How to Tie the Sound Searcher Fly

Learn how to tie the Sound Searcher fly pattern, including step-by-step instructions, a video tutorial, pictures, and much more. Improve your fly-tying skills here.

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The Sound Searcher is a very cool upgrade to the classic gurgler. It makes a great searching pattern for sea trout and also a super effective wounded bait imitation.

Recipe

Hook - SC15 1/0
Thread- Veevus Mono
Body- White Evozote Foam
Tail and Underbody- Hareline UV Ice Wing Pearl

Video Transcript

Hey guys, today we're going to be tying a very cool unique pattern. It's called the Sound Searcher. It's a variation on a gurgler with a couple of key differences. It's used extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest for sea run cutties, but it's a good fly below dams too. It looks very much like a wounded baitfish. We're going to get started on it right now.

In the vise today I have a Gamakatsu SC-15 in a 1/0. Again, this is a saltwater pattern. If you're going to use it in freshwater, use a freshwater hook. If you're going to use it in salt, use a saltwater hook.

The first thing I'm going to do is just start my thread. For thread today I'm going to use Uni Mono. I like to use mono when I am tying saltwater flies - it's my preference. You can also use a white 140 denier thread. I'm just going to get this going, create a nice little thread base, bring it all the way back to the bend of the hook here, and then because mono is slippery, I'm just going to do it again. Then we'll get rid of our little tag and tie in our tail.

For a tail, I'm going to use Hareline Ripple Ice Fiber in UV Pearl - you can use a number of different materials, but this works well for me. We're just going to take a chunk of this. It's pretty messy, so I'll grab it and kind of taper it out in my hands a little bit. I'm going to take a measurement - I like it to be roughly a shank and a half length here. I'm going to double this over, create a little bit of bulk on the shank, and pull it back over. The nice thing with this Ripple Ice is once we get it in place, we can use our hands to break it up and get rid of any extra length. You can just break it off with your hands.

One of the key differences between this and a gurgler is the shape of the foam we're going to use. We have a little baitfish shape, which is super fun. You can cut these however you like to match your baitfish. There are baitfish cutters available through River Road, but I just free-handed this one. You can also make a template and cut a bunch of these. I'm using white Evazote foam. You can use Evazote or just your standard Hareline 2mm foam - that will work as well. We get this tied on with tight wraps, but not too tight so we don't cut it. Let's take a look at the bottom and check our profile. We've got our nice little tail there with some flash underneath, so that's perfect.

I'm going to advance my thread and then create a quick, easy little dubbing loop. You could also use a brush for this, but just to keep it simple and quick, we're going to use the same material for the tail and the body. I've grabbed a bunch of it in my hand. I'll get my dubbing loop going - just create our loop, about two to three inches, go around twice, and then advance our thread up. With mono thread you've got to play a little bit of a game of getting your dubbing in, getting your dubbing twister on, and then tightening up that dubbing loop. Once it's tight it will stay. If you use a standard thread, you can put wax on it and it'll be a little bit stickier.

Once we have our little rope here, I'm just going to come in with a brush - this is a Velcro brush - and just pick this out. We may lose a little bit of fiber, but we want it to be nice and thin. We want to be able to see our thread almost underneath all this dubbing. Then we'll pull it to one side and wrap this forward. Nice touching turns - this is going to be a dense fly. Pull that fiber back, wrap and back, and there we go. We're getting close to the eye here. I like to leave a little bit of room so we don't crowd it too much. Just come in here and tie that off, a couple of wraps over it, a couple of wraps in front, and get rid of that extra material.

The next thing we're going to do is just brush this out again, get rid of anything that's loose or tied down, and brush it to the sides and down. That looks pretty good. We'll pull our head - our foam back - right behind the hook eye, tie that off nice and tight, and throw a nice little whip finish underneath. Get rid of our tag.

From here we can adjust how we want our head to look. We don't want it too long because it'll be hard to cast, so I'm going to come in and cut it square and then trim my little head shape by just taking the corners off. That's baitfish-y enough for me. If we've got some extra long fibers, we can come in and break them to the length we need and brush them back.

Another key feature of this fly is putting an eye right down in here. For an eye, I have a Fish Skull Living Eye in the earth color. I like to use a bigger eye than you think is necessary - it just adds a good trigger point. Get that on there and press it down. Then we're just going to coat this in UV resin. I have Loon Fly Finish in UV Thin. We're going to come in here and get it all around this little eye, a little bit over, a little bit under, but mostly around the edges. We'll let it seep around, and once we hit that with our light, it's pretty much it.

You can trim these to whatever shape you like. Like I said, you can fish it like a gurgler - find some fish, find some moving fish - or another great way to fish this is right under a dam where a lot of baitfish get stunned. Big fish know that and they'll hang out. Thanks for watching guys, and we'll see you next time.