I tied these with a yellow and a olive body. Originally, I only fished with an orange bodied TDC. I need to tie some of those orange bodies. This pattern doubles as a scud pattern too, for some. By the eye, I thought the hackle to be just fine, but in looking at the pic, the lens shows the hackle to be a bit overdressed and too long for my tastes. This is a lesson in fly tying, a pattern that you have never tied before or haven’t visited in a while, often requires a good half dozen efforts to fine tune the look and materials to maintain that look.
Size 14 nymph hook, 8/0 tan thread, deer hair tail and top pulled up over single strand of wool yarn (3 ply), tied in at back, which is wrapped up the shank and tied off. A brown hackle was tied in at same tie in point as single strand of yarn. Hackle was wrapped forward over body. The deer hair is then pulled over the body/hackle and tied down. The hard part (for me) is to then trim the deer hair close, then cover the deer hair to form a thread head, without too much build up. The body could be dubbed, but I would go with a dry fly type fine dubbing. Of course, the options abound.
SwittersB & Exploring 
Maybe a dumb question; obviously fished wet when imitating a scud – but do you fish these mainly dry or wet? or damp? Or all of the above?
I like this pattern it’s a new one to me.
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I had always fished it subsurface like any nymph. It worked top to bottom. Especially in riffles etc. It has really fallen away over the years. I learned of it 45+ years ago when a neighbor boy intro’d me to fly fishing…he tied this one pattern for a local department store that had a FFing section…he was only paid to tie that fly…so that was my fly…it was all I knew as a teen and it worked pretty darn well. Later, when I came back to FFing, I never saw it that much and still don’t….I think it is worth a tie in sizes 10-14…(smaller is harder to tie)….I only saw it in orange bodies but sometimes see olive or yellow or tan…probably could be dubbed with hairs ear, but then a different pattern…know how that goes…
Gary
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