How to Tie the San Juan Worm: Step-by-Step Guide

What's up everyone, it's Ryan again with Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to be tying the world famous San Juan Worm. There's a million different ways to tie this fly. I'm going to show you a simple, effective way to tie it. So we're going to start with a size 8 scud hook, and we're going to use either a 3 or 4 millimeter bead. This is a 4 millimeter gold tungsten bead. I'm going to start by tying on my 6-aught Vivas red thread behind the bead. And I'm basically going to start by laying down some touching wraps, going all the way back to the bend of the hook. Very simple fly, but I want to try to cover that hook shank as best I can. I'm going to kind of tie down into the bend of the hook a little bit more than you usually would to cover that up. And again, thinking about the sort of shape of a worm, just be careful of that hook point. Great. Right about there. I'm going to cut out a piece of ultra chenille in red. This is a pretty thin gauge. And I'm going to tie in. It's sort of up to you about how much you want to leave on the backside of the fly. I'm going to go with about 2 inches here. So my first tying point is going to be right at the last wrap of thread. So a couple of loose wraps. And if you're not paying much attention, sometimes the chenille will kind of roll to the other side of the hook like that. You really want to make sure that it's positioned nicely right on the top of the hook shank. You can do that by holding with your left hand a couple firm wraps to keep that in place. Now, rather than tying up over the chenille like this, I'm going to lift the material up and do a few thread wraps. I've seen some flies where people tie in literally every inch of chenille. I like leaving the segments. So I'm going to aim for one, two, three different tying points here. So I'm going to advance my thread from the first tying point about a half inch. Hold that down. A couple of loose wraps. Position looks good. Cinch it down. Same idea. I'm going to move it ahead about halfway between my tying point and the bead. Hold that down. A couple of loose wraps. And then really cinch it. You can see that creates that nice little segmentation there. And now the trickiest part of the fly. I'm going to actually, some people will tie it so that the last tying point is right behind the bead. If I do that here, I'll kind of show you what happens. There's a tendency for the material to kick up at that 90 degree angle, which looks kind of unnatural. Would a fish eat that? Probably. But I want to have a more natural looking fly. So I use this size 4 millimeter bead because it's large enough for me to pass through the material, hopefully. I might have to back up just a bit. I just undid my last wrap in just so I can move the bead further down the shank. And I'm going to lift the bead up and try to move this chenille through. Like so. You can see it poking out the other side. Cool. Then I can move that back over. And I'm going to pull that chenille through. So now, rather than that sort of 90 degree angle, rather than that sort of 90 degree point, I have this nice straight shot. I am going to have to wrap down and around. I'm going to go right behind the bead chain there. I'm sorry, right behind the bead. Tie that in. Great. And you'll notice there's a little bit of play here in the front. But I'm going to lock this in pretty good behind the bead with a bit more thread base. I might also put a little Zap-a-Gap or superglue right in the back here just to keep that bead from rolling back on the material. Once I create that base, that's not going anywhere. And again, this has some nice natural play. But I'm going to do my wet finish up and over the material, like so. Great. So the length of this fly is sort of up to you. I'm going to make this a little bit shorter. But I like that natural sort of curve. It looks like the sort of squiggly nature of an earthworm. So when you cut chenille, there is that sort of white core. And the tendency here, if you don't lock the ends here with a little bit of glue, it will start to unfurl. And you'll kind of lose the material in your fly. A really easy way to sort of lock this in after you make the cut is by using a lighter and just quickly singeing each end. You notice when I do that, it creates this sort of like black little tip there, which also looks kind of natural for those small red worms. Same idea on the other end. Great. So now those are locked. And some people will twist them. Just be careful not to twist it when it's still hot. And that will kind of keep that locked. And there is a very simple, very effective simple, very effective car fly, the San Juan worm.