerise or Pink Lady for hot pink, Steelhead Orange. McFly Foam can be substituted and rounds up more easily.

Yolkoptional

Micro Glo Bug yarn or a quarter strand of full yarn in a contrasting colour (red, Flame or Steelhead Orange), laid on top of the main bundleThe blood dot. Leave it out for a plain egg.

Beadoptional

Fluorescent orange tungsten bead, 7/64 in (2.8 mm)Cheech's weighted Good Egg variant; useful when fishing foam yarn, which floats.

Head cementoptional

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails or thin head cement on the thread wraps only

Steps

1. 1.Debarb the hook and mount it. Start the thread a little behind the eye and lay a firm thread base back to above the hook point, then bring it to the middle of the shank. A full base stops the egg spinning later.
2. 2.Cut a 1.5 in length of yarn. Use one strand for a sparse trout egg, or double two strands for a steelhead-sized egg. If you want a yolk, split a short piece of contrasting yarn into quarters and lay one quarter on top of the main bundle.
3. 3.Hold the bundle across the shank where the thread hangs and take one loose wrap over it. Now pull both yarn ends straight up so the bundle stands vertical around the thread, and cinch with two or three very tight wraps in exactly the same place.
4. 4.Take a couple of tight wraps immediately in front of the bundle and a couple behind it, then two or three around the base of the standing yarn, above the shank, the way you would post a parachute. This gathers the fibres into a tight stem.
5. 5.Whip finish right in front of the yarn with as few turns as possible, cut the thread, and touch a drop of cement to the wraps only.
6. 6.Gather every fibre of yarn, pull straight up under firm tension, and cut straight across in one clean snip at roughly half the diameter you want the finished egg to be. The yarn flares into a half sphere as soon as it is released.
7. 7.Roll and fluff the yarn between your fingertips, or tease it with a dubbing brush, until it forms a ball that surrounds the shank on every side.
8. 8.Check that the hook gap is clear. If fibres crowd the point, trim the underside a little rather than tying the next one denser.

From the tier

• The Orvis Learning Center tier stresses tying sparse so the yarn cannot block the hook gap and cost you hooksets; Loren Williams adds that a good egg should sink like the real thing, and that on pressured water he still leans on outrageous colour contrast.
• Michigan usage (Ted Kraimer, Current Works, Traverse City): in high or stained spring water fish dime-sized bright eggs; in clear water drop to natural size and colour, and in fall pair a large bright attractor with a realistic egg on a two-fly rig. For St. Marys River pink salmon and the trout behind them, The New Fly Fisher recommends Glo Bugs in sizes 10 and 12 from light yellow to white to fluorescent chartreuse depending on clarity.
• As Cheech of Fly Fish Food puts it, GSP thread and McFly Foam yarn "make your life easier": standard egg yarn resists compression, and a tungsten bead offsets the buoyancy of foam yarn.

Hook and hardware

• Short-shank heavy egg or scud hook1

  size 6 to 16; C14S for steelhead, C67S or TMC 2457 for trout · Gamakatsu or Mustad

  Hook

  1

Synthetics, flash and legs

• Glo Bugs yarn1 bag (15 ft) per colour

  Oregon Cheese, Apricot Supreme, Peachy King, Steelhead Orange, Chartreuse, Cerise, Cream Delight · The Bug Shop

  Egg

  1 bag (15 ft) per colour

• Micro Glo Bug yarn, contrasting colouroptional1 bag

  Flame or red · The Bug Shop

  Yolk

  1 bag

Thread and finish

• Tying thread1 spool

  6/0 orange, or GSP 50 to 100 denier white · Uni or Veevus

  Thread

  1 spool

• Head cementoptional1 bottle

  Hard as Nails or thin cement

  Head cement

  1 bottle

Other

• Tungsten beadoptional1 per fly

  7/64 in fluorescent orange

  Bead

  1 per fly