
Here’s another fly I’m going to enter into that fly tying contest I mentioned last time. This one is called the Braided Blue Damselfly which I am going to enter in the Bass Category of the contest. It’s a fly pattern from world-class fly tyer Barry Ord Clarke, a.k.a. “the featherbender”. You can watch him tie this fly here.

I did make the following “improvements” to the recipe in his video:
- Instead of using a length of white Dacron backing for the tail and coloring it with a blue marker, I came across a commercially sold product from Hareline Dubbin called “Adult Damsel Body” in color “#23 Blue”. All I had to do is melt the end so it wouldn’t unravel and then add the black segmentation markings. I do need to straighten out the curl a little more though.
- Instead of using blue foam from a craft store, I used the more dense “Thin Fly Foam” from Wapsi in the color “Damsel Blue”. That’s kind of a no-brainer.
- I typically prefer SLF dubbing over Hareline Dubbin Ice Dub so I used SLF Prism in the color “Electric Blue”. To make it look a little more like the UV Blue Ice Dub used in the video, I could add a little SLF Prism dubbing in “Hot Purple” but I didn’t think it was necessary.
After incorporating those changes, here is the fly tying card for the Braided Blue Damselfly:

I inserted this card into the Other Bass Flies card set and you can find it on my Fly Tying Cards page.
Great looking damsel. I’ve seen them here on the lake and know that the bass sure like them. I’ve even used a blue/grayish Adams sort of tie and had great success with it. Great looking fly CFT (Classic FLy Tying). UB
The Damsel looks great! I’ve seem them here on the little lake we live on. That’ll get their attention for sure. UB