Royal Wulff

[Tigereye]

One of my favorite searching patterns on a number of waters is the classic R Wulff. I typically tie it in size 12 and 14 and never really had reason to go smaller or larger.

My problem is that after fishing one for a bit or after catching a fish or 2 the fly swamps out on me and has difficulty staying afloat. I usually just clip it off and tie on another giving the used fly ample time to dry for another time. This is annoying.

I am ready to tie a batch up for this year and thought I'd reach out to you experts for advice. I am by no means a novice tyer as I have been tying for 20+ years. But this fly always stumped me.
I use calf tail wings, deer hair tail, a few wraps of peacock for the butt. , floss body , and a few wraps of peacock for thorax, finishing with 3-4 wraps of stiff hackle. I am paying attention to proportion and as always take care to avoid excess wrapping or making the fly bulky.

How do you suggest getting more "floatability" in your Wulff patterns? Any tricks you'd like to share? Your suggestions are welcome.

 

[dryflyguy]

What kinda of floatant are you using?
I use a home made concoction of lighter fluid and mucilin paste. I keep it in a bottle on my vest, and dunk the whole fly in it before fishing. This coats every part of the fly quite well.
There are also several commercially prepared floatants on the market that work the same way.

That said, peacock herl does not float very well. Besides that, royal wulffs are a PIA to tie. And I don't even bother with them any more.
There are much simpler, more durable searching patterns out there - that work just fine, IMO.

 

[chromid]

I tied some modified lime trudes that have a similar body construction as the RWulff. I used a small bit of lime colored razor foam to replace the floss mid-body for a recent trip out west. The thought was I wanted something that would perform in the heavier water out there.

Although I really like to stay with some of the traditional aspects of the flies I tie, they floated like corks and the fish didn't seem to mind at all.

 

[MKern]

Sounds like you are tying they okay.

But if you want more floatability, I'd suggest a thicker/stiffer tail and more hackle. (that goes for most dries that use a palmered hackle.

I would also think about substituting synthetic peacock dubbing or regular dubbing for the traditional/natural peacock.

But, the royal is not an easy fly to tie, and isn't very durable. Personally, I'd switch searching patterns. My preference, especially on small streams, is a klinkhamer style emerger/dry without the trailing shuck. To me, it covers three phases of a mayfly: hatching, dry, and egg-laying. It also has its hook point submerged, which leads to more hook ups.

 

[Tiogadog]

Three to four wraps of hackle seems a bit too few. Not sure if you meant three in the back of the wing and then three more in front. I would try to get as many wraps of hackle as you can.

Not a Royal Wulff but the instructions below are basically the same

GTH Variant

 

[pabrookie94]

Yeah since my RW's are just being used as searching patterns or for brookies I cram as many wraps of hackle as I can and they seem to fish just fine. Another tip is to use shake and dry to dry out the fly and then fish or after shake and dry use a touch of loon aquel. Brookies do not fight long so maybe it is just holding up for me do to the fact they're barely getting wet.

 

[RLeep2]

Actually, one of the things that always was a little off-putting to me about the Royal Wulff was that for an impressionistic searching pattern, it had only mediocre floatability and was always in need of being re-juiced or rested. Didn't fit my definition of a small stream searching pattern very well.

But there are a lot of little tying things you can do to make it ride as high and durable as its somewhat unfortunate design allows:

1) Use a deer or even caribou hair tail and run it the entire length of the body, using more widely spaced wraps on the front half to take advantage of the hollow hair.

2) Use extra wraps of hackle up front in general to increase buoyancy.

3) Tie it trude style and palmer it. This puts part of the responsibility for floatation on the wing and also gets the hackle more involved in floating the thing. You can use poly for the wing and grease the living &^$# out of it.

4) Finally, this is what I do if I've recently had a concussion and as a result have lost all reason and have decided to make a pile of Royal Wulffs... I redesign the body and use bookends of peacock ice dub or some such to separate a band of narrow cut razor foam colored with a red Sharpie.

Usually though, what I do is take my snips out and change to a Grizzly Wulff or Stimulator...

 

[pabrookie94]

^ +1

The stimulator is my #1 confidence pattern and it floats like a cork.

 

[Tigereye]

Thanks everyone for the great feedback. I was going through some old fly tying books and came across C. Mecks patriot fly. Very similar except for color and not unlike the suggestion of using ice dub however Meck uses blue crystal flash. Certainly olive or peacock would do just as nicely while staying true to the color scheme of the RF. Perhaps a few in the box this year as well as trude, palmered and the other suggestions are in order.

This place is a wonderful resource. Thanks all.