How To Tie The Bronze Goddess

Follow Karl as he ties The Bronze Goddess. Improve your fly-tying skills and know-how here!

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Created by Mike Jacobs of Iowa, this streamer is a variation of the Woolly Bugger and is specifically designed to catch smallmouth bass. With lead eyes on top of the hook shank, it rides hook point up, reducing bottom snags. Using a Daiichi 2220 hook, Uni-Thread Dark Brown 6/0, Marabou Blood Quills in Burnt Orange, Copper Flashabou, Painted Lead Eyes, Estaz Rootbeer body, Crazy Legs, and a Mallard Flank Feather dyed Wood Duck for the collar, this fly is both effective and visually striking. Recommended tying sizes are 2-8. Don't forget to leave a comment with your thoughts and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more fly fishing content!

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Material List:

Hook: Daiichi 2220 (size 4)

Thread: UNI Waxed 6/0 (Dark Brown)

Eyes: Hareline Painted Lead Eyes (Small-Yellow)

Tail: Hareline Marabou Blood Quills (Burnt Orange)

Flash: Hedron Flahabou (Copper)

Body: Spirit River Petite Estaz Chenille (Root Beer)

Rubber Legs: Hot Tipped Crazy Legs (Root Beer/Orange)

Collar: Hareline Mallard Flank (Wood Duck Gold)

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Karl at Trident Fly Fishing and today we're going to tie the Bronze Goddess. This fly was created by Mike Jacobs of Iowa. It's a variation on the Woolly Bugger and it's designed to catch smallmouth bass. The lead eyes on top of the hook cause it to ride with the hook point up and it helps limit bottom snags. I recommend you tie it in sizes two through eight. Here's our fly in the vise and we'll get the tie started.

Our hook today is a Daiichi 2220 - that's their four extra long streamer hook. This is a size four and we're going to start with our thread, which is Uni-Thread 6/0 in dark brown. We're going to tie a lead eye on here, and to do that I like to get a ball started with my jam knot to help hold that eye in place. The eye is from Hareline - it's a painted lead eye, size small, and the color is yellow. When I tie this in, I tie it in right behind that ball and the thread naturally pulls the eye towards the ball and helps hold it in place. Just making some figure-eight wraps and then some wraps around to draw it all together. Keep it in there tight and make sure that they're level. They look all right. To add a little more security to that pair of eyes, we're going to put a dab of super glue there and a few more wraps through that glue.

Now once we've got those all anchored in place, we're going to thread back to the start of the bend of the hook where we're tying our tail material. The material for the tail is going to be some Hareline Marabou Blood Quills in burnt orange. I've got a couple of feathers already picked out. We want these to be a hook length - the tail is going to be a hook length. If we wet the material just a little bit it becomes a little more manageable. We're going to add a couple of feathers to the tail. That looks about right. Get rid of what we don't need here. I'm going to tie these in kind of on the side of the hook - I like that. Take a few wraps in front to lock it down, wrap forward up towards the eyes, and capture that. Now we'll prep the other feather the same way, measure that out, and tie this in on the other side at the same length. A few turns in front to anchor the material down, pull the material forward, capture it, get rid of all that excess, and wrap back to the base of the tail.

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Here we're going to tie in some copper colored Flashabou - just two pieces. I've got a couple of pieces already cut off and we're just going to tie those in, two on either side. Bring that over the top and down the other side and we'll cut these off just the length of the tail.

For the body of the fly we're going to use some Estaz in the color root beer. This is from Spirit River. Tie this in on top of the hook shank, run down to the base of the tail, and run our thread back up. Then using the rotary function, we're going to spin this up as the body. When we reach just behind the eye, tie that off and cut off our excess. Neaten that up just a bit.

Now we're going to tie in the collar of the fly. This is some wood duck colored mallard flank feather from Hareline. I'm going to tie this in from the tip and we're looking for a fairly long feather. Once this gets tied in at the collar, we want it to reach back past the barb of the hook well into the bend. We'll create a tie-in point here at the tip, like so, and catch this behind the eye with some good tight turns so it doesn't pull out as we wrap it. We'll take our hackle pliers, get a hold of the feather, and I'm going to preen these back so they tend to lay back as we wrap the collar. Two turns is quite enough. Looks a little messy right now, but we'll straighten that out. Grab our excess and pull that back, wrap back up over it - that will help force it to lay down.

Next material is going to be the legs. They're Crazy Legs in root beer orange tipped from Hareline. Just need two on each side. We'll tie these in on this side, bring these up over the top. Those hang in the way I like them - we'll just let those hang there for now.

The last material we're going to tie in is going to be for the head of the fly, and that's some more root beer colored Estaz. I'm going to tie that material in right behind the eye and jump our thread up to the eye of the hook. I'll take a couple of turns of this behind the eyes, over the top in kind of a figure eight, and then one in front. Capture our material, cut off our excess, and pull the material back and form a small head. Take our whip finish tool, a four or five turn whip finish, seat our knot, cut our thread. Just to catch a couple of pieces of that Estaz, we'll clean that up with the scissors. The legs I'm going to bring back to about the back of the tail and cut those off. And some Hard as Hull head cement. Our fly is finished.

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