Woolly Bugger Tail

[linwood]

At vimeo.com's Practical Patterns, there is a good video from Tim Flagler's Tightline Productions on tying the Olive Woolly Bugger.

It says, "Marabou blood quills are fluffy at the base, but have fine stringy tips. To get just the fluff, take a small straight edge (like the back of your scissors) and rip those stringy tips right off" in preparing the marabou for the tail.

What do you think? Should the tip of a Woolly Bugger tail be fluffy or left stringy?

 

[afishinado]

linwood wrote:
At vimeo.com's Practical Patterns, there is a good video from Tim Flagler's Tightline Productions on tying the Olive Woolly Bugger.

It says, "Marabou blood quills are fluffy at the base, but have fine stringy tips. To get just the fluff, take a small straight edge (like the back of your scissors) and rip those stringy tips right off" in preparing the marabou for the tail.

What do you think? Should the tip of a Woolly Bugger tail be fluffy or left stringy?

^I'm not sure if it matters that much to the fish.

But out of being frugal, I use the tip of a marabou feather to tie a wooly bugger, and I'm am left with a tip-less marabou feather base with fluff on both sides.

I peel off the fluffy feathers on each side and tie another bugger.

On smaller buggers I use one side each to tie two more flies.

If the truth be known, I like the look of the fluffy ones better than the one tied with the tip only.

Give it a try.

 

[sandfly]

the original was tied with both, just pluck the tip out and tie in the right length and stroke all the fibers back towards tip and tie in. which should be shank length.

 

[nfrechet]

stringy for me

tie them any way you like

 

[MKern]

I think it depends on the feather too. I have seen many that are pretty fluffy all of the way and some that are thinner.

I doubt the fish care, but I prefer the fuller look (especially when wet) of the fluffier ones.

I do think that most of the time the tail is tied too long though, I prefer a shorter tail.

 

[phiendWMD]

I've tried leaving them whole, cutting them, and breaking them on a straight edge. To me, I like the look of the broken tip the most. The fluffier tail just looks more appalling to me. Most of the tying channels on Youtube do it this way as well, which is another reason I got into this habit.

 

[MKern]

I would like to add that trimming the tail after it's tied in looks weird to me.