How To Tie The Sculpzilla

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Combining a realistic profile with a ton of natural movement, the Sculpzilla is a heavy fly that you can rely on whenever you need to get deep and connect with heavy fish. From big Browns to massive smallies, this is a fly that you can fish for any predatory species with success. Thanks to its heavy construction and jigging motion, you can fish this fly no matter the water. No matter the color scheme that you tie it in, the Sculpzilla will always wreak havoc in the water. Follow along with Levi as he ties one of the best streamers out there.

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Materials:

Hook: Gamakatsu B10s (Size 2 *shank hook*) and Daiichi 2557 (Size 4)

Thread: Danville 210D Flat Waxed Thread (Olive)

Wire: Danville Spooled Lead Wire (.030)

Weight: Hareline X-Eyed Cones (Medium)

Hook Connector: Rio 20lb Dacron Fly Backing (White)

Tail: Hareline Black Barred Rabbit Strips (Olive)

Body: Hareline UV Ice Dub (Pearl) Hareline Strung Guinea Feathers (Orange)

Collar: Hareline Wooly Bugger Marabou (Sculpin Olive)

Video Transcript

Hey guys, Levi here with Trident Fly Fishing and today we're going to be tying a Sculpzilla. Very solid sculpin imitation, a good streamer pattern whether you're fishing a large river or small water. It just plain works and it's a pretty easy tie. We'll get started with it right now.

We have a Daiichi 2557 hook in the vise. This is a trailer hook, size 4, nice black nickel finish. First things first, we're going to get started with some 20 pound Dacron backing. What we're going to do here is loop it like this, get that loop nice and small, and just run it through the eye. Grab it with your left hand, then you've got to take the hook out of the vise and take that loop - make sure it's nice and straight - and loop the whole hook through it. That gives you a nice connection there for your shank coming up front.

I'm just going to throw some thread down. You won't need to take this thread all the way back to the bend of the hook, but get it about midway. We're going to tie in a zonker strip, snip the excess, and bring your thread right about midway - maybe a little more than that. We're going to move into some black barred rabbit strips. This is the color olive. It's a good fly to tie in olive. Browns are good, any earthy tone works quite well. You can probably get away with tying it in white and I'm sure the fish would like it.

You're going to need about three to three and a half inches of this for the fly. You want to err on the side of generosity here - you don't want it to be too short whenever you get to that shank, so feel free to make it a little longer than three inches if you need. Size this to where the zonker strip ends just after the bend of the hook. Get in there, wet your fingers, and separate those fibers so you have a nice clean tie-in area. Bring that thread just right behind your backing and tie this in with a few nice tight wraps. Once you get that, pull it back and tie it off. Throw a couple of whip finishes in there. We'll do two just because this is a lengthy tie and I always want that extra security anytime I'm tying a fly that takes longer than 10 minutes.

Snip your thread and we're going to move into a B10S hook. We're going to put an X-eyed cone on there, so get that in the vise and I'm going to wrap some thread right in front of that eye because we're going to throw some lead in there. You only need to bring this back about once. The lead provides just a little bit more purchase, and whenever we go to glue this it will keep everything together. If you put lead on a metal hook shank, even if you do coat it with some super glue or epoxy or whatever it may be, it does tend to deteriorate over time. So I like to have - and this goes for any fly with a cone head - I just like to have that thread up there.

We're going to move into some .030 lead wire. You don't need a lot of wraps, maybe five or six. This is really just going to be to push everything up there. Now I just want to shove that in there, and from there I'm going to put the thread back on the hook shank and wrap this about midway. We're not going to use this whole hook. Wrap that and then we're going to attach our trailing hook right here. We're going for about a three inch fly here, so get that tied in. You want to make sure it's nice and straight on top of that hook shank, not cocked off to either side.

Make sure this is sized appropriately. What I do is put a little loop in there and then pull it back like that. If you put that loop and tie it in one way and then reverse tie it, that connection is not going anywhere regardless of how big the fish is on the other side of your line. Snip the excess of that backing and clean that up.

