Fly Tying Group: At the Vise
Braided Butt Damsel
Al and Gretchen Beatty

(Originally Published in the Flyfisher Magazine)

In the mid 90s we purchased several pounds of flies from an offshore factory. When the flies arrived we learned why they had been so inexpensive – we had thousands of “assorted” flies all dumped together, size 22s with size 2/0s and everything in between. We also learned just how many flies were in a pound – a lot!

It took us about six months to sort the flies, figure out their names, and store them by category/type. We had about 40 dozen of this really good-looking adult damsel pattern that we just couldn’t find its name. We really liked the way it caught fish and started calling it the running-line damsel because the body looked like it was made from braided line used for that purpose.

One day we were doing research for a magazine article and we found the pattern in Gary Borger’s book Designing Trout Flies on page 110. It was called the Braided Butt Damsel. Finally, we had the proper name for it.

While reading damsel chapter in the book we learned Gary and Bob Pelzl developed the fly while they were in New Zealand capturing video footage for “South Island Sampler.” While there a fellow angler showed them an adult damsel pattern with a braided monofilament extended body. The idea lights flashed on how they could improve one of Gary’s patterns. They removed an extended body constructed out of deer hair from a parachute adult damsel pattern and substituted it with the braided monofilament. They had a winner the fish really liked and the fly was much easier to tie than the pattern using the deer hair.

Gary ties the fly using the blue color you seen here today to represent an adult male damselfly or uses a mustard color to mimic the teneral (and some females). No matter which you elect to tie, you will find this pattern incredibly easy to assemble and very attractive to the fish. It is our “go to” pattern when we want to present an adult damsel.

Materials
Hook: Size 10 or 12, standard dry fly
Thread: Blue or match the body
Abdomen: Braided monofilament, blue & black permanent marker
Thorax: Blue dubbing
Parachute post: Blue poly yarn
Hackle: Blue dun, parachute style
Back/head: Blue poly yarn

Step 1: Place the hook in the vise and apply a thread base over the front half of the shank. Wrap a small ball of thread in the center of the shank. Leave the thread there for the next step. Use a blue felt tip to color a section of braided monofilament then mark small bands with a black marker. Use a cigarette lighter to melt a small ball on one end of the colored monofilament.

Step 2: Tie the braided mono to the hook forming an extended body 1 ¼ inches long. Be sure to position the body so the melted mono is on the end.

Step 3: Tie on a segment of blue poly yarn and a blue dun hackle feather so they point up from the center of the hook.

Step 4: Apply dubbing to the thread and wrap the thorax starting at the front of the hook and ending at the poly post/hackle. Be sure to leave the thread hanging behind the poly yarn.

Step 5: Wrap the hackle around the poly post parachute style. Tie it off on the post using three thread wraps. Pull the thread forward over the thorax to the hook eye and anchor it there. Trim the waste end of the hackle at the base end of the poly post. Note: We like to tie our parachutes off on the post. If you like to tie off at the hook eye then adjust how you place the dubbing in the previous step so your thread ends up at the hook eye.

Step 6: Pull the parachute post over the thorax to form the back. Tie it off at the eye and trim the poly material to form the head. Whip-finish, trim, and apply head cement to complete the fly.