Mizutani KAVA2 Fly Tying Scissor

Review of the Mizutani Kava II Scissor: Razor blades joined by a screw

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It’s always pleasant to find new functionality in a time honored tool, and scissors being the life blood of a fly tier, it’s even sweeter to find something that raises the bar on the traditional implement.

When I converted from inexpensive fly tying scissors to surgical scissors, I needed to relearn how to use scissors, as fine tips and tungsten inserts did not play well with brass wire and hook shanks. I needed to learn to care for the scissor and be judicious in its use – or risk destroying them quickly. A cut toward the hook shank was now a dangerous move, risking catching the shank between those fine points, in addition to the unwanted material I was removing.

After using Iris surgical scissors for several decades, I find myself relearning how to use scissors all over again, this time to avoid removing an errant fingertip, or accidentally severing a Carotid artery.

I was recently gifted a set of Mizutani Kava II scissors from Japan. Mizutani scissors are among the premier makers of barber shears and hair cutting scissors for upscale hairdressers, and have been making them for over one hundred years. Their handmade scissors are known for outstanding edges and meticulous craftsmanship and can cost over a thousand dollars for the high end models.

Mizutani scissors use unique steel alloys in their construction, designed for longevity, and ability to hold an edge on the blades. “Nano powdered metal,” Stellite (High Cobalt content), Damascus, as well as specialty alloys containing Cobalt, Molybdenum, and Vanadium are used in the different styles of Mizutani scissors. “Nano powdered metal” is a term describing the construction of steel by first reducing it to tiny particles, then using heat and pressure to blend the powder into a steel free of impurities, whose ability to hold an edge is unrivaled.

My scissors come in a small box with a Certificate of Authenticity, and the name of the craftsman that made the scissor. Each has the serial number etched on the blade to verify their authenticity versus a potential fake that proliferate in this high priced market. The fly tying scissor is much smaller than traditional barber shears, and only cost about $150 each – which is comparable to mid-range surgical grade scissors from a medical supply house. Each scissor case contains a suede glove to contain the scissor, a small tube of specialized scissor oil, a ratchet device to tighten the unique screw used in the scissor, and several band-aids to use while relearning how to use the scissor properly …

… that’s right, something to prevent your bleeding out – after you do something really stupid …

Mizutani has released their 4,25″ fly tying scissor in Japan, called the “Kava II” scissor, using the same Nano Powdered Metal composition as their traditional barber shears. I was recently gifted a set of these scissors and after a couple of uses, I find myself describing them as, ” …other .. worldly.”

Mizutani scissors come with a warranty covering materials and craftmanship for 30 years, and these can be resharpened via a Mizutani certified shop or by mailing them back to Japan. Resharpening the scissor currently costs between $70 and $100 US dollars (via Japan), depending on the prevailing exchange rate. Our current environment will also be subject to changes in both the Yen/Dollar exchange rate – and tariffs .. which the current quite administration is fond of wielding and/or repealling.

Mizutani KAVA II Fly Tying Scissor (Black Non Glare Finish)

The scissor comes with several screw in tangs that increase the number of fingers participating in the grip (can be added to either left or right handed), and serve as a stand to lift the scissor off the work surface, ensuring it’s not scraped across your desk each time the scissor is added back into your hand. Many fly tier, like myself, tend to put the scissor down when not in use, then hunt for it later when needed. Typically we drag it across to work surface in the process, removing whatever finish the scissor has over time.

Mizutani Ratchet used to tighten the specialized screw

Note the screw shown in the above illustration is not a traditional screw used for tightening scissors. A small coin shaped ratchet comes with the scissor that allows for tightening or loosening the screw, which controls the tension required to close the scissor completely. This ratcheted adjustment turns easily and is a very smooth tension adjustment. I set the ratchet tighter a few notches to test how much it changed the tension, and it was minute, implying a lot of adjustment is available to the user.

Most scissors have a design weakness due to the steels involved. The steel of the screw is typically harder than the steel used in the scissor body. Over time, the effort needed to cut tough materials like wire and feather stems, distorts the screw hole as the screw moves minutely against the screw hole, and this expansion becomes unwanted “slop” into the action of the scissor. As all documentation accompanying the scissor is in Japanese, I am unable to confirm the scissor and screw are identical steel, but the 30 year warranty suggests that’s the case.