For dubbing, we're using UV Ice Dub in pearl. That'll imitate the underbelly of a sculpin - it tends to be a little on the lighter side of things. But if you want, you can use brown, olive, any color that works for you is fine. We'll just loosely apply this to our thread. We want this to be bulky yet buggy. This is a fly you can tie in quite a range of colors. Earth tones are always good, black's a safe bet, brown is great - you could probably tie it in hot orange and I'm sure it would work depending on the fishery you're in. You want this dubbing profile to sort of taper and get larger as we move forward. Dubbing is a little tough for me right now because I've got some super glue on my fingers from earlier. Bring that up almost in front of the cone - you want to leave yourself a little bit of space there, as we've got some feathers to wrap and some other stuff to do up here. Just tuck that right on in to your cone and then secure it.

Now that we have our zonker tied in behind the cone, we're going to move into some strung guinea feathers for a little soft hackle. Nice color in there, and this is also a pretty stiff-fibered feather. It's webby, but it is stiff enough to where it's going to kind of prop everything up as well. We're looking for something that is going to be about maybe half of that fly's entire length. Just grab that by the tip and sweep everything back. We're going to tie that in right on the side here at a 45 degree angle facing southwest, and clip that tip off.

We're going to wrap this feather - get a couple of turns out of it and you can stop once you get to that webby, more marabou-looking stuff. From here, we're going to move into some olive marabou. We're going to palmer one of these on there and create a nice flowing body. We don't need super lengthy fibers, but we want a nice uniform feather. Strip some of these fibers off the bottom of the stem. Just like we did with that guinea feather, we're going to pull these fibers downward and tie this feather in by the tip at about a 45 degree angle facing southwest. Make sure it's nice and secure - you don't want to pull it out when you go to wrap it. Get a couple of wraps in there and tie it off. If you get any fibers trapped, just get in there with your bodkin and free them up. Whenever you have all this material, sometimes things will get trapped. You can wet those fibers if they're standing in your way.

Then we're moving into a Grizzly Soft Hackle Marabou patch. These things are sweet - you get a lot of variety of feather on there. The ones towards the rear are really good sculpin pectoral fins. We need two of them, so try to find two that are pretty equal and pop those off. You can see that barring is really nice on there, and they also have a little curve to them. Size that up - we want this to be just shy of the guinea feather. Get that tied in right on the side for those pectoral fins that are pretty prominent on the real thing. Snip that, and we'll do the exact same thing on the other side. Play it safe and measure that first to make sure it's the same length. Snip that excess.

What I do here is pack this cone with dubbing before I apply super glue to the nose. That, A, ties the profile together and finishes it off, and B, just gives a nice barrier for this cone so it doesn't push back. For the dubbing, I'm just going to use the same stuff we used on the zonker - it's the same color, it's rabbit dubbing, it's nice and easy to work with. Blend it up a little bit and apply it to your thread. This doesn't need to be super neat or anything like that. It's really less about aesthetics and more about function. Get that nicely pushed into the cone and then we will finish this off. With that dubbing there, you don't have any gap between this and the body of the fly.

Now we're going to take this out of the vise. You can cut the hook shank now - you can wait until you super glue it, but if you wait you end up having glue everywhere. Throw some super glue right on in there. You can be liberal with this and really get it in that hole. A little glue in the eye hole, like so. Grab one of these quarter inch 3D eyes and just pop it right in there. We'll do that on the other side as well - just a little dab. Cap your super glue and grab one of these eyes and just get it in there. If you have to use your bodkin to push it in, do so, so you don't get it stuck to your finger.

The reason we cut the hook shank first is because once we have this super glue in here, I don't want to be messing with that hook shank - you'll end up getting fibers stuck up there, you'll lose fibers, and your fly just won't look as good. So I just prefer to cut that shank first for ease. Then you can let this dry. But that is a Sculpzilla. I want to thank you guys for watching, and I will see you next time.