How to Tie a Midnight Fire Balanced Leech

Producer: Fly Fish Food

“Hey everybody, we are going to tie a cool little stillwater leech and it’s one of my favorite color schemes.  It’s called a Midnight Fire and it’s tied balanced, so it’s it’s gonna hang more horizontally in the water when you fish it.

So we’ll go ahead and get started and just get the thread on the hook and then we’ll tie in our pin. So what I like to do is just lay down a little base a thread so it gives the pin a little bit to grab on to. And so what I’ve done is I’ve grabbed my bead and I’ve taken the pin and just trimmed it. I think these are an inch and a quarter satin pin, or an inch and a 16th.  So this is it, it’s a Dritz brand satin pin, nickel-plated steel for extra strength, and you just get these at Walmart or Hobby Lobby literally, and you search if you go to Amazon search #16900 satin pins and boom, you get five hundred for like three dollars or something. That’s crazy, so we’re not gonna sell them on our website.

So what I’m gonna do is, you want the pin to be balanced balanced right at the edge of the eye and that’s where I’ll just tie that on. Now there’s kind of two schools of thought here on pins. I’ve seen some people like to get the smaller size pins, and then you don’t clip them. My problem with those is they’re usually not as strong, so I’ve never had one of these bigger ones bend out. The only thing is you just have to be a little bit careful with your thread as you go around that little sharp edge. Now if you want, sometimes I’ll keep a little file handy and just kind of file down those edges. And I want this to go about halfway back on the shank of the hook; so kind of like that. And then we’ll just work our way to the back now. One thing: depending on the size of beads you use—this is a 3.5 so it’s probably a bit on the bigger end of what I would normally use—so you don’t have to extend it off. The pin is long which is another advantage to the longer size pins—you can trim them the length you want.

So midnight fire is a mix of color. So I like to tie the tail in a dual color scheme. This is awesome stuff. Nature Spirit bought out the Fish Hunter brand of marabou and this is black UV with emphasis on the UV—makes it extra saucy. And then I’ve grabbed the burgundy and I just create a little dual color tail there then I tie in about a hook shank and a half or so and tie that in right there on the the bend….”