HCFF John Schultz Midnight Bunny

[Music] good morning my name is John Schultz I'm a norvice Ambassador out of the Park City Utah area I'm a Stillwater junkie I've tied some other stillw flies for norvice but I'm show showing a a new tech technique and some new patterns of flies that I've had incredible success with now this fly today is going to be tied with black rabbit and it's also I'm going to use this brilliant black and red and blue um dubbing from hairline it's called Midnight fire and the midnight fire woollybugger pattern has been a favorite of mine for years but when once I started tying with rabbit I couldn't find any combination to make it come out to where I could use it with rabbit so I decided to put this together into a dubbing Loop and I'll show you how I do it to start with i I'm going to take my rabbit from the the end of the fur and trim it so it just tapers the end of the rabbit slightly just so it doesn't look so square and unnatural in the water and then from there I've already dressed my hook I'm using number 70 Dair Ultra thread today but I'm going to dress my or I'm going to take my leather part of my feather or of my fur and lay it over my vice and measure the leather for the hook shank length that's pretty much my rule of thumb for building these flies then I'm going to separate the first where I can get a good tie-in point on the leather and just dampen it a little little bit so that it stays separated next thing I do I'm going to use just a drop of super glue on the butt end of that hook shank cuz I've had a lot of problem with these rabbit flies after the leather in the rabbit gets wet they have a tendency to want to untwist in the water so after I got super glue on there I'm going to lay that right over I kind of line up my my thread angle right for where the the um Barb of the hook is and I hold it down tight the leather against the hook shank with my thumbnail and I'm going to do six pretty tight wrap one over the top of each other here to get this tail tied in good to where it's not going to untwist on me and after I've got that I pull the leather back a little bit and try and pinch a little bit more in under my thread there and get it tied in and with a few wraps and then I'm going to throw a half inch in there after I'm at this point I'm just going to make a fairly small dubbing Loop and then Advance my thread to the eye of the hook I'm going to take my midnight fire dubbing and I like to pull these fibers out lengthwise so you get as long of fibers as you can possibly get out of your dubbing slide that up into my dubbing Loop and put a little bit more down in the bottom and you can add or subtract depending upon how bright you want this fly in the water um you can put more or less dubbing so I like it a little subtle looking in the water but this black red and blue combination is a trout killer I guarantee it really is a good functioning fly now I'm going to take my fly and I like to offset my hook a little bit there so that my dubbing doesn't get caught in the hook shank as I go now I've got my dubbing Loop spun out and I'm going to try and stretch those fibers out just to make them a little bit as long as I can get them after I've done that the the most critical part of getting these flies to to tie out nicely I think is to take your leather and go over the top with your leather one wrap and make sure that the leather is flat down against the hook shank on the top then after you do that I'm going to take the the leather and my dubbing Loop and put them between my thumb and my middle finger that leaves my pink finger or my pointer finger available to push fur back as I'm going so now I'm going to start rotating this pull a little of that fur out right B the hook shank I just got the the dubbing Loop is laid just to the side of my rabbit now that I've come up to the eye I'm going to stop and lock that and I'm going to force that fur and the dubbing loop back as far as I can now from there I'm going to I could do almost have enough room for one more wrap but I think I will place one more wrap around that now when I come up to the hook shank I'm going to pull it back again make it good and tight in there and I'm going to take my dubbing Loop and cross over the leather and go through it and make two rotations around that and then hold it up and that that locks that leather in place while you tie your dubbing Loop in so now I'm going to do about six wraps on my dubbing loop again just cuz I hate to have these things come undone on me and they will if you don't over build them I've got that pretty well tied in I'm going to trim off my dubbing Loop I'm going to come back and I'm going to wrap over that dubbing loop again quite well make sure that it's really well tied in throw another half inch in there at that point now just run my thread back right behind the eye of the hook and then I'm going to take my rabbit fur and go one more wrap over the top after it gets over the top and I'm going to take my scissors and separate that fur again put a little moisture in it and then I'm going to cross over that the leather part of that rabbit fur separating the the loose piece and the fly from into two pieces and I'm going to do another six nice tight wraps over the top of that leather to make sure that that is anchored in pretty well I'm going to trim that off and I'm going to build a a nice red head over the top of all the leather and the dubbing Loop there getting it totally tied in there good I've tied these with eyes on them so they look like more like a minnow but fishing them I really don't feel the difference in quality of catchability with the with the eyes on the hook and they're not worth the effort for this I think in saltwater where the fish really focus on eyes it's probably worth doing it but for still for Still Water freshwater fishing I don't think you do it now I'm going to come back and I'm I'm going to put about six whip finish knots and then I'm going to do six more on top of that just to make this as solid and tight a fly as I can possibly get it to be take it trim it off and take my 22 caliber uh dubbing tool out and and comb out my fly if you can see just the subtle bits of black and red and blue in that this fly in the water when you strip it just comes to life it's so so alive and Fishes so well it's amazing I I fish it on my intermediate and my type four and my type 7even sinking lines and it's caught some terrific fish for me in the last year and a half that I've been tying it so give it a give it a try you will like it thanks much for [Music] watching