Hello fellow tiers!!!!
Making dubbin can be fun. It is a great way to make blends of your liking. If you have ever seen a real insect than you know that they are not a consistent color. It doesn't take much, just a simple electric coffee grinder will do the trick. Furs from any animal. Yarn of just about any kind. Even marabou (AWESOME DUBBING)
For furs my personal favorites are rabbit, both mask and body hair. Body under fur is one of the softest and easiest dubbin around. When treated with a water proofing agent ie floatant it will float all day. Body fur with guard hairs makes awesome nymph dubbing that is extremely easy to dub. Squirrel of any variety. Squirrel makes great spiky nymph dubbing. Australian opossum is great nymph dubbing. Seals fur is great emerger dubbing. Which really goes well in dubbing blends. Muskrat is great nymph dubbing and also dry fly dubbing. Beaver makes great dry fly dubbing as well.
Yarn of just about any sort. Check out whats on sale at the craft store or mega stores and pic out some colors you like.Its very easy to make yarn into dubbing. You can get wools and synthetics. Synthetics in the craft world they are acrylics.
Marabou from feathers and actual marabou makes some awesome dubbing. When you pluck those hackles don't just throw away that butt or strip it away. Instead cut it away. Store them in a bag or container and when you have accumulated a bunch simple trim the marabou from the stalk. DON'T strip it or you will up with the stems skin, which will not blend or dub so well.
Flash materials can be picked up via yarn or just picking up some packets of ice dub, polar dub, sts, antron and so on. My favorites are ice dub u.v., polar dub, and sts. The bags you get will make tons of blends. So they are well worth the couple of bucks.
General materials list.
1- Electric coffee grinder. Wally world has a great one and its cheap.
2- Scissors.
3- Fur, yarn, Marabou, Flash materials.
4- dryer sheet or static guard- this is to help with static cling, not necessary but very helpful.
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| Tools. The coffee grinder is a wally world one, works excellently. I like the large scissors as you can get more with just a cut |
Ok lets do a blend! This is one my favorites, its a great olive blend for caddis and various nymphs
Materials-caddis green polar dubbing, an olive hare's mask, and caddis green sts
Cut a small amount off the hares mask. If you want extra coarse dubbing cut in some ear hairs.
load it into your grinder, and give it a few pulses of about the count of 1,2 and stop. Repeat. It will then look just like dubbing in a bag, but fluffier. This will help us add the flash materials. The grinder will chop up your fur if you let it run to long.
Take out about 3-4 pinches of flash, about this much will do nicely. Add them to your hair that you have blended. Just dump the sts right in. Its a short cut dubbing so it will come apart and blend easily. The polar dubbing is a long cut dubbing. You will need to tease it out and put it in. Once you have them all in, give it several pulses of 1 and 2 and stop. Any time you use synthetic in your blender never blend to long or will end up with little plastic balls.
The result. A buggy, flashy but not to flashy, easy to dub blend
As you can see it is quite simple. Have fun creating your own custom blends.
Tight Ties
Johnny Utah
Here is a version of the adams I put together some time ago. It works just as well as any adams. It has caught me some very selective trout though, that refused a standard adams parachute. I tie this fly on light wire scud or emerger hooks. This one is tied on a daiichi 1130. I tie and fish them in a range of sizes. Really small ones are very effective. The abdomen of the fly is fibers from a grey canadain goose feather. I wrap them so the under side of the feather is shown on the shank. I then rib the abdomen with dark grey montana midge body thread. It gives it some flash. The abdomen I use grey stella dub. The post is siliconized poly yarn. And the hackle is your standard hackle for the adams, grizzly and brown. 
