AN ESSENTIAL BUZZER

Oliver Edwards and I were tying at John Norris's show in Penrith in April 2000 where we were shown a buzzer pattern, the essential ingredients of which are: Doritos Tangy Cheese flavour crisp packet (the orange bits) and Sally Hansen's Hard-as nails nail enamel (from the chemist beauty parlour).

Important: Don't ask for varnish! When I worked for a living I once asked the blonde Head of Beauty Department how long it took her to put varnish on her nails. 'Varnish!' she screeched. 'Varnish goes on doors. Enamel goes on nails!'

This is the best of the crisp-packet Buzzers by a long way:

Hook: Wet fly, sizes 10-12.
Thread: Black.
Abdomen: Stripped, well marked peacock quill from eye *.
Thorax: Tying thread **.
Wing buds: Two narrow strips of Doritos orange Tangy Cheese Flavour crisp packet.
Breathers (optional): Tiny bunch white Anton or similar fibres, cut short ***.
Overbody: Hard-as-nails. At least three coats.

* No need to tie round the bend to get a curved shape.
**To speed things up I use thickish thread but was told off for doing so by the great tyer Paul Little who then asked, 'Haven't you heard about proportions in fly-dressing?' Who needs friends?
*** Sometimes these breathers do increase the catch rate, but they were added only in 2001 and I caught lots of trout in both wild and artificial lake without them in 2000.

Fish a long leader (16-feet), A big dry fly on top dropper and one of these on point and bottom dropper. Cast out and watch the dry fly; don't retrieve, but keep everything tight. Dry fly bobs under, fish on! One day a few weeks ago on a small put-and-take lake, I caught more with this fly and method than all other twenty-odd other anglers put together. And it was the fly that did it!

Malcolm Greenhalgh

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