Flash N’ Grab Intruder

I’m a big fan of using flashabou in my trout, salmon, and steelhead flies. Beyond the flash, flashabou has great movement in the water and does not bleach out or get torn off the fly like marabou. During the years I was guiding in Alaska, I found that the Flash N’ Grab Intruder fly would hold up through lots and lots of fish. When the hook wears out, it can be replaced. Most flies last through several hook changes. When you don’t want a bright flashy fly; blue, black and purple are the perfect colors to focus on. They flash, but not too much. They also show up really well in stained or clearer water, so you can rely on them in varied conditions. When you deliver these colors with the pulsating movement of flashabou in front of all but the stalest of fish, you can expect a grab.

Material List:

Thread: 140 UTC or 6/0 Veevus
Shank: 25mm Waddington
Loop: Senyos Intruder Wire 6 or larger
#2 Hook Choices: OPST Swing, Owner No Escape, Gamakatsu Octopus
Eyes: Anodized Dumbells 3/8” or Real Eyes of choice
Dubbing: Senyo’s Fusion Dub Midnight or Black Simi Seal
Wings and Throat: Flashabou Black, Blue, Purple
Body: Polar Chenille Black

Video Transcription

Intro to the Flash N’ Grab Intruder

This is Fred from North 40 Fly Shop and today I'm going to be tying a fly I call the Flash N' Grab Intruder. This is a great a fly, or at least I've found it to be successful when I fish in the fall in Alaska. It catches rainbow trout. It also catches silver salmon, and it will catch Dolly Varden as well, so you can get all species on this same fly. And, it's worked for steelhead in several different river systems as well.

Step-by-Step Tying Instructions

So, I'm going to start out. The first thing to do is to add a hook to my wire. And I'm using the Senyo's Intruder wire for size 6 or larger. Your hook choice is actually an interesting deal because I have found that depending on the way the fish are eating the fly, I will often change my hook choice. One of my favorites if the fish are eating well, where you're getting really positive takes, I like these a No Escape hooks. It's a barbless hook with a pretty good upturn and a straight point. If it's just your preference to use the Gamakatsu Octopus hook, this is always a good choice. It does have a little bit more of a beak to it and I've sometimes found with rainbows, they will seem to slide off that beak without getting hooked. And if that's happening then I'll switch to a pointed hook that doesn't have a beak, and this Drop Shot hook works really well.

So, usually, I'll fish one or the other of these hooks and if I'm missing fish I'll just switch to the different one because there's nothing worse than getting grabs and not getting positive hookups. But this No Escape hook has actually been my go-to for the most part lately. So, I'm going to grab a 25 millimeter Waddington shank and stick this in the vice. Actually, I'll probably put it this way so you can see it better on camera. And then I've already got my hook prepped on a piece of wire. I'm going to want that hook to extend back about a little over a half inch behind my shank. We're just going to go ahead and run down a thread base. It's the middle of winter in Montana. For some reason that always makes me want to tie flies that I'm going to be fishing with in Alaska.

All right, so I've got enough of a thread base that this should hold my wire pretty well. Once you get it started, if you need to pull a little bit to adjust it, as long as you've got a few loose wrapped, you can kind of get it set right where you need it to be. This shank is long enough that this wire is probably not going to need any additional glue. There's a lot of pressure with all these thread wraps locking down into that coating, so this is not going to pull off of there. But if you are more comfortable giving it a little run of superglue before you proceed from this point, you can go ahead and do that. If I'm tying a bunch of these flies, a lot of times I'll prep the shanks ahead of time and then I'm just ready to start tying.

So I'm just going to put in a little cluster about an inch and a half long and get this spun up. What I'm doing is I'm just building a little bulge here at the tail end of the fly, and then when I get my first layers of Flashabou on that will just give it a little spread. Get a little more water movement through it that way. That looks about perfect. All right, so now I'm going to grab a little clump of Flashabou and I don't want a really big clump. I'm also going to be doubling this over my thread, so whatever I grab is going to be multiplied by two. So, I'm going to get that place tied in and then as I get right up near my bump, it's going to be mostly on top of the hook, but I like to give it just a little bit of a spread. Then we're going to cut that off about two inches long.

Next, I'm going to throw on some dumbbell eyes. This is a 3/16 eye in blue. Give it some good crossing locking wraps here. One nice thing about these shanks, since it's a double-over platform, those eyes get secured real easily and they're always oriented just where you need them. And then our next step, we're going to grab some Polar Chenille in black. This is just going to fill in a little bit of the space on the body. I'm just going to tie that in behind the eyes and then wrap back up, make sure I've got it really good. Throw that in the bobbin cradle. Then we're just going to spin that around. After a couple of spins, I like to just kind of sweep all the little tips forward. You can also kind of tug on it and make sure it's really getting seated well. That way fish teeth will have a little less impact on it. I'm just going to take that all the way up to just a little behind the eyes.

All right, next stage is I'm going to make another little ball of dubbing right behind the eyes. This one's going to be just a little bit bigger than the first one. I'm going to end up with about two inches of material. I'm just going to build this up right behind the eyes to create another thick point to spread my next layer of Flashabou around. Just going to give it a little bit of a pick-out here. My first layer of Flashabou is going to be on the bottom. I'm going to bring my thread forward to the eyes then I'm going to pull out just a little bit of purple. This is just going to add a little bit of accent at the throat. This fly is mostly blue and black, but just a little bit of purple doesn't hurt.

What I've found with this color phase combination here is that as long as you're mostly black, you'll definitely be able to catch rainbows. If you get it too flashy, they'll usually leave it alone, but as long as you have a little bit of blue and a little bit of purple flash on there, you definitely will get more eats from the salmon, so that way you get to cover all your bases. All right, so on the top, I'm going to run out a layer of blue. And again, I'm starting my tie off point in front of the eyes here. And this one's going to run back and extend out a 1/4 inch from the tail. And then before I really have it locked down with my thread, I'm just going to spread that a little bit, then I'll put a little more thread pressure to kind of hold it in place. And then, I'm going to finish topping that off with just a little more black.

Then this last layer fairly sparse. I've got a little water here, see if I can get some static out of my way. Then this last layer is going to be, again, just a little bit shorter. This one's going to extend about 1/4 inch inside of the blue. All right. Now we're done with our three colors of Flashabou and then to finish this off we're just going to finish out the head with more of the Fusion Dub. So, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to build another dubbing loop and I'm going to do that just behind the eyes. And I'm not going to run that dubbing loop really tight because I'm going to want these fibers to kind of pick out a little bit. I'm going to get a couple turns behind the eyes and then I'm going to bring it to front. Finish that out.

And after this point, you can leave that head fairly small, or if you want a little more bulk in your head you can just tie in a little bit more dubbing. In this case, I'm just going to go ahead and place tie in a little bit more on the top and the bottom. Now, I can get just a little bit longer sweep. All right. Get a little whip finish with the fingers and then I usually polish this off with some Loon UV. Give it just a little brushing. And there we have the Flash N' Grab in the blue and black with just a little bit of purple.

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