Belly Scratcher Sculpin

Sculpin Overkill

Belly Scratcher Sculpin

Wet vs dry.

I have to admit that I have been on a mission to tie a realistic sculpin for the last couple of years.  El Sculpito has been a great fly, but it's still a pretty impressionistic pattern instead of being a dead ringer.  When Bruiser Blend came to be, I was trying to incorporate it into flies any which way I could, and I got an idea for some fins.  If you have seen a sculpin you will notice that they have huge pectoral fins, and that it's hard to duplicate how big they are with materials that will stay big once wet.  I have seen them tied with hen hackle, mallard flank, zonker strips, etc...  All of that stuff compresses a LOT when it gets wet.

It's hard to explain all that goes into these fins, so you will have to watch the video to see it.  Yes, it is overkill, but it's the closest thing that I could get to huge pectoral fins.  They get a bit softer as you fish them, but they still hold a shape pretty well.  This is the first fly that I tied "woolhead" style with bruiser blend dubbing, and it works REALLY well in that technique.  I realized that I would waste a lot of the dubbing by tying it in woolhead style, so I started using Bruiser Blend Jr. to avoid excess waste.

Another version with a thicker head.

On the first few that I tied I put stick-on eyes on them, but there was something that just didn't look right about them.  I went through several versions of eyes until I just decided to build my own right on the dubbing.  Because these eyes are epoxied right into the dubbing of the head, they don't ever fall off.  If all you get out of this video is a new way to make the eyes, you will still come out ahead of the game...

Initial fishing tests were pretty insane because the fish would come out of the woodwork to absolutely SMACK this fly.  The best part is that you can tie some that are lightly weighted, and some that are heavy in order to put them in all of the water columns.

The four things to watch for in this video are the weighting system, the fins, the head, and the EYES.

Recipe:

Hook:  Allen B200 or Daiichi 2461 (BUY HERE)
Thread: UNI 6/0 - white (BUY HERE) Veevus GSP 100 - black (BUY HERE)
Tail: Zonker strip - olive (BUY HERE)
Body: Holographis cactus chenille - silver gold or olive (BUY HERE)
Weighting system: Articulation wire and 3.8 mm tungsten beads (BUY HERE and HERE)
Fins: Bruiser Blend dubbing - brown olive (BUY HERE)
Head: Bruiser Blend Jr. dubbing - brown olive (BUY HERE)
Eyes: Loon UV resin - thin, and thick (BUY HERE)