Twinkle Wing Spinner–Hendrickson
When I wrote Designing Trout Flies in 1991, I had not yet discovered Twinkle Organza as a winging material. It was up to Bob Brooks, then manager of the Hot Creek Ranch, to show me this material one July when I was there with Nancy and Jason to fish the Trico spinner fall. His little imitation with the Twinkle Organza wing out fished every fly I had, and the Twinkle Wing Spinner became a part of my fishing vocabulary and fly tying efforts.
But Twinkle Organza was very hard to apply to larger flies because the fibers wouldn’t flare very much. On a tiny Trico Imitation even a tiny bit of flare is enough. But on a size 12 Hendrickson, a little flare is certainly not enough. I tried many different approaches to make the fibers flare, and finally hit upon a method that works every time. It’s easy to do and makes a most delicious looking spinner. Furthermore, I added the bent shank hook approach that I use on the duns and found it to help the fly snuggle into the film like the natural. Here’s the secret.
The X-Wing Spinner that I showed in Ddsigning Trout Flies is a very good spinner imitation, only one notch below the Twinkle Wing Spinner. It has a fan tail, dubbed body, and hackle wound X-style and trimmed top and bottom. The above illustration is by Jason Borger from Designing Trout Flies.
Typically on larger hooks I use the handles of my scissors to bend the front of the hook upward. On small hooks I use a pair of fine needle nose pliers.
For a spinner I bend the front 1/4 of the shank upward. The wing will lie in the bend.
Apply a fan tail, dub on the abdomen, and then tie a 1/4 inch wide strip of Twinkle Organza onto the hook, right at the bend in the thorax. The strip should be longer than the wings. Note the dubbing on the thread, ready to be used to make the thorax once the wings have been locked in tightly with figure 8 wraps of thread.
Pull the winging material back and clip both wings at one time. Make them as long as the rear of the hook bend. Then use a dubbing brush to comb out the cross fibers in the wings.
Twinkle Organza is a super-trigger that will draw a fish out of its feeding lane. Wing this tying tactic it can be used on any of the medium to large spinner imitations as well as on the tiny stuff.
Does Twinkle Organza float or do you have to apply dressing to it?
Typically I give it a thin coat of floatant just to help it stay on top.