Marvelous Micro Ice Chenille: ideas for using this fuzzy metallic for fly fishing lures

by Harrison Steeves III

If you have ever tied anything using standard size ice chenille, or one of the similar products, you may have done what I have: you looked at the fly, held it up to the light, and thought, “Boy, if I could just find something in a smaller diameter, I could tie some neat little streamers instead of these monsters.” Well, here it is. Kreinik Micro Ice Chenille is about half the diameter of regular ice chenille, which has allowed me do a lot of things I used to only dream about. 

I use the Micro Ice Chenille for many purposes:

• You can use it to wrap bodies on patterns such as Woolly Buggers, Sculpins, Zonkers, Muddler Minnows, and other assorted streamers. 
• It also makes fantastic bodies on salmon and steelhead flies, big Zug Bugs and Prince Nymphs (I use Kreinik color 850 Mallard for these), Clouser Minnows, Deceivers, and a host of other flies. 
• I have tied quite a few of the Crazy Charley patterns using Micro Ice Chenille for the body wrap, and it allows me to tie the smaller sizes (which many times seem to outfish the bigger ones) with no trouble whatsoever. As a matter of fact, one of the most well-known Christmas Island bonefish guides went ballistic over the material a few years ago at the International Fly Tackle Dealer Show in Denver. 

Other than the obvious use of this material to wrap bodies on subsurface flies of all types, what else can you do with it? Actually, it has quite a few other applications you might want to try

• I have used it to wrap the bodies of both hopper and cricket patterns. While I'm not going to make any generalizations, there have certainly been days when these have outfished their regular counterparts. One of the patterns is simply a Letort Cricket tied with a body of either Black, Mallard or Peacock Micro–Ice (which Rob Cramer, former owner of the Mossy Creek Fly Shop in Virginia, introduced to the general public as the Disco Cricket). For a number of years, I have been tying a Letort Hopper, a la Ed Shenk, with a body formed from yellow Micro Ice Chenille, and I have been very pleased with the results. I suppose this should be named the Disco Hopper?
• The material is small enough in diameter to use it for the thorax on many of the nymph patterns, as was done on Steeves' Braided Bitch and some of the other nymph patterns marketed through Umpqua. You might want to give this a try on some of your favorite nymph patterns; it does away with the mess associated with dubbing and forms a wonderful fuzzy, sparkling thorax that just seems to naturally attract fish. 
• I have been tempted to use the Micro Ice Chenille for the body wrap on some of the really large dry flies; something like a great big Humpy or Wulff pattern could be very interesting. What about using it for the body on some of the big stonefly patterns, or on the Madame X, Tarantula, Stimulator, or some of the damsel and dragon fly dry fly patterns? Any big pattern loaded with deer hair, foam, hackle, elk hair, caribou or some other highly floatable material is certainly a candidate for trial. Try these ideas and let me know what happens; I promise I won't tell anybody else. 

Helpful Hint: Try the following if you really want to produce a wrap in which the material in any of the "Ice Chenilles" is absolutely and irrevocably locked in place... Instead of tying in a strand of Micro Ice Chenille and wrapping it in the usual manner, tie it in as a loop. In other words, tie in both ends to form a loop in the same way that you would form a dubbing loop using thread. Then, using a dubbing spinner hooked in the closed end of the loop, twist the two strands together before wrapping the material forward. Using this procedure assures you that all of the little glittery pieces in the strand will never fall out. Also, it does not increase the diameter of the material and it gives a fuller and more luxuriant wrap.