Then blood leech is part of my Six pack for spring carp. This pattern for me has evolved over the years to where it is now.
It works great for all species and clear water, however I gave found that carp love this fly in murky to dirt water. I have seen fish chase this fly down to eat it. They just love to eat this fly. Leeches are the first thing to start to be active and carp actively eat them to put on the feed bag in preparation to spawn.
This pattern is a little complex to tie and it has some techniques/material that are not used all the time in my arsenal, but some of the other skills learned from other flies are transferable, dubbing loops, weighting the fly and adding marabou.
So lets discuss the material for this fly and the video will follow below. The hook is a Mustad signature in #8 3xh 2xl, this is my all time go to hook for most of my patterns. It holds up, light, strong, durable and sharpens easy. All necessary in the word of fighting big fish in tough places, especially carp. The next on the list is a glass bead, red almost any glass bead of your choice will do, I found mine favourite ninth craft store. If you are worried about it breaking you can add head cement, UV glue or other to the bead to prevent it from breaking. I usually only brake them when I am fish heavily treed area’s or where there is a lot of rock along the shore line, if you land them off target, once or twice a year, or other wise it’s golden. The next item, is the lead wrap or non lead wrap in 0.015 in a length of 2 times the hook shank length, as you are going to add red wire, size small in a dubbing loop, which adds more weight. This fly is not a bottom dragging fly, it suspends or sinks very slow, drives carp crazy, the cant resist it. The body of the fly is made from ice dubbing in two colours, black and red, spun in a dubbing loop with wax with the red wire as started earlier. The tail is made up of black, red or claret marabou. Sometimes the fish want red tails and other times black, let the fish tell you.
Tailers & Chasers 