Bunny Leech
The Bunny Leech is a rabbit strip and nothing else - the simplest big fly in the box and, on its slow-water days, the most alive thing you can throw.
Strip of rabbit, hook, thread: the Bunny Leech is streamer tying reduced to its active ingredient. In stillwater and slow rivers it swims like a living ribbon - leech, lamprey, eel, dying bait - and its Alaska/steelhead 'string leech' descendants have anchored trophy fisheries for decades on the same single idea.
What it imitates
Leeches above all (a universal predator food), plus lampreys and any elongated soft swimmer.
When & where it wins
Stillwaters (trout lakes live on leeches), slow deep river pools, steelhead swings, Alaska rainbows (flesh-and-leech culture), night browns.
How to fish it
Painfully slow: hand-twist retrieves, long hangs, gentle lifts - leeches amble. On the swing, let it wave in the current untouched.
Sizes & variants
2-8 black/purple/olive; egg-sucking version (see its profile) adds the hot head; articulated 'string' versions for trophy water.
Tying notes
One material; five minutes; deadly. The gateway to big-fly confidence.
Common mistakes
Retrieving at baitfish speed (leeches don't sprint), and skipping the ugly colors - black and purple out-fish pretty ones in most light.