Scud Mani has become one of my most popular patterns for difficult seat routs. It has also become a successful pattern, and become a part of history when it was publicized in an article in the Norwegian magazine Alt om Fiske in 2008.
I love simple, effective and good looking flies. Scud Mani is a perfect example of this. The hook is a stainless Partridge Salt CS54 in size #12,#10 or #8. I prefer #10 for Scud Mani. Owner Kappa
could easily be used instead of Partridge. Better hook, but not as durable agains the salt.
The other part, is the good looking part. I have loved Larva Lace, since i first used it in 1997. It just looks great. Brings life to the flies look, but it´s still a dead material, that needs
smoother materials to move. To get that lively effect, I use my shrimp mix, hare´s ear and SLF fiber, mixed 80/20.
I have not seen this type of fly tying technique anywhere (let me know if you have!) but it just made sense for me, to bring the dubbing as close to the Larva Lace as possible. It´s what you see
in step 5 to 7. Instead of wrapping the larva lace around the dubbing, and then pull it out afterwards, i twist the dubbing and the Larva Lace together around the hook. I use ski wax colored blue
to get it sticky un the flat underside, and makes the dubbing smoothly stick out from the hook, on each turn. It looks crazy at first, but then, when you start to brush it with a weapon brush,
the bodily look comes thru.
It´s a simple fly to tie. You decide how to cut and trim it, but the most important is that you get the back free of dubbing. I believe that this is what makes it look good. Make some heavy and
some light ones, in the colors that you prefer. I have four colors that I always brings along; Brown, light brown, cream and olive. This should be enough to cover the Scandinavian needs to
imitate the scuds in our waters.