Weekly Fly Tying Tutorial – Olive Zonker

The Olive Zonker is a class rabbit fur streamer pattern that has fallen out of use a bit in the past twenty or so years. That said, it’s still a very effective pattern. This tutorial teaches how to tie the best version for Yellowstone Country: a gold body, an underbody designed to invert the fly for less snags, and an olive wing. Two methods of constructing the body are presented in the video, a lightweight version and a heavy version. The basic recipe given here can be used to tie the fly in whatever colors you like.

 

In the Yellowstone area, we tend to fish Zonkers on floating lines under strike indicators. Sometimes we dead-drift these flies. Sometimes we twitch them a bit with a tighter line and lots of mending. Either way, the goal is to drift the fly directly into a hungry brown trout’s face. This method works best in July and August adjacent to turbulent seams where the big boys sit to beat the meat.

Skinny Timmy BWO – Recipe

Hook: #2–8 3XL nymph/streamer. Here, #6

Thread: 6/0, here olive.

Underbody Option #1: .035 lead wire folded into a teardrop shape and secured at the rear of the hook shank.

Underbody Option #2: 2-3 tungsten beads threaded onto 49-strand steel wire, with the largest bead furthest forward, and with the wire secured atop the hook shank at front or back.

Body: Mylar tubing, here medium gold.

Wing: Rabbit fur strip. Use Magnum on #2 and standard on #4–8. Here, olive variant.

Throat: Pinch of rabbit fur used for the wing.

Flash: 3–6 strands of Krystal Flash, here 5 strands of pearl.

Head & Eyes: Tying thread and small 3D stick-on eyes (here, 2.5mm red) secured with thin Loon UV resin and coated with flow Loon UV resin.

Tying Procedure

1. Start tying thread and lay a thread base over approximately the middle half of the hook shank.
2. Construct the underbody using one of the two methods presented in the video below, beginning at the following time stamps: 2:20 or 19:09. This step is much easier to explain visually.
3. Slide the Mylar tubing over the underbody from front to rear and secure at the rear of the hook.
4. Trim excess Mylar from tag end, then cover most of the remaining “scraps” with tying thread. Create a pretty hefty thread bump here. Tie off and clip thread. If using half-hitches to secure, add super glue to reinforce the knot.
5. Start thread on top the front end of the Mylar tubing using gathering wraps to “pinch” onto the material. When secured, trim excess mylar from tag end, then cover tag ends with tying thread back almost to the front of the underbody.
6. Poke the rabbit strip onto the hook point by briefly removing the hook from the vise.
7. Liberally apply super glue to the thread wraps at the rear of the body and on the bottom of the mylar (which will become the top of the fly when it is fished).
8. Before the glue dries, slide the rabbit strip up firmly to the fly body and gently press the rabbit strip to secure it to the glue-coated thread wraps and body.
9. When the strip is secure, tie it off at the front of the fly and remove any excess.
10. Tie in a pinch of rabbit fur to serve as the fly’s throat.
11. Secure several strands of Krystal Flash on either side of the fly, generally about 1/3 of the way “down” from the tips of the rabbit fur once the fly is inverted.
12. Smooth out thread head with more thread turns, if necessary. Tie off and clip thread.
13. Add a pair of small stick-on eyes on the thread head.
14. Coat head with thin UV resin and cure. Add a second coat of Loon UV Flow or similar, or add a coat of head cement.

How-To Video

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