I love tying this fly and when I do it ends up wrong in some way. Marabou to long, hackle never comes out as I see it on professionally tied ones. Bumps in the chenille cause of the thread. Does anyone know of a cheap website to get these materials on? Eventhose wooly bugger packages would help thanks!!!

If I were you I'de write down the list of materials you need and the colors:

white, tan, gray, chartruese, dark and light olive, black, brown, orange, rust, purple, pink etc, etc

Flash: i use krystal flash in a variety of colors

Marabou: in all colors

chenille: in all colors and sizes

hackles: in all colors

thread: in all colors

hooks: i use a 4x streamer hook, in alot of sizes

eyes: if you want you can add bead chain or whatever in whatever color

While you are waiting for materials, start watching some videos about them and learn as much as you can from a bunch of different sources. Use this knowledge and practice practice practice. Mine were just as you describe starting out, but eventually they started looking better till now, where they look like store bought. I tie them in a bunch of different variations of these colors. Personally if you were to pick two flies that will give you the basic ability to tie just about everything is wooly boogers and clousers. I believe one reason wooly buggers are so effective is because, depending on the color they can imitate 20 different things at one time where a baitfish pattern looks like a baitfish. wooly buggers can look like crayfish, bugs, and fish, just about anything found in water. Good luck

Fish like ugly buggers

practice makes perfect (I have been practicing a long time & am far from perfect)

Love Steve Couch's Golden Rule Fly Shop . However, on his site he has posted, due to family commitments, he can not fulfill any orders until 22 June 2011.

Nice bugger bass bug

Here are a couple of thoughts that might help with your learning curve.

- To make sure the tails of your buggers are the correct length and consistent, smooth down and measure the marabou feather against the hook before you tie it to the hook. Tail length is really a personal choice, but I make mine the length of the hook shank.

- After you tie in your tail, do not clip the feather butts off at the back of the hook. Instead, pull the butts down flat against the top of the hook shank and wrap them down almost all the way to the eye. Now trim the butts, leaving a little space for the head. Essentially you are making an underbody of marabou. This technique allows you to have a smooth body once you apply the chenille rather than a big bump ad the rear of the fly where you tied in the marabou.

- Single out a hackle feather without removing it from the neck. Bend the feather around the bottom of the hook shank and observe the length of the barbs compared to the hook gap. I normally select a feather that is 1 1/2 times the length of the hook gap. If the feather you test is not the right length, leave it in the neck and try another.

- Prep your hackle feather by gently stroking the barbs down from the tip of the feather toward the butt. Try and get them to stand out at at least a 90 degree angle to the quill. Tying the feather to the hook by the tip causes the barbs to become longer and have more web as you wind the feather closer to the head of the fly. Aligning the feather so that the underside is facing the hook eye causes the barbs to angle forward toward the eye. Attach the feather with the top facing the eye if you like the barbs angled toward the tail. I also like to take a couple of turns of hackle right at the eye to build up a little collar. I think it pushes more water and adds more action to my fly.

Hope this helps.

i appreciate all of this guys thanks alot. but its all easier said then done. ive seen vids and there really not that good. if anyone would make me a vid and send it to me on this thread or pm that would be great thanks!

really i think if you follow bmocs advise and practice you are set. that there is some very good written advise.

Another tip that will help you learn to work with marabou tails, is to dip your finger and thumb in water and then run them down the length of the feather before you tie it to the hook. A damp marabou feather will behave, a dry marabou feather does not.

Good luck and have fun learning!

Rex

fixed it

+1 on bmoc's advice!

Once you have tied in your marabou tail, if you find it is a bit too long, wet your fingers, moisten the tail, then use your thumbnails to pop the ends of the feather off at the right length. It gives a more realistic-looking tail than cutting it.

ya the 3 main flies i wanna tie are the wooly bugger,crystal bugger, and like the 2 color wooly bugger. there are so many types of chenille,hackle,marabou. what ones should i really get?

first thing to consider is the size you want to tie, there are different sizes of chenille, you can get by with most any marabou & hackles (although some of that fat webby stuff aint gonna work)
actually the best advise I can give you is to find out when & where a local group gets together for fly tying & join them, most would be more than happy to show you how to tie a woolly booger & help you select the appropriate materials. I think there is a group that meets at the Grapevine BPS.
You can get a kit for just the fly you want, although its a costly way to go.. the benefit is their will decennt instructions (you can find that all over the internet also) and the materials will be matched up. http://www.bearsden.com/product9339.html

OK it is time to share a few of my thoughts about tying these most useful flies. I consider them among the most complicated of flies that I tie, but then I just tie simple stuff. Most of mine I tie on size 6 thru 12 4x long streamer hooks because I like to tie mine with cone heads and additional lead wire to weight the flies. You will need some help to learn how to choose the correct feathers to buy in the flyhop. Due to the genetic breeding of the chicken feathers it was difficult to find suitable ones for about a decade, but then I figured out that Dr. Tom Whiting had the answer...he started packaging the Whiting Bugger Pack, so it then became simple just buy them in the color you want. I seem to tie most of mine in black, olive, brown, or purple,but tie them in all colors. I use the butts of the maribou for an underbody on my flies and I use another spool of tying thread to rib the flies with as I had trouble breaking the thin gold wire I had been doing the ribbing with. I use the standard medium chenille for most of the bodies on the size 8 thru 10 flies that I tie most often. I particularly like the black and olive varigated chenille. If I need larger chenille for some in size 6 , I simply twist up two strands of that and use it. For the smaller flies I prefer to use rabbit cut off a zonker strip to dub the body with. I learned to tie a variation called the Beavers Bend Bugger from Jim Green that I tie in size 14 and 16 which is simply a gold bead headed bugger tied without any hackle and using the rabbit dubbing for a body material. For some reason purple seems to be a particularly effective color in these smaller buggers.

The wooly bugger is a great fly to tie to develop your tying skills. The fish will eat them no matter how much you think you need to improve the apearance of the fly. I have seen flies of much less quality than the one tied by Bass Bug on the covers of books. There is no reason to bother buying less than 100 hooks at a time for tying these flies on.

Have fun with this stuff.

Big Dale