Pheasant Tail Clouser Minnow

Bait Fish

Tied By Joe Glessner

Hook: Tiemco 5262 size 8

Thread: Semperfli Classic Waxed Thread 6/0 – Fluoro Green

Materials-

eyes: 4mm Tungsten 3d eyes (summer)

underwing: Ringneck Pheasant Back Feather, iridescent green

underwing 2: Ringneck Pheasant back feather, blue fading to rust

gills: Ringneck Pheasant blue/green head feather (2, optional)

flash: Midge size Krystal flash, color of your choice (4 to 8 strands, about twice the overall length of the fly)

overwing: Ringneck Pheasant tail fibers (~25)

Notes:

This is an all Pheasant version of the Clouser Minnow tied for experimentation purposes.

I’ve tied this one using brighter colors, you can certainly use just about any color you can find for these.

For a size 8 hook I use back feathers closer to the rump, folding them to align the barbs as carefully as possible before bundling them forward for the tie in. For this fly I started with the largest iridescent green back feather I could find on the male Ringneck pheasant skin I have, then chose the largest blue back feather (the blue part tends to be rather small), which in this case was right at the transition to rust, which resulted in a pretty cool looking transition on the belly from green to blue to rust.

I’ve tied a few of them without the head feather “gills” but with the color gradient, the blue/green head feathers really pop on this one.

Clousers ride hook point up, so to get the profile right using pheasant tail barbs as the overwing, you’re going to have to take a bit of time to align them so that the traditional forward of the eye only tie in point results in the proper shape. I like to tie the tail barbs in so that they are slightly longer than the underwing, but just a hair shorter than the flash.

This fly is nowhere near as durable as the traditional Clouser, I don’t expect it to last much beyond a few strikes, so I use head cement on the head but don’t bother with the thread band behind the eyes like I would with a bucktail Clouser.