Beaded Surf Candies

I have been playing with surf candies lately and wanted to find a new way to incorporate colors into the body of the fly. I'm not the first to use epoxy and beads in bait fish pattern by any means, but I haven't seen anyone else use them to make lateral bands or red gills in a surf candy. Using different color beads to make the appropriate "match the hatch" colors is very cheap and creates some neat affects within the fly.

First I string the beads on some material (e.g. wire, flash, monofilament). Then depending on the pattern I want (e.g. spots, band, or gills), I position the beads on the monofilament and add a very small amount of super glue (not the gel superglue, it needs to be liquid) to lock the bead in position.

When making long group of beads I will add super glue above them on the mono and then slide them upward into the glued area. I like to leave plenty of tag end on the mono to allow for an easy tie in on

I have not tried to do the two methods described below with epoxy. I have only done them with UV resin. I would suggest resin only because holding the beads in position while the epoxy sets would be difficult. (If some one decides to try it with epoxy let me know how it goes)

I have so far used two methods to work the beaded mono into the surf candy.

1) Make two similar beaded mono strands tie in one on each side.

 Note: This results in a fairly cylindrical fly, which is not necessarily a bad thing depending on what you are trying to imitate. Mud minnows and mullet are both cylindrical.

2)Make a single strand tied in between the layers of super hair.

Note: This results in a thinner fly shaped much more like an anchovy, however it is the more difficult to position the single strand within the fly.  Also be careful to not leave a space between the layers of super hair.  I doubt this would affect the fly much, but its not as esthetically pleasing.

I also attempted threading the beads on the super hair once the fly was built, but before I put the first layer of resin on to make random spotting. However the random "bumps" created by the beads made it difficult to create a smooth shape to the body. I'm still working on a better way to achieve this spotting effect.