Gut-Bomb: Tan Edition

Tan is the new red

The other day, we got a comment on the original Gut-Bomb article asking an excellent question in tying the Gut-Bomb in a tan color, similar to the photos we posted of the natural bloodworms (from Phil Rowley's website). The naturals come in a variety of colors, depending on the amount of hemoglobin, ranging from red to tan, as shown below, but also showing up in greens, grays and browns.

New Tan variation of the Gut-Bomb

Bloodworms come in a variety of color shades

The challenge with this particular color combination is that tan, being a lighter color, becomes more difficult to get it to "pop" in contrast to the darker black vein. I ended up going through a few variations with different colors of thread, stretch flex and Sharpies. Most of the time, the fly ended up much darker than I'd like. I finally ended with a relatively decent color combination using some tan GSP. Because the thread now becomes the main fly color, I ended up using a black fine point marker to create the "gut" (whereas the original pattern, the "gut" is created/colored via the black thread and the body color comes from Sharpies). Also, for some reason, with this lighter color, I liked the way the fly looked without the ribbing.

Anyway, it's another color to try out. Here's the original video tutorial, so just swap out the thread, leave out the ribbing and Sharpie coloring, add some black vein markings and you're set.