Rabbit fur flies – picture heavy
- This topic has 35 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated Jan 3, 2009 at 7:23 pm by
.
-
Posts
-
Nick, here are some ideas for tying with rabbit fur/zonkers.
Can’t have enough rabbit zonkers! Natural, died, barred, crosscut.
I don’t have my traditional slumpbuster box handy but here are some examples of similar flies. I have recently been tying a bit more “shaggy” and using natural barred rabbit.
My favorite slumpbuster style fly. I tie it on a size 4 4xl hook and make the collar a bit fuller. Great movement underwater.
same fly but in chartreuse and with rubber legs.
Pine squirrel is also a great little zonker. Here is a little “zuddler” style fly that is very effective.
If you don’t wrap the zonker with wire (e.g. like a slumpbuster) you get a more wavy action of the tail underwater.
Here is a variation on the slumpbuster I have been tying as a baitfish imitation.
Other things to do with rabbit zonkers include zonkers and double bunnies. You can learn most of these patterns at charliesflybox.com.
Zonker
Double bunny using a small pine squirrel zonker strip (very effective fly, one of my favorites).
Rabbit zonkers are often used in saltwater patterns.
You can also cut up the rabbit and spin a dubbing brush. This creates a very lively fly underwater. Great for wooly buggers also. I use a dubbing brush bench but you can easily do this with a traditional on-the-vise dubbing loop.
Fill up some boxes quickly, this stuff goes a long way! You can tie many flies off a $3 pack of rabbit.
Awesome post Neal, as always. Re. your DBL Bunnies, what glue do you use to affix the two bunny strips? I have tried Zap, but I found that it made the Bunny hide brittle, leading to cracked Bunny hide (pun noted but not intended). I then tried Goop, but it was nothing more than a mess of Goop and Bunny fur. Is there a glue I am missing for this application?
D.Great question Dusty and one I struggled with for a long time. You can’t use super-glue derivatives or Zap products on leather (i.e. zonker strips and rabbit) because it will change the chemical properties of the natural hide. Thus creating a cemented and brittle outcome and the fly won’t wiggle and act naturally. You have to use Tearmender http://www.tearmender.com/ which I get at Ace Hardware.
To quote Charlie Cravin (http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com) “Now, for my little trick . . . Tear Mender is the stuff used to stick rabbit strips together on flies like the Double Bunny and is stickier than snot! it dries in about three minutes and this stuff STICKS! . . . If you get any Tear Mender on the rabbit fur or hackle, just let it dry and it will come off cleanly…DO NOT try to wipe it when it’s wet.”
I forgot to mention that rabbit zonkers also make effective articulated flies like the sex dungeon variant.
Neal thanks for the ideas and examples, you have helped answer a lot of the questions that have haunted me. I can only hope that one day I will have half the knowledge of someone like yourself, and that is why I became a part of this community, to learn from those more knowledgeable than myself.
Nick
Damn!…just Damn!
It amazes me that the people on this board with the most time-demanding jobs are the ones producing some of the most quality work-MDs, Esq, Photogs, et al. Kinda makes me feel lazy.Let’s start a commune! (But it cannot be in Waco as the last one went horribly wrong!)
D.
Awesome post Neal, thanks.
Tearmender is definitely the glue!I’ve been mucking around with rabbit and its quickly becoming my material of choice with streamers. Your flies have inspired. Thanks
Remember, when using fabric/leather cement to bond your flies avoid smearing and never wipe the excess off when wet or it will just smear into the fur and smudge.
Neal –
I was tying Zuddlers last night and I have some questions since you clearly know what you are doing.
1) Where are you getting the wider cut strips of rabbit?
Damn!…just Damn!
It amazes me that the people on this board with the most time-demanding jobs are the ones producing some of the most quality work-MDs, Esq, Photogs, et al. Kinda makes me feel lazy.I have noticed this trend too…and I think it holds true in most of life as well…not just here at IA.
The people who get the most done are the ones who are driven, disciplined and just cant seam to sit still.
Zach, I will post some pictures later tonight if I have time and discuss the Zuddler cone-head. Truthfully it was a real bitch to perfect the technique and I wasted a ton of material early on trying to get that nice little hair collar. I used the tutorial from Lauren Williams http://www.flyguysoutfitting.com/zuddler.html early on until I learned to do it my own way. Lauren does a great job on photographing his flies. The “trick” to this fly is getting the hair to spin “under [or within] the cone head, thus reducing bulk and allowing you to use a razor blade to spin-shave a nice donut-shaped collar. One last comment is about the cone size – Error on the side of a larger cone. My early flies had a small cone and the deer hair would not spin correctly, thus creating bulk at the head and collar.
As for the rabbit strips, I get them at either of the two shops downtown/Buckhead, no secret source per se. However, I always take the strips out of the package and look them over. It is amazing how the hides can vary from package-to-package. Especially with Pine Squirrel. Some are thin and some are thick, I have been known to buy a package of each to serve different tying requirements. Then again, I’ve been known to buy a lot of stuff for no good reason, ha.
If you dont mind buying online…International Angler in Pittsburgh should have the wider strips as well.
Zach,
To add to Neal’s response, the wider cut rabbit strips are called Magnum Zonker Strips, and then you can find some even wider ones called Magnum Texas Zonker Strips.
Zach, funny you should mention about the dubbing bench and rubber. That is exactly why I bought the device initially. I saw this great fly at Orvis http://www.orvis.com/store/productchoice.aspx?pf_id=54G0&dir_id=1236&group_id=1260&cat_id=15330&subcat_id=15331&feature_id=17. My friends out west say they like it on the bigger rivers. So anyway, yes, the device makes great rubber hackle. I will post some pictures later. By the way, I believe the best rubber stretch material cut up as a blend is the Uni Flexx and I am pretty sure that is what the production guys are using for the Orvis flies http://www.uniproducts.com/eng/produits.asp#. I used Spanflex early on and it worked great, I just ran out of material (anyone know where I can buy more?)?.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.