Shaving Brush    The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern   

Hook: Dry fly hook

Thread:  Brown 8/0 Uni-Thread

Tail: Pheasant Tail

Body: Buggy Dubb or other shaggy dubbing

Wing: Deer Hair Fine

1/ Use 8/0 thread with this fly but be careful when tying in the deer hair in step two as it is very easy to break thin thread when using this material. Lay a base of thread from the eye of the hook to a point about one third the way back down the hook shank as shown. Standard operating procedure for starting off a fly. Now grab your deer hair. I like to match the colour of the deer hair to the body colour but this combination works well on the Goulburn so I have used the natural (un dyed).

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

2/ Select a small bunch of deer hair. They should be short'ish at about an inch to an inch and a half depending on hook size. Stack the tips gently in your finger tips or an over-priced commercially available deer hair stacker! A spent bullet cartridge cut down with a hacksaw is a perfect substitute. Tie in as shown with deer hair protruding forward. Pinch the hair onto the top of the hook and start winding level with the hook point working backwards. Use gentle wraps first to stop it flaring making the thread bite into the hair as you move towards the rear of the hook.

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

3/ Trim the excess being very careful to not cut the thread. While we had to be careful not to break the thread in the previous step, cutting it is now the potential pitfall. Try and get a nice even cut to avoid unnecessary bulk although we will be building the body over it so you have a little lee way. Once this is tied in and trimmed as shown skip the thread back to the rear of the fly to a point about level with the hook barb. Because I want a lot of this fly under the water I wrap back further so that the pheasant tail when tied in will angle down slightly.

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

4/ Select a bunch of pheasant tail fibres. Three to four is fine and tie them in as shown. The first turn should be at the very rear of the hook and you can then wind forward, binding them down with every extra turn of thread. This should easily be done with a minimal amount of turns. When this is tied in securely simply trim the excess and move onto the next step.

 

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern
5/ Ok dubbing time. Get some of the dubbing you wish to use. I am deliberately non-specific about the type as the millions of dubbings out there are confusing to the new fly tier and it is often assumed that you cannot tie a fly without material x or y. Well that is garbage. Anything natural fur will work well. If you want a shaggier fly use a dubbing with some guard hairs in it or a more delicate fly use a dubbing that comes from the under fur. In this case I have picked a shaggy dubbing with plenty of guard hairs. The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

6/ Start wrapping the dubbed rope of fur up the hook to build the body. Wrapping in a clockwise direction if viewed from the front of the hook slowly wrap and tease the fibres with your spare hand until you have the start of a nice body forming. While this is not difficult I have broken this step down into two parts.

 

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern
7/ You can see here the body starting to take shape. The dubbed rope is not always perfect from the initial dubbing attempt so play with it as you wrap and move forward. Thin it out if you need be or add more where needed. You can even go back and touch up gaps in the body. As this is a mayfly emerger we want to mimic the tapered shape of these insects and therefore we want a body that uniformly goes from thin to thick over the course of moving forward along the hook shank. The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern
8/ When you reach the wing we want to add a little bit more dubbing to create the look of the emerging mayflies thorax. This can be done by adding a little more dubbing i.e. making the rope thicker or by putting in more wraps in the same area. This is purely academic and I use both methods. Once you are pretty happy that what you see looks reasonably close to this then you can move onto step 9. The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern
9/ To whip finish or not to whip finish, that is the question. Well not really. Its pretty straightforward. If you want to waste $40 on a whip finisher then go ahead. But the end of a biro or similar such instrument will work just as well. A couple of half hitches and your flies will be just as strong. I guarantee the fly will fall apart long before the knots do. Trout teeth shred flies but they don't have thumbs and whether you whip finish or half hitch makes no difference. Just half hitch is the short answer. The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

10/ Here is the finished fly in all its shaggy glory. Shaggedelic baby! This is a pattern to imitate mayflies and can be carried in most sizes and all the major mayfly colours. Tie them sparser if you are fishing in smooth water to picky fish. The shaggier the better if fishing in tassie.

 

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern

11/ Again another useful version is the shaggy one tied trimmed off. I would fish this version shown with confidence when fish are chomping emergers on the Goulburn and feel equally satisfied to use a larger version in the same colours on the famous hatch lakes of Tassie's central highlands.

 

 The Shaving Brush - a simple and effective fly pattern
   

The Pattern

I haven't got much time to write about this fly here today but suffice to say that it is a take-off of many successful patterns from overseas and we have been fishing a version of them for over ten years. They represent an emerging dun very well and many fish them as an imitation of crippled duns although this is more of geographical oddity as I have yet to find many situations locally where fish are keyed into cripples to the point where they exclude other duns.

In Tassie we often fish them in tandem with a dun or different emerger pattern. Often a bit of movement is all that is needed to elicit a take from a circling Arthur's fish. We had great successes with them in the mid 90's when we spent a bit of time over there.

In recent years we have had good results on our home waters using this little pattern. I like the shaggy version which can then be chopped down although I admit I use the chopped down version much more these days. They are an easy fly to tie and definitely a handy addition to the armory of any visiting angler. Tie a few up for yourself today.

~ Antony