Nymphs That Fish
Lesson: Bead Heads and Getting the Fly Down
okay. we did the hare's ear and the pheasant tail, so you've got two nymph bodies under your belt. this lesson isn't a new fly. it's the thing that makes those flies actually work in real water: the bead.
i probably should've led with this one, honestly. a beautifully tied nymph that rides six inches under the surface is a fly the trout never sees. on our streams, the fish are holding down near the bottom, in the seams and behind rocks, and your fly has to get down there fast before the current sweeps it past. that's the whole job of a bead head. it's not decoration. it's ballast.
tungsten vs. brass
you'll see both at the shop. brass beads are cheaper and lighter. tungsten beads are denser, so a tungsten bead the same size as a brass one sinks a lot faster and gets you deeper without having to size up.
my honest opinion: buy tungsten for anything you're fishing in fast water, which up american fork canyon is basically everything. brass is fine for slower pools or if you're tying a lot of flies and trying to save money, but on freestone water the fish don't get a long look at your fly, so getting it down into the strike zone matters more than almost anything else you'll do at the vise. i'd rather fish an ugly nymph that's in the right depth than a gorgeous one skating through six inches above the fish's nose.
sizing the bead to the hook
this trips people up. the bead needs to match the hook wire, not just look about right. too big and it wobbles around and looks silly, plus it can crack if it's forced onto wire that's too thick. too small and it won't slide past the hook point at all, or it sits weird and throws off your proportions.
general rule i use: hold the bead up against the hook gap, same idea as measuring your tail length last time. the bead's hole should be snug on the hook shank right behind the eye, not loose, not forced. if you have to really jam it, you've got the wrong size.
getting it on the hook — the order matters
this is the part people forget until they've already tied half the fly.
- thread the bead onto the hook first, before anything else touches the shank. slide it around the bend and up to the eye, small hole first — most beads are countersunk on one side so they seat flush against the eye.
- start your thread behind the bead, same as we've practiced, and build a little thread dam right up against the back of it. this keeps the bead from sliding around later.
- from there, tie the fly exactly like you already know — tail, body, everything we covered on the hare's ear and pheasant tail.
if you forget step one and tie the whole fly before you remember the bead, you have to cut it off and start over. i've done this. more than once. it's not a big deal, just annoying, and it's exactly the kind of mistake that happens when you're excited to get to the fun part.
a word on weight, and a story about buying too much gear
some patterns also want a few turns of lead or lead-free wire under the body, in addition to the bead, if you want them to get down even faster — good for deep, fast pocket water. we'll cover wrapping wire properly in a later lesson so i won't rush it here. for now, the bead alone will get you most of what you need on typical canyon water.
this is a good spot to bring up something i wish someone had told me earlier, actually, about gear in general. when i started tying i bought the top-end vise before i understood what i actually needed — figured more expensive meant better in some straightforward way. took me a while to realize a mid-range rotary vise does everything a beginner needs and most of what an expert needs too. spending big up front is a good way to talk yourself into a hobby before you've actually committed to it. same logic applies to beads and weight, honestly — you don't need every tungsten size and every wire gauge on day one. get a small assortment, figure out what your local water actually calls for, then fill in gaps later.
a caution worth saying plainly
tungsten beads are hard. if you're using pliers to force one onto a hook, stop and check your sizing instead of pushing harder — beads can crack or chip, and a chipped bead can have a sharp edge. no worries at all if it happens, just don't keep tying on it. toss it and grab another.
before next time
grab a small assortment of tungsten beads in a couple sizes if you can, and try threading one onto a bare hook a few times just to get the feel of sizing it right before we tie with it in class.