Egan's Red Dart

Egan's Red Dart is a pattern I found on Fly Fish Food, which is also where I often get my tying materials. It is a great attractor pattern that gets deep fast and fishes great.

Start with a jig hook with a gold tungsten bead behind the hook eye. Add about nine wraps of lead wire, here I'm using a 0.015 diameter wire, and push it up into the bead. Using red thread, start behind the lead wraps and build a small ramp leading up to the lead. Take wraps through the lead to behind the bead and then back down to the hook bend.

Tie in about 15 fibers from a red hackle feather to create a relatively short tail extending beyond the hook bend. Now tie in a piece of small pearl tinsel and a piece of 6x tippet material and secure both back to the base of the tail. Tightly dub Peacock Ice Dub to the thread and build a tapered abdomen, leaving space behind the bead about the space of one bead. This leaves space for the collar. Since I'm not overly good in "tightly dubbing" ice dub, I go in and trim out the pieces of dubbing that are sticking out until I have a pretty closely trimmed abdomen.

Take the small pearl tinsel and make open counter-wraps (opposite way the ice dub was wrapped) to where the abdomen left off and remove the excess. Now take the 6x tippet material and make open wraps - the opposite way the tinsel was just wrapped - up the abdomen and remove the excess. This will help secure the tinsel and make the fly more durable.

Next, take a fairly small furnace hackle feather, hold it by the tip, and stroke the fibers back to create a tie in point. Secure the hackle right where the abdomen left off and remove the tip. Take two wraps of the hackle while stroking the fibers towards the hook bend. Secure the feather and cut if off at the stem. Finally, add pink Ice Dub to the thread and create a collar behind the bead that also helps push the furnace hackle fibers backward.

Finish the fly with several wraps of the red thread to create a red hot spot behind the bead - being careful not to cover up the pink Ice Dub. A lot of moving parts, but it isn't too difficult to tie. Give it a try.