Trout Soft Hackle

Trout Soft Hackle

by Kuba Chruszczewski

          Another sea trout season is just around the corner, you need to review and replenish the contents of the boxes, it will be happening, it will be raring to go.... This time for winter sea trout I recommend a midge, which works well as a winter lure. It works vividly even in slow currents and at quite slow leading. And this is due to the design and materials used. It has no tail or trunk, in fact, it consists of several successively wound blackberries. But everything is determined by the material used for these blackberries - the well-known and often used „marabou”, which is actually down feather of turkey. A fly not very labor-intensive and quite simple in construction. Here is the trout SH in a few steps:

I set a salmon hook (#4-2/0) in the vise. I start in the middle of the shank. At this point I wind a small amount of dubbing.

Immediately after the dubbing, I make a scutellum from a stiff cock feather. It will support the subsequent blackberries from the marabou, so that they do not fold too much along the shaft.

I tie a marabou feather.

I wind the blackberry densely arranging successive coils. If necessary, I use two or even three feathers.

Now I wind another blackberry, in a different color and with definitely longer rays. They should extend clearly beyond the arc of the hook.

Now as a finial one more contrasting blackberry, at most 1-2 coils, it can be shorter than the previous one. Shellac for the head. The fly is ready.

Other variants - a tube fly weighted with a conehead, and one made on a ”shenk”, with the hook clearly moved back, attached to a loop of steel braid.

Article featured in Fishing News 2019