Coulee Killer – Evolution of a Fly

Fly tying is an activity which is related to fly fishing, but for many it is a pleasure apart from the fishing itself. It can be a dangerous thing to pursue and if you’re not careful it can, I think, adversely affect your fishing— see my previous blog post Don’t Let Fly Tying Steal Your Joy and Hold You Back.

In the age of Instagram and FaceBook fly tying seems to have become even more driven by fashion than it used to be. Fly patterns, materials or even hooks seem to make the rounds as the latest darling of the interwebs. Maybe fashion and trendiness (and marketing) have always been major drivers of fly design and it’s just that the internet makes it happen more quickly and visibly?

I don’t really know. But I do know that any attempt at the fly tying version of “keeping up with the Joneses” will leave you with a lot less green in the wallet and and probably a desk full of materials you don’t use and a box full of flies that leave you scratching your head on the stream wishing you’d tied more of those good old pheasant tails rather than that “CDC ceramic sexy finn raccoon czech frenchie articulated jig with an artisanal hand hammered bead made of metal from a meteorite”.

So it’s with that introduction that I’d like present a totally un-needed pattern present I invented: The Coulee Killer. Is it an improvement on anything ? Who knows. But it does catch fish and it’s easy to tie.

The Coulee Killer Story
A few years back (maybe it was 2016) I made a trip to the Driftless Region of Wisconsin. If you know anything about me you know that I am a Driftless junkie. In the Driftless region a “coulee” is a steep-slide valley which generally has a sweet limestone spring creek flowing through it – Timber Coulee Creek being one well known example. A regional fly of some renown out that way is the Pink Squirrel nymph created by John Bethke. Here’s a link to blog post featuring the original Pink Squirrel Recipe . As I was getting ready for my trip I wanted to tie some quick nymphs – and the Killer Bug is about as quick as it gets (see my recent post about it) but I wanted to add a black bead to give it a more caddis larva or cranefly larva look and just a little more weight. I’d been tying some wooly buggers with black glass beads so I figured that might be the ticket. As luck would have it there was some Shrimp Pink SLF Prism Dubbing lying about on the tying desk. The gears turned in my brain and my thoughts turned to incorporating a pink collar on the bead head killer bug as an homage to the Pink Squirrel nymph. The Coulee Killer was born.

I used the glass bead version of the Coulee Killer on that trip to good effect and then started to incorporate black tungsten beads on some of them for added weight. The tungsten version is the one that I brought along to sell at the Midwest Tenkara Fest the following year.

I’d sold a few to a friend early in the day who then went off to fish. Just as the official day was winding sown and everybody was closing up shop that friend came back in, still wearing waders wet from the stream and bought a handful of Coulee Killers, telling me that they were the ticket for him that day and they were indeed killing it. That’s when the fly was cemented as a keeper for me.

So the Coulee Killer wasn’t really imagined as an improvement to any existing fly. It really it was a crime of opportunity (I just saw that shrimp pink Prism SLF laying there on the table). And also it was an homage to the region that I love and one of its famous regional flies. 99% of my creations at the vise never enter permanent rotation in my box but the Coulee Killer with it’s ease of tying and effectiveness is one that made it.

The Pattern and Instructions for the Coulee Killer is listed below and if you’re not a fly tier you can get them over at my Three Rivers Tenkara shop. As of this writing I have the tungsten version for sale but if you’re interested in the glass bead version just shoot me a message through the Contact Me page here or at Three Rivers Tenkara.

Pattern and Instructions:

Hook: I generally tie size 12 and 10 and I’m not super picky about the hook. A Fulling Mill Heavyweight Champ (shown in pic) or Fulling Mill FM50 85 barbless nymph hook works nicely.
Thread: Hot Fluorescent Orange
Body: Yarn such as you’d use for a Killer Bug. I’ve used various shades. The one pictured here is B C Garn Bio Shetland in Oatmeal. The original version was tied with Jamieson’s Spindrift in Oyster (as those shown in picture at beginning of article). You could of course use other colors and go for a green or cream caddis larva, etc.
Bead: Black Tungsten (3 to 3.5 mm for the 10-12 size range works) or black glass bead from the craft store which is shown in the picture below.
Collar: Shrimp Pink Prism SLF or similar pink synthetic dubbing. I wouldn’t sweat it too much – I figure any pink dubbing should fit the bill. Or abandon the pink squirrel homage and use something like a black or peacock ice dub.

This pattern is pretty dead simple. The Prism SLF dubbing and other similar synthetics can be a little unruly to work with if you haven’t before. But one thing I’ve found helpful in order to keep the collar tamed is to wind thread through the dubbing as a sort of reinforcement – the thread will sink in and you won’t see it but it helps to rein in the fibers a bit. The only other tip really is that on bead head flies with a dubbing collar I like to apply head cement to the thread before I whip finish because generally the thread will be below the level of the dubbing collar and pretty tough to cement after whip finishing. I just apply the cement to about a 1/2″ of thread (starting where the thread meets the fly) then do my 3 turn whip finish between the collar and the bead.

Good Luck!