How to Tie the Picky Eater Perdigon

Like it or not, competition angling is driving many of the advancements in our sport. And while I generally find Perdigons and their cousins to be pretty boring flies, Zach VanDeHey, a 39-year-old Oregonian, and his approach to his Picky Eater Perdigon gives me hope for the future. VanDeHey hatched the idea for his Picky Eater while feeling was that his conventional Perdigons were sinking too fast. Though the entire premise behind slender-bodied nymphs with big tungsten beads is to plummet through the water column to the bottom, these fish were feeding in the middle of the water column. VanDeHey got to work on the vise to design a fly that would sink more slowly and spawned the brilliant idea of not only downsizing the bead, but also adding a dubbing-loop CDC collar to function as a parachute and reduce the rate of descent. This flowing CDC collar adds tons of fluid motion to the fly, and creates enough drag and lift to keep the fly drifting mid-column. Follow along as I twist up this super-fishy fly.