Favorite Flies coming to you from your local vice

Now that I am at the halfway point on my “to tie” list, I decided that the next set of flies would be my favorites to fish and tie.  For me, that fly is the Copper John.  This fly is responsible for a major portion of fish I have hooked and landed.  I fish it in several colors and sizes, so this one pattern will be next 72 flies that I tie.  Since I am pretty quick at this fly, this should be about 8 or 9 hours of tying.

A finished Christmas-y Copper John (Tri-color)
A fine specimen of the tri-color version
Copper John step 1 - adding the weight
Got a bead and weight added
tying a Copper John at the halfway point
Got the biots on and the wire all wrapped to jsut past mid-shank
Copper John in the home stretch
Added the thin skin and getting ready to tie in the peacock

For the sharp eyed, you noticed that the finished fly is not the the same as the fly in progress.  Very observant of you.  I was taking a progression of shots of this fly as I was tying and for some reason the finished BLACK version turned out all blurry.  Had to use one from the previous batch of shots.  Oh well.  For the record, the tri-color version is my searching pattern and it has done a fair job of fooling trout.  I still prefer and use the green or red versions first, backing those up with black or the original Copper that gave the pattern its name.

I owe John Barr a big thanks for a great pattern that is easy to tie and extremely effective.