Perdigon 04/13/2020 Photo Album

Around five years ago my daughter, Amy, introduced me to Instagram. It was a seminal moment in my fly fishing career. I now follow hundreds of anglers around the world, and I am amazed at the quality and creativity of tiers on every continent. A fly that frequently appears in my Instagram feed from these international tiers is the perdigon. The perdigon fly originated in Spain, and it is a small yet comparably heavy sleek design that quickly plummets to the bottom even in fast water conditions. Many tiers make them on a jig hook, and they typically incorporate a tungsten bead to hasten the sink rate. These flies portray very slender, sleek bodies that slice through the water column with minimal resistance.

I Love the Shine

I never experimented with a perdigon, but in a recent article in Fly Fisherman Charlie Craven instructed on the steps. Given the covid hiatus I decided to make a few. I discovered that Charlie created a video of the tying steps, so I viewed the clip from beginning to end to get an overview. I did not possess any jig hooks, so I dug out some size 18 scud hooks. Charlie did not use a jig hook in his demonstration, so I felt that I was not deviating excessively from the pattern.

Five Completed

I gathered the remaining materials and produced my first perdigon. I used fluorescent orange thread and mylar tinsel for the body, but I struggled to prevent the tinsel from sliding back to clump the tail. On the second attempt I used olive floss for the body, and it was an improvement, although quite a bit of the fluorescent thread showed through the floss. Both may be acceptable to fish, but I knew I could do better. For my last three I used olive thread with pearl flashabou for the body and then wrapped strands of brown and black super hair for the rib. If you check out the embedded photos, you will agree that the super hair versions are the best. The topping on all these perdigon flies is UV resin, and I utilized flow for the layer over the abdomen. The epoxy layer renders a rich iridescent look to the tiny nymph.

Materials Used

For the final step I used a black marker to color a black wing case on top, and then I applied a small thick drop of UV resin for the wing case. This last step gives the fly the stereotypical hump that distinguishes the perdigon. I have five more new flies to experiment with during the 2020 season.