A new twist on a old pattern--My Not So Casual Dress

One of my mentors Polly Rosebrough came up with a nymph pattern named the Casual Dress. Polly use to swing this pattern alone or behind a wet fly. This is one of Polly's best know patterns and it has caught trout from coast to coast: probably internationally. he tied it with muskrat which he trapped and died himself. The Casual Dress imitates a ton of different nymphs keeping on track with what Polly would call a suggestive pattern. His idea was that fish eat flies that don't look "fishy" out of the water but rather carry the same look underwater as the natural. Its for this reason he would tie flies that trap air and give some shimmer, because that exactly what  emerging nymphs do! when they build the necessary gasses it takes to rise through the water column those gases make a bubble. That bubble would shimmer under water. His casual dress did this well as it would trap air as it entered the water. The Casual Dress was one of my favorite flies until I was fishing with someone who put a little flash in their fly, giving it a super shimmer under water. I got out fished, on my own river using a classic fly that was born on that river. this got me to thinking--I had better change something. Out of pure tradition and respect to this cool fly I still wanted to fish the casual dress style, but I thought I would bring it up to date with some of our more modern materials. The result was an amazing success.  What I came up with was a fly that I call the Un-casual Dress, as it holds on to some of the tradition of Polly's pattern, but is updated with some of our modern materials. below you will find the instructions for tying it, and with another blog post I will describe how to fish it. Oh, and by the way, this fly doesn't work on any of the waters I guide on, so don't even bother to try it. Enjoy!

Here are all the materials you need to tie My Not So Casual Dress
Any good nymph hook, olive 140 thread, .015 lead wire, Krystal Dub--olive and brown, muskrat strips--olive and Brown, and Crystal Flash. 

Add lead wire along the whole shank of the hook.

Tie in a muskrat tail leaving the guard hairs pointing back like marabou.

Add a strip of flash on either side of the tail. 

Dub about 3/4 of the shank with Peacock Green Krystal Dub.

Make a dubbing loop add guard hair from brown muskrat to the dubbing loop.

Wrap the Muskrat like its a hackle. 

Finish the head with Brown Krystal Dub and there you have it My Not So Casual Dress. Its not a true Casual dress like Polly's, but it is truly a fuzzy inspired nymph that loves to swing.