Surgical steel is typically Stainless (for antiseptic purposes) which is a “soft” steel and the hardened screw can easily deform the screwhole with moderate pressure (and/or considerable use). A good pair of iris surgical scissors will last me somewhere between 2 and 3 years, as fly tying is more abusive to scissors than the minor tendons and flesh of the human eye.

Use and Abuse

I have completed several dozen trout flies through the tying process, and can comment on both the new function and dangers these scissors represent. What I cannot speak to is the prohibitions the maker insists upon – and what shortens or lengthens their lifespan, as I am both unable to find the maker’s prohibitions nor able to translate Japanese.

What’s completely different about these scissors from other high end scissors, is these are two razor sharp knives joined with a screw, these are NOT scissors as we know them.

You DO NOT run your finger down the blade as they will filet your finger instantly. These are conjoined knives or razor blades, and you need to keep your fingers, your children, and everything else away from the “business end” of these scissors.

The three-pronged stand and the increased height of the scissor from the bench makes it easier to find on your work area and begin cutting, and is a welcome option that becomes instinctive quickly.

I tried the scissors both with and without, the three pronged “stand” and found the three tangs do not get in the way whatsoever and are quickly forgotten.

If the finger-extension tang is used on the rear of the scissor, it has just enough weight to tilt the scissor off of its three point rest and make it sit upon the work surface point upward …The weight of the scissor borne by the two rear tangs and the rearmost “grip extension” tang. That does not imply you will impale yourself on the point if you aren’t careful, the points on these are not thin and sharp, rather a fine general -purpose tip versus something “needle sharp” and dangerous.

My default configuration is all tangs attached; three on the scissor as the stand, and the larger tang attached in right hand mode to increase the fingers used in the grip.

I would describe these scissors as an outstanding general purpose scissor usable for all fly types and sizes. They are not “delicate” nor do they seem fragile or damage prone.I would feel comfortable taking a large “whack” out of a spun deer hair bug, a heavy saltwater fly, or a smaller trout fly. Their size and design makes the scissor your “go to” option for all tying, rather than some needle pointed scissor that only handles small flies and fine materials.

New Functionality

A scissor this sharp requires you to think outside the “box.” You should not cut towards your fingers, nor cut towards the shank if your view is obscured by a big gob of marabou or a thicket of spun deer hair.

The scissor is so sharp that most of the tactile feel of the cut is gone. You don’t feel the individual hair strands parting when you close the scissor, and the blades are so sharp they part the material effortlessly. Tying something like a Goddard Caddis and cutting toward your fingers as they hold the bend of the hook, is unwise. It’s likely that your fingertips would offer little resistance to the cut and only the spurt of blood will clue you that you have cut too far … and then the pain will hit.

Flattening the bottom of a Goddard Caddis? Hold the fly in your hackle pliers and keep those sensitive fingertips away from the cut. Trimming a Bass Popper? Large hooks offer more safety, but make sure your fingers are visible and not covered by untrimmed hair …

Razor blades can cut materials simply by applying tension to the item as it touches the blade. This same cut is available from Mizutani scissors. Touch the point to the thread, and it’s cut. Pull the floss tight against the scissor edge, and it parts instantly. You can saw the scissor through the material WITHOUT closing the blades, so you have a new type of cutting device that offers a different style of cut than scissors.

Typically most scissor cuts (with precision scissors) are done up and away from the shank. Both right-handed or left-handed tiers will have the scissor in front of the fly, cutting back toward the tail with scissor points elevated above the shank. This induces a tapered angle to the cut which is thin closest to the shank and wider as the cut procedes down the material towards the tail. By touching or sawing with the blade you can cut from either direction, tail to head or head to tail, which gives a bit different profile on the severed material butt.

If you decide the cut needs to come from a different direction than traditional, make sure you attach the material with this new directional force in mind. Cut or saw with the scissor edge in the same direction you wrapped the material as pulling or tensioning the item in the opposite direction will loosen it. Tinker with this to understand the options you have.

As with surgery scissors, especially those with Tungsten Carbide inserts, avoid cutting down towards the finished areas of the fly. At least minimize these cuts where possible. The scissor is so sharp that hitting the completed ribbed body, when cutting a material on a future step, could cut through the wire rib, fur, and sever six or eight turns of thread, ensuring your fly comes apart instantly. Cleaning the hook shank of the remnants of a poorly tied effort is possible with a simple sawing motion to remove all the mats off the bare hook.

… and yes, I’m still commiting most of this to my muscle memory, but so far … still have all nine digits intact.

