LaFontaine's Emergent Sparkle Pupa (SwittersB)
The Sparkle Pupa has a few variations, such as this one. I used cactus chenille for the body and the surrounding shroud of green Antron was formed around the fly (the hardest part). Coastal deer hair is the wing and I used a dubbing of brown rabbit fur with some chopped up sparkly stuff (although it doesn’t show). The underbody is usually sparser and shows through the shroud as a darker, contrasting body. Below is an early effort from quite a few years ago, while I was experimenting with beads. Also, notice below the heavier thread (probably 6/0). I had learned with 3/0 but soon learned to move to 6/0. I advocate maybe learning with 6/0 or 8/0. Then progress smaller, fine tune the pull and tie better flies. Of course, if you are working with courser materials you may need to revert to 6/0, but generally go as light as you can for less bulk (to reduce that ugly thread head). Some of this is not obvious until the macro lens does its job.
I suspect the better pattern lays somewhere between the puffer fish pattern and the older sparse pattern. Both were tied on a size 14 hook.
