How to Tie a Marabou Leech: Complete Stillwater Pattern Guide

Hey everybody, Ryan from Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to tie a marabou still water leech pattern, which is a really good, it's a good trout fly especially later in the summer when the trout get down to deeper water. We're going to tie this on a size 6 long shank tiempo, tiempko, and I'm going to add, I'm going to add a 4mm bead. The bead's going to be orange in this case. Again, putting the bead through the smaller hole. I want to make sure that bead is pressed up nice against the eye of the hook. And that will give us a little bit of color and also a little bit of weight to sink, with which to sink the fly. I'm going to use a 6-aught thread and I'm going to start tying right behind the bead, like so. Just going to get those thread wraps started. The whole shank is going to get covered up here with material. And what I'm going to do first is basically using two different materials. So for the tail material, I'm going to use, and for the body, extra select marabou. This is, the tail is going to be in black. I'm going to select a piece, a quill. And what I'm going to do is kind of visualize here, I want the tail to extend about an inch, maybe an inch and a quarter past the hook bend. What I like to do is hold it right above the hook so I can kind of eyeball. That looks good right about there. Rather than tying the tail in back by the hook bend, I'm going to tie it in right behind the bead, so that I can use all this material to build bulk here. I'm going to keep this for bulk. So in other words, I'm just going to, I'm going to wrap my thread wraps back towards the bend of the hook. It's going to look a little messy at first, which is fine. Right to the bend of the hook. A couple nice firm thread wraps to make sure the material is locked in place. We don't want that spinning around. And that's a pretty good length. It's maybe a little bit more than an inch long off the back of that hook bend. If you go too far back with your tail, one of the problems you run into is when this gets wet, when you're stripping the fly back, sometimes these fibers will wrap around the hook and foul. So you want to kind of be careful not to go too far back. Again, this is about maybe an inch and a quarter or so, and that's a pretty good length. So in this case, I'm going to wrap back to my original tie-in point. And you can see I've created this nice kind of base body. Rather than just cutting here and trimming, which would leave the hook shank kind of naked, now I have this nice bulk from the marabou tie-in. So I'm going to lift this up and cut off the rest of the quill. Scissors need a little sharpening apparently. Tail's a little long. I'm going to add a little bit of flash now. I'm going to use some crystal flash in red. I'll grab two pieces. I like to kind of thread it onto the thread itself. That way I'm doubling up my thread like that and tie it in. Holding this back to the left, tying it along the close side of the hook shank. Great. And then again, I'm going to eyeball that. So I have two strands that are now doubled over. So I actually have four pieces. I'm going to cut a little bit shorter than the tail. With my rotary vise, I can turn that right over. I'm going to do the same thing. Holding that material back. Just be mindful of the hook point that will break your thread if you're not careful. Notice I'm kind of moving that thread inside the hook bend to avoid breaking off. And then once that's locked in place, I'm going to move my thread back towards the bead. Let that hang. And again, a little bit shorter about to length from the tail. Great. And that is movable so I can kind of position those fibers where I want them. And now I have some nice red flash. Great. Now for the body itself, I'm going to keep just using the marabou material. I'm going to take a couple two different black quills and one red quill and then flash. What I'm going to do is I'm going to trim the tips off of the marabou here. I'm going to go to these pointy tips and cut off about a half inch or so and just start to build a pile of marabou bits. I'm going to use this for the body. You can notice that the material itself is nice and wavy. It has a lot of movement, particularly when it's wet. I like that micro movement and trout seem to like it too. So I'm going to use most of the material on the quill so I don't waste anything. The ratio is about two of the black quills and one of the red. I want the base, the primary color of the leech body to be black with just little accents of red. We'll add a little bit of red flash as well. Again, find those tips, cut in about a half inch each time. You start to build this nice pile. Getting the length exact is not necessary because we're going to use our fingers to kind of pluck the body down to size when we're done. Okay, so I'm going to add a little bit more red now. Kind of fun. Marabou haircut. Looks good. I'm going to add a little bit of flash. Add a couple strands. I'm going to cut this in nice and gently because if you cut hard it's going to kind of spray the material over the room. So I'm just going to cut nice and gentle and try to aim it down towards the marabou. I'm going to use probably about half of the length of the flash. This is just to give some accent points, a little bit of flash when the light hits it. You don't have to go crazy with it. Cool. So now I have my nice pile of red and black material with a little bit of flash. Now my job is to blend the materials up. I'm just going to use my fingers to kind of do that. It doesn't have to be perfect, but again I want to have a kind of a nice blending of colors. I could probably add a little bit more black in here. Great. Nice thing about this is nothing goes to waste, right? So if I have leftovers I can tie another fly. Now I'm going to work my way from the hook bend towards the bead. I'm going to grab clumps of this marabou blend like so. I'm going to take that, oops, get rid of that thing, and I'm going to position this clump. And what I'm going to do is kind of place it around top of the hook like so. It's going to look really messy. A couple of loose thread wraps. And tie that in. I'm going to tie back just a little bit. Pull that material back. You can see how from the tie-in point the material that's to the right of my thread is kind of poked up. I'm going to pull that back, tie that down a little bit, and move the thread forward. Same idea. Take another clump. I'm going to lay that material around top of the hook. Tie it in. Tie a little bit backwards. Pull that material back. Don't catch the hook point like I just did on my finger. And I'm basically going to repeat that process until I get closer to the bead. It's going to look really messy. That's good. That means you're doing it correctly. And if the lengths are troubling you, they're a little all over the place, that's fine because I'm going to use my fingers to pluck this down to size in just a minute. It looks messy. It should. I'm running out of material. I'm kind of gathering that down here. It's a little bit messy, but that makes it fun. Notice I have just a little bit of a gap here behind the bead that I need to finish off. Gathering my material here. Great. Now, there's a little bit of space. I could add a little bit more behind the bead itself. And what I can do is actually just pluck material off of the body itself. And just kind of pull that straight out. That's good. And now I have a nice last little bundle to pull from. Just a little bit of flash in there still, which is great. So I'm going to do one more chunk right behind here. And again, the material in front, you just use your fingers to sweep it back. I could probably do one more little clump there right here. I could probably do one more little clump there right behind the bead. A little bit messy. That's okay. Sweep that back. I'm going to whip finish the fly now. Great. So the last step is, I like to pull the material out so it's at its longest. And you can see back here near the tail, it looks pretty good as far as length. I'm going to pluck around the front here. I like a pretty full body. That's looking pretty good. And you can obsess about this as much as you want. I like these strands that are a little bit longer. Again, that gives the fly life. And you can see as far as the color scheme now, I have this nice blend. The body is primarily black, but there's red accents. There's red flash in there as well, which will catch some light and catch the fish's attention. And that is a Marabu body still water leech fly.