How To Tie Coffey's Sparkle Minnow

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Follow along with Jared as he shows us how to tie Coffey's Sparkle Minnow. The Sparkle Minnow is one of the most productive little streamers that you can stick in your box. You can tie it in a large array of sizes, colors, and even tie an articulated version of it. It's flashy, has tons of movement, and will catch everything from trout to bass. You don't want to leave home without a couple of these in your streamer kit.

We've put together a kit that contains all the materials you need to tie this exact fly pattern.

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Materials:

Hook: Gamakatsu B10s (Size 2)

Weight: Hareline Tungsten Cones (Large, Gold)

Thread: UTC Ultra Thread 140D (Red)

Wire: Danville Spooled Lead Wire (.025)

Flash: Hareline Krystal Flash (Gold)

Tail: Hareline Extra Select Marabou Feathers (Tan and White)

Body: EP Sparkle Brush (Pearl and Root Beer)

Adhesive: Loon UV Clear Fly Finish (Thin)

Video Transcript

Hey guys, you're here with Trident Fly Fishing and today we're going to be tying a Sparkle Minnow. We're going to tie it in a very easy, simplified way and we're going to get going on this right now.

In the vise I have a Gamakatsu B10S in a size 2, and for a cone I'm going to use a size large tungsten cone from Hareline. The first thing we're going to do is put a lead wire base. I'm going to use 0.025 lead wire. I'm just going to start this right above the hook point and bring it all the way up to my cone, just get a good weight base on here, and then I'm just going to break that off, push it forward, and seat my bead. That's going to make sure that my cone head does not move around.

For thread you can use whatever you like. I'm going to use a 140 UTC in red. You're not going to see this except for when you finish it off. The reason I'm using red is it kind of gives you a little bit of the effect of gills.

The first thing we're going to do for a tail is take a piece of marabou. I'm using extra select marabou in white. We're going to get less of a squared-off look with this and have more of a taper in our marabou. I'm going to measure this to be about two hook shank lengths, tie this in right here, bring it up to where my wire starts, trim that out, and cover that butt up right where my wire ends. That way we won't get any bumps. Bring my thread back, and then I'm just going to tie in two pieces of Krystal Flash. This is in a gold color - you can also use copper or whatever you prefer. You could use pearl and it'd look good, but just a little bit of contrast here. Two on this side, then bring it up a little bit, fold it over, and put the other two on the other side. Then we're going to trim that to length to be roughly the length of the tail - more or less a little bit long, but good enough.

The next thing we're going to do is put in my second piece of tailing material, which is going to be a marabou quill again, and this one's in tan. Tan, brown, ginger - you can do a couple different colors for this color combo, but somewhere around a light brownish. We're just going to lay this in right on top of our previous tail and it should be about the same length. The reason this is so long is you'll see once we start wrapping the body, this will stick out and look a little bit better. Right on top and then all the way up to where that lead ends.

The next material I'm going to tie in - and this is how we're going to simplify this - is some EP Sparkle Brushes. These are three inches long and this one's a pearl color. I'm going to rotate this around and tie it in on the bottom. This is going to be pulled over, so just remember we left this tied in back here. I'm just going to cover up that wire all the way up there.

The next one we're going to tie in is going to be our body. This one is the same exact sparkle brush in a root beer color. I'm just going to tie this in on my side of the hook shank right where that tail ends, bring my thread up, and leave it behind the cone. Once we get this tied in I'm just going to make tight touching turns and pack it in. We're going to use pretty much the whole brush, just keep going up in tight touching turns, and you'll see we're starting to create our body.

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I like to fold this back as I wrap - it's almost like palmering a hackle where you just kind of pull it to the rear and make sure you don't trap anything. This is just tight, tight touching turns, making sure that we get a dense, thick body. This thing's really going to push some water. Traditionally this fly was tied with a dubbing brush that you would make yourself, but these wire core dubbing brushes that are pre-made make this fly super easy and super consistent, and that's why I really like them. This is the way that I'll tie them just for simplicity's sake - you can really get going on these and tie a bunch of them.

Right up to behind the bead we're going to keep working, and on this size hook we're going to use pretty much the whole brush. The one hard thing with this brush is trying to get it to break off. Once we get this pretty much up to the bead I think we can pack one more in there. Just pull it up, find that center core, get our thread over it, make a couple tight turns to tie it down, and then I'm going to helicopter this off. Because it's a twisted wire it is going to take a little bit to break off, but just keep going at it and eventually it'll break. There it goes - you break that core and then just fold back and tie off anything that's loose.

You could hit this with a brush or a bodkin to pull stuff out. You'll see this is why our tail was so long. Look at that - looks pretty good to me. Just fold everything back and out of the way.

The next thing we're going to do is rotate this around. I'll keep this at about a 45 degree angle so you can see. I'm just going to split this down the middle, get my flash on either side, pull it up and out of the way, and then pull my other dubbing brush that we left tied in. Make sure we don't get that marabou - just pull it up, preen these fibers back, and then we're just going to tie this down. This is going to create our nice white belly. Come in here and tie that off, a couple turns, and then we'll helicopter this off as well.

What I like to do here - because sometimes you don't get as thick of a body or belly - is strip off some of these fibers from that core, just take a chunk, and tie a little bit more right there so we get a little bit more bulk right behind the belly. Then we're going to come in right behind that cone. This is again why we use the red thread, because you're going to see the thread there no matter what, so I like to use red to get a little bit of a gill effect. We're just going to whip finish back in here.

A trick that I like to do is take my UV cure - I'm going to use Loon Thin - and just put a little bit behind this cone, get it down in there. This is going to really tighten this whole thing up and make sure none of this goes anywhere. Just fill it right up and then hit it with our light.

That's pretty much it, guys - a super simple, easy Sparkle Minnow. Great attractor fly, great fly to strip very quickly when you're looking for aggressive fish, and super easy with these brushes. Give it a try and let us know what you think about it in the comments below. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.