Size 24 BWO Traitor
The Traitor: A Style for Small Parachute Flies
Well, I’m in the process of planning a fishing trip to Colorado. So I’m thinking back to the last trip to CO, and the flies that worked. Inevitably, I never seem to have enough of the flies that are working – so I want to avoid that situation this time around.
With that in mind, I find myself thinking about a small parachute style pattern that worked wonders last time. This fly is a small olive bodied parachute – it accounted for quite a few nice rainbows on the Yampa tailwater below Stagecoach Reservoir. The only problem was that most of these were not on the end of my line. The fly indeed fooled a bunch of fish – but more for my friend Larry, than for me. So I’ve named the fly The Traitor.
The Traitor is a fairly standard parachute fly. The major differentiating feature is the way that I form the body. The body is formed by twisting a strand of Uni-Stretch Floss into a “rope”. Dubbing a slim-body can be difficult on tiny flies – so I tried to find an alternative and came up with the idea of using the twisted Uni-Stretch body. In addition to allowing me to form a slim, smooth and tapered body, it makes for a nice segmented effect. As an alternative, you can achieve a similar effect with antron, instead of Uni-Stretch – but you’ll need to split the strand thickness in half for small flies.
I tie this style in sizes from 20 to 24. I’ve had luck with it primarily during hatches of tiny BWO’s and midges. Tie some up olive, gray and cream and you’ll have a good selection for tiny bugs that you might encounter. Below is an example of a Traitor Midge tied with a cream antron body and cream wing-post. Leave off the tails for the midge patterns.
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