New Damsel Pattern (and Body Technique)

I have often found carp in a few specific locations which prove very difficult to coax into striking.  The locations are very different, but the conditions are very similar: clear, shallow water and spooky/selective fish.  A while back, I picked up some Kiley's Damzel Tails with intentions to create a highly detailed damsel nymph pattern that might coax a few of these fish into eating.  I wanted a detailed, buggy pattern with a slow fall and subtle movement.  I weighted the fly with a single 1/8" bead belly-scratcher style for a slow fall on a size 10 Dai-Riki 700B.

My first attempt was a flop, in my eyes.  I tried a new body wrapping technique, and that part actually worked, but the front half of the fly wasn't what I wanted.  The end result was too skinny in the thorax area, the Thin Skin (even though it's olive in color) was too dark, and I wasn't a fan of the rubber legs.

The leg technique I came up with was to combine a dubbing loop idea with a complex twist.  How I accomplished this was to tie in a pair of rubber legs, and use those rubber legs as a dubbing loop with a sparse dubbing layer in between the rubber legs.  Here's how it looks in pictures.

Once you've got it spun, wrap it forward and brush it lightly towards the rear of the fly.  The resulting body is a rubbery segmented body with a buggy "veil" of dubbing over the body.  The changes I made to the front of the fly were to skip the nymph dubbing and rubber legs in favor of a combination of both: Cohen's Carp Dub.  This awesome stuff is a buggy dubbing with tiny spandex rubber legs mixed in.  It picks out really well with a dubbing brush.  I also scrapped the dark thin skin for some basic brown scud back that I topped with Loon Thick UV resin.  Here's the final product.

I think it will destroy large panfish in the right environments, but I'm really anxious to see how the clear water carp react to it.  Hopefully the weather continues to warm up and I can put this fly to the test sooner rather than later.  The final recipe:

-Hook: Dai-Riki 700B size 10

-Tail: Kiley's Damzel Tail

-Weight: 1/8" brass bead (belly scratcher style to keel the hook point-up)

-Eyes: Small mono eyes

-Abdomen: rubber legs spun with Spectrablend Nymph dubbing

-Shellback: scud back

-Thorax: Cohen's Carp Dub

-Shellback Top Coat: Loon Thick UV resin