Medium Dun Chickabou Body Marabou Patch

Medium Dun Ewing Chickabou Marabou Body Patch

Medium Dun is a slate gray, a shade darker than light dun. It matches sow bugs in tailwaters, gray caddis pupae, Adams-colored mayflies and a pile of small gray stuff trout eat every day without anyone noticing.

Medium Dun Ewing Chickabou gives you soft gray fibers for soft-hackle collars, nymph legs and short, buggy tails. It’s a quiet, natural color that works when nothing flashy will.

Tailwater trout, spring creek trout, grayling, carp and panfish.

Recipe 1: Medium Dun Chickabou Caddis Pupa

• Hook: Curved scud/emerger, #14–#16
• Bead: Small gold or black tungsten
• Thread: Gray 8/0
• Abdomen: Olive-gray Ice Dub or Antron, ribbed with fine copper wire
• Legs: Medium Dun Ewing Chickabou, 1 turn as a soft collar
• Head: Brown dubbing or a turn of ostrich herl

Tying: Wrap one turn of chickabou behind the bead and stroke it back. Real caddis pupae swim with their long legs trailing; the chickabou copies that.

How to fish: Fish it as the bottom fly in a two-nymph rig through riffles in late spring and summer. At the end of the drift, let it swing and rise to the surface — that’s a Leisenring lift. Many of your takes will happen on the rise.

Recipe 2: Medium Dun Chickabou Sow Bug

• Hook: 1XL nymph, #14–#18
• Weight: A few wraps of lead-free wire, flattened
• Thread: Gray 8/0
• Tail and legs: Medium Dun Ewing Chickabou fibers, short, at both ends
• Body: Gray rabbit or Ice Dub, picked out on the sides
• Back: Gray Thin Skin, ribbed with fine mono

Tying: Flatten the lead wraps with pliers before you dub the body. Sow bugs are flat and wide, and the shape matters more than the color.

How to fish: In tailwaters with aquatic weed, dead-drift it under a small indicator near the bottom. After high flows or weed cutting, sow bugs drift by the thousands. Trout line up for them.