How to Tie the Zug Bug: Step-by-Step Guide to a Classic Peacock Herl Attractor Nymph

What's up everybody? It's Ryan at Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to be tying the Zug Bug, a very popular trout salmon nymph. And we're going to be tying it with this 3.8 mm bead. Uh a lot of times this fly is tied in gold. We're going to change it up today and tie it in with a silver bead. And it's going to be on a size 12 nymph hook. So I'm going to start by tying in right behind the bead to create this thread base working back towards the bend of the hook. A really simple pattern that really aside from the bead uses three different materials. The base and the tail being peacock curl. I'm going to tie back beyond the hook point a little bit. I preselected four different pieces of the strung peacock curl. Just the little tips here. And I'm going to tie them in about a half inch off the back of the fly. Like so. I might pluck that down to size cuz it looks like they're a little uneven. Just going to cut that a little bit. There we go. You can see it's really nice as far as the peacock the natural peacock has a sort of gold copper green profile. It reflects the light really well, so it has this nice flash. The fish tend to see it. I'm going to tie back towards the bead. And now I'm going to tie in some wire. So this is the ribbing. We're going to again instead of gold we're going to use uh we're going to use this silver colored wire. This is ultra wire in silver size the gauge is small. I'm going to tuck that right into the bead. And tying it on from the eye back gives you a little more more weight. >> And this is going to be all covered up by peacock body, so I don't need to get too worried about covering every single inch of this or every little bit of this wire. Cool. So, that can just hang out there. The next step is we're going to tie in some of the peacock curl. I've taken four strands of the peacock curl. And I'm going to tie them I want to give myself enough I'm going to palmer wrap these four together all the way towards the bead. So, I want to give myself enough space enough room on these to to do that. And I'm going to tie them with the base. I'm going to make a clean cut at the base. In other words, these are This is the tip end. I'm going to I'm going to tie in the base end. Make sure I capture all those initially. Really get that covered up nicely with your thread so you don't add too much bulk there. And this is a fly that has a slight taper. So, depending on how much time you want to spend and this is a fly you can tie really quickly once you get the hang of it. You can build up a bit of a taper with your thread. In other words, I'm going to build up a little bit more of a thread base closer to the eye here because that will sort of give that peacock curl a natural tapered base to sort of tie palmer over. So, you can do it this way or you can just wrap if you use longer peacock, you can wrap the actual peacock itself over itself to build that taper. And you can see now I have that slight taper going from the bend towards the bead. I'm going to wrap this manually. You can use your rotary vise if you want. I'm I'm going to twist this a little bit to give myself more consistency. And twisting that will help. Twisting those four together will create that kind of tightly wound look. And notice I'm not having to wrap over the peacock. I'm just doing these touching wraps, but because I used the thread to create that sort of tapered base, it makes my life a little easier when I'm closer to the bead. I'm going to go right up against the bead. Couple more wraps. You can use a hackle pliers here if you want. Couple loose wraps over the top. I'm using my left hand to capture the peacock like so. Couple wraps in front. And now I'm just going to pluck that off like so. Great. Really simple body. Has that nice taper. Has nice flash. Has the consistency into the tail as far as the color. Um and the reflection of it. Now I'm going to counter wrap the wire. There isn't a set There's not a set number of wraps you have to make. Essentially, I'm giving the segmented look of a nymph. And I'm also trapping some of this peacock. So after you catch a few fish with this, especially fish that have little teeth, the wire will help kind of keep that material in place. And I'm going to capture it with my thread. I can usually helicopter this a little bit. And it should break eventually. Rather than using your your favorite scissors and dulling them. Okay, so now I have my tail. I have my peacock body. I I the nice sort of evenly placed wraps with the wire. The last thing I want to do is add add a little bit of This is strong Chinese saddle hackle in brown. And I chose the very tip of it, so you can see it's pretty it's about the width of the hook gap here as far as the the width of the fly itself of the feathers itself. I don't want it to be super long. I'm going to cut off a little piece here. And I like cutting on I like kind of pulling off some of the fibers so I just have that tip and I can actually put that tip up into or near the bead itself. Like that. I'm going to tie it in on my side like so. And now I can simply wrap. I can see that that's too long. Let's go the other way. I'm going to tie it in by the tip. I did that because I noticed the fibers when I start to palmer them they're really long. So we're going to do the same idea. Just tying in. Oops. From the tip end. I'm just going to need a couple of wraps here. Pulling them fibers back as I go. Probably going to get away with two of them. And it looks good. And now I'm going to be kind of aware of I don't want to capture too many of these fibers with my thread as I kind of wrap to capture and this is tricky. So I'm going to go up and over. Up and over. Sweep that material back and try not to hook yourself like I just did. You'll see these straight fibers. You can kind of pull them back. And then you can either pluck or in this case just to try not to pull too many off, I'm going to cut that there. So now it almost has this like soft hackle appeal of having these fibers that sweep back. It's pretty sparse, which I like. You could probably add another wrap with the hackle if you wanted to, but I like that sparser look. I can whip finish. I'll add a little bit of head cement here and you're ready to fish. That's a zug bug.