How to Tie a Conehead Zonker Streamer: The Ultimate Trout and Smallmouth Pattern

Hey everybody, welcome back, it's Ryan with Trident Fly Fishing. I'm going to be tying a Conehead Zonker today in all olive, different variants of olive. This is a great trout fly, salmon fly, and smallmouth fly. I tie this fly pretty heavy. You can see that I have a tungsten cone, that's a size small in gold. And then this is going to be tied on a size 4 streamer hook. I'm going to start by tying on some thread, this is 6-0t Vivas, I think it's like a golden olive color. So I'm going to tie in right behind the conehead. And we're going to start by adding part of the body, which for the body we're going to use some pearl chenille in medium. It's got some great flash, it's like green, a little bit of yellow and gold in there. So we're going to add a little bit of that. Some folks tie this fly with lead, you can kind of do the same thing with the chenille and push it up underneath the opening of the cone, kind of wrap that in. I'm just going to wrap back once, keeping the material on top of the hook shank and just kind of let that hang out. Pretty simple fly as far as materials. Not many materials, three or four materials. So I'm going to wrap back to behind the cone to get that really locked in. I'm going to tie in the main feature of the fly now, which is the rabbit strip. And I'm using Hairline Rabbit Strips. This is the Sculpin Olive, which is like this very deep, dark olive brown color. To make your life a little easier, you can see how the hide on the rabbit strip is squared off like that. I'm going to try to cut that into a bit of a triangular shape, and that way I can push the triangular shaped, the leather right up underneath the cone head. So I'm just going to cut a little bit of a triangular shape there. And then I can take the pointy end, tie it in a couple of loose wraps, and I'm using my thumb and my pointer finger to hold on to the hide, each side of the hide, and make sure it's positioned right on top of the hook. We want that for balance. We don't want the material to slide off to one side or the other because then when the fly, when you're stripping the fly back in, it's going to can't to whatever side you kind of like tied that into. So I want that right on top. That's great. I'm going to pull that forward, pull those fibers out of the way, and there's several different ways to tie this fly. This is the way that I tie it. I'm going to bring this chenille, I'm going to wrap the chenille back towards the front of the hook. As I'm doing that, I'm going to use my thumb and forefinger to kind of pull back on that material. On the chenille, there are these little tiny fibers. I want to pull those fibers back so that they're kind of even on this body. I want to make that body nice and even. I want it nice and full. And as I pull back, it'll create that kind of nice, neat body. I'm going to keep wrapping all the way back. And you could use a rotary vise to do this, too, but I like to do it the hard way, you know? And you'll notice there'll be spots with little gaps, like here. I can pull that material back, really pull it really tightly as you're wrapping it. That way it won't slide around, and you can get that nice, uniform body. I'm going to wrap right behind that rabbit strip, tie that in, a couple of wraps on top, pull that back, a couple of wraps in front of the chenille, and I'm going to cut that right off. Great. So now I have that nice body. As you can see, it's pretty uniform. It's not perfect, but as far as the width of the body, it's pretty uniform all the way back. So now I can take my hide material and kind of stretch that back. Obviously, this is much longer than you're going to end up with. I want to make sure with a couple more wraps that that hide is tied in nicely in the front. A couple ways to do this. You can pull this forward and wrap back over and through. Just for the neatness sake, I'm just going to do a quick whip finish here. I'm going to come back to this later on. I'm going to pull that hide forward, tie in right in the back. I'm kind of putting my thread at the bend of the hook and pulling it back up into that material. Just a couple of loose wraps. So I'm trapping my thread like so, pulling that back. And you'll notice sometimes when the rabbit strips come out of the package that they have some kind of kink to them. If you pull on this kind of steadily, it does have some memory. In other words, you can kind of straighten that out a little bit. You don't want to pull too hard because you will tear the actual leather. But nice and firm to kind of straighten that out. And as far as the length of the tail, I'm going to go back probably about an inch beyond the hook bend. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to tie this thread in here at the very back of the chenille. So with my fingers, I'm going to pull the fibers on the rabbit strip forward to expose the leather right above where I want to tie it in. You're kind of eyeballing that spot. That looks good right there. It's okay if you trap a few of the fibers here because that's going to get swept back. You can use a little bit of saliva just to pull that forward. And then I'm wrapping a couple of nice tight wraps. I'm going to lift. I'm actually going to cut that now to length. Again, I'm going about an inch or so back. I'm going to put my scissors through the fibers like that. I don't want to cut down on top of the fibers. I want to put the tip of the scissors through the fibers and cut down. That way, I maintain the integrity of the fibers on top of the rabbit. I'm going to pull that forward, a couple of loose wraps behind just to really lock that in place. It kind of looks like this thing just woke up from a nap, but we're going to figure that out here. So once that's nice and locked in, I'm going to finish in the back, making sure I don't trap fibers on top. So the last step on this fly is to add a saddle hackle and palmer that in there so that we have a little bit of coverage here in this gap, and it creates some really nice micro movement as well. So I'm going to be using, this is Hairline 4 to 6 inch Grizzly Hackle, and this is in a light olive color. I'm going to choose one of the feathers that has this nice kind of webby material down at the bottom. And when you look at the quill, you can see that it's kind of a drastic difference between this really thick white part and the thinner part. I'm going to cut right where those two meet, the thick and the thin, right about here. Same idea as with the leather on the rabbit strip, I can clear off just a little bit of this quill, push that quill again underneath or into the open part of the cone head, wrap that on nice and firmly. I don't need to go too far back, just enough to capture that quill. And then I'm going to palmer this like so. As I'm palmering and wrapping the feather around the hook, I'm pulling that fiber back. So that creates that even kind of uniform veil around the hook. And you could argue that's a little bit long for this hook size, but I kind of like it. It gives it more life. And it's this nice veil of color from this lighter olive color to this shiny chenille and the darker rabbit strip. So three or four wraps, nice and tight, pulling that down with your right hand or left hand, and then wrapping a thread wrap up and over. I'm going to pull that back, a couple more wraps there, a couple more by pulling that forward, just to really make sure that's trapped. I don't want that to unfurl when I cut this off. Good, a couple more thread wraps there, really capturing that material. I'm going to whip finish, being mindful not to wrap around the cone head itself. Cut that under slack. What I like about this fly, you have this micro movement from the collar. You have that nice flash from underneath, right? So if the fish is looking up, they're going to see that flash here. And then you have this nice movement of the tail itself and those little fibers in the rabbit strip. So in combination, it has a lot of movement for a small fly. It doesn't have a ton of materials. It's easy to tie. You do want to be mindful when you're casting it, it has this sort of bullet shape in the front. You don't want to knock that in the back of your head. But what I love about this fly is after you finish stripping the fly, especially if you're in a current, the weight of that tungsten cone will sink that fly back down. So it gives it great action. It has great action from materials and great action from that cone head. That is an Olive Zonker.