How to Purchase Mizutani Scissors

My understanding is the wait time on these scissors is non-trivial. I have heard mention of “months” of wait for a completed pair, so you need to plan accordingly. The scissor is available from the Dolly Varden Fly Shop in Hokkaido, Japan, and from their website you can add yourself to the notification list and be informed when new stock arrives. Their email address is dolly@dorllyvarden.com, and they offer worldwide shipping.

In Summary:

These are an outstanding general purpose scissor for the professional tyer, not for the occasional hobbyist. Their 4.25″ length is traditional for a small pair of scissors, and they currently offer only the single size in four different alloy/finishes for fly tiers.

The fact that I like this scissor does not mean you will like it, as I have tied both commercially, professionally, and occasionally – and have spent many hours (and many dollars) using precision scissors. The Mizutani scissor is a wonderful instrument that likely will become your workhorse scissor, but is not appropriate for everyone due to their sharpness and potential to cause injury. It would likely make a great gift for someone that ties lots of flies and has been doing so for many years, but this tool is not for the beginning fly tier.

How to Find Thin Skin in the Wild

Tracking fly tying materials requires a bit of sleuthing, given how vendors disguise the original form and function to ensure we buy the small packets offered by fly shops.

Searching for these materials isn’t difficult, but finding the best keywords can be difficult. A good search string quickly produces likely candidates, and invariably one of those leads you to something very close to the original. Investing in a few samples is the best way to determine winners, but there may be dozens of possible options (and colors) and your final choice may take considerably longer.

A synthetic yarn or similar textured material is always harder to find because you can’t “feel” a photograph on a website. The final selection is made more difficult because only touching the material can confirm it has the proper size, nap, or texture. These intangibles are more difficult to describe to a search engine, but AI enhancements and their increased presence in search tools are quickly becoming discerning enough to overcome these shortcomings.

When crafting a search string I typically use terms that reduce the item to form and attributes. Recently I spent some time looking for Thin Skin, used as the wingcase on the Copper John. Starting with terms that describe attributes; “stretchable thin film,” or “flexible paper backed film”, and depending on the volume of items returned, I might add “transparent” or “flexible opaque paper backed film” to narrow the search more. Most of the resultant solution set being a variety of tapes and vinyl wraps used for packaging.

“Stretchy” typically implies a solution set of vinyl, rubber, urethane, PVC, and/or latex – and a thin film of either will be indistinguishable from one another when viewed on a website. Vinyl or PVC may stretch and not snap back to original form, where urethane, rubber, and latex, typically will stretch and recover their original shape.

Poring through the possibilities will often take you into other areas that are not expected, like vinyl window treatment tape for tinting, or reflective coatings for the windows in your home. Many of these may require you buying samples for use in other flies and additional purposes, this being the hidden (costly) silver lining of material discovery.

In my case, I found the Thin Skin replacement as a “heat transfer vinyl” for transferring text and pictures to tee shirts and promotional sportswear. Available in 11 additional colors, and offering six 8.5″ X 11″ sheets for eight dollars – or a 12″ X 8′ roll for sixteen bucks. In addition to sheets of single colors, they had metallic colors, rainbow hued psychedelics reminiscent of tie dye, and a few other options,

For the Copper John – six sheets may be a lifetime supply, so I would order the minimum until you’re certain of the candidate material’s lifespan.

Caution: Things that stretch DO NOT like sunlight

Why so cautious? Simple. Things that stretch do not like hot fly boxes or sunlight. Did I find the exact material sold as Thin Skin? Probably not, so you should treat any candidate as an unknown stretchy material that may oxidize in a week … leaving you with a fly box full of copper bodied flies and broken rubber bands.

In this case, an eight dollar investment won’t break you, and six sheets will tie several years worth of flies – giving you ample time to determine if the material can survive a season in your fly box.

Now that you know what industry that it’s in, other vendor’s offerings will emerge giving you additional colors, materials, and price points. I typically will grab a couple of candidates, (especially if the color choices are limited) tying numerous flies with both, and then see how each handles fingers slathered with mosquito repellant and temperatures in excess of eighty degrees.

Amazon sells a small paper cutter for ten dollars, and one of more sheets can be cut at the same time simply by stacking them on the cutter.

Strips of vinyl heat transfer material cut from sheet form to thin strips for use as a Thin Skin replacement
Vinyl Heat transfer material cut from sheet form to thin strips via paper cutter. The backing will be seperated from the vinyl, and the vinyl used as shellback material for Czech Nymphs

I purchased the assortments of browns, greens, and greys, in addition to the traditional black color. Making 1/4″ strips via paper cutter allowed me to process the material into a more usable form – even for Thin Skin. The backing material is clear plastic and the adhesive stays on the clear plastic, it does not transfer to the flexible vinyl strips once separated, making a clean install as scud and czech nymph shellbacks.

As a side benefit, the colored strips have white on one side and are colored on the other, allowing you a free color to use when white is needed for a local watershed. Depending on the size of the flies tied, each 12″ strip typically will tie six to eight flies.

To separate the backing from the vinyl I stuff a scissor tip into the side of the strip to start the process. None of the vendors seem to feel it necessary to add an easier way to remove the backing, so using scissors or a fingernail appears to be the solution.

In either case, stock up a few sheets to test the material and determine how it survives the flybox. Don’t buy more than a starter pack until you’ve confirmed it lasts at least a couple seasons in the fishing vest.

Do rotary vises offer anything to the tier other than increased cost?

Having treated myself to a full rotary vise whose price rivalled a mortgage payment, it was not enough for me to leave all that mechanical wonderment alone.

Per my last post on the features of the Dyna-King Excalibur, I suspected the rotary capability of the vise was linked to the kind of flies tied rather than a “must have” feature that would benefit fly tied on the vise.

My surmisal was based on my own viewing of other tiers featured at shows and club gatherings, as well as viewing the fly shop reviews via YouTube. Most of the fly shop reviewers wax eloquent about the rotary feature, but subsequent reviews, or flies tied in later episodes, only show the occasional use of the rotary function, and almost always on large flies. Small flies simply don’t lend themselves to the use of full rotary function.

Opinion is always the easy part …

… especially as we grow older. To be fair to this mechanical marvel, I needed to practise using the rotary feature to see what it offered … and to see what it did well, versus the more traditional vises we’ve used for the past century.

For testing purposes I ran about twenty dozen trout flies through the vise to test how rotary function assisted (or hindered) me on both dry flies and nymphs. I ran sizes 16 through 6, for the testing. The smaller sizes tended to be dry flies and the larger sizes were heavy Stonefly nymphs. I used both beaded, non-beaded, and barbless hooks.

I found that two kinds of rotary use is possible …

The first is the thread is moved out of the way of the work area and the bobbin deposited on a stand or arm. The yarn or hackle is wound, and the thread returns to the area to tie off the material.

The second type is the thread contains the item to be wound, like dubbing, and the bobbin is held at your belly while you feed the material to the rotating shank.

Preliminary finding: Not at all surprising. The larger the hook meant the more turns of material used in hackle or body – and that meant more turns for the rotational feature – and therefore more use.

Finding #1: Small hooks are at most four or five turns, and if the thread is snagged by the hook point (as part of rotation), dubbing will explode off the thread, and the work paused while you re-dub the fur back on.

Finding #2: Despite being able to watch wire ribbing get laid onto the body, it was not easier to get more even spacing or concentric turns, because the lumps and bumps of earlier steps and tie off points cause the stem to settle where it wants versus where you desire it. The ability to see the wire go all the way around, versus losing sight of it on the far side of the hook, did not make it easier to apply.

Finding #3: Hackle was identical to wire rib above. If you crowded the head with earlier elements of the fly, the rotational application of the hackle was not easier, as the lumps and bumps of prior steps made the stem slip to one side or the other.

Finding #4: We don’t consider the “spin” of the shank when we mount hooks, as rotation is still a new member to our toolset. In my testing I had to reposition every hook to ensure it rotated smoothly. Eventually I gave up and adjusted the vise barrel only … allowing a “wobbly” rotation to be acceptable. This saved time versus removing and repositioning the hook to get the precision rotation. Different bends and sizes require the hook to be mounted differently on the Excalibur as the slots in the jaws change the grip on the hook. Small hooks are mounted on the tip of the jaw, large using slots, and the in between sizes added somewhere between the tips of the jaws and the meaty slotted area. This change of location alters the spin on the hook, and will require a vise barrel adjustment to spin smoothly. “Wobbly” was more efficient than repositioning the hook, so I would consider this a bit of a hindrance or time sink…

Finding #5: Depositing the bobbin onto a vise extension or arm, usually required me to remove the thread when rotation was complete. The small angle formed between the shank of the hook and the resting place for the bobbin, was not large enough to allow the hook eye to NOT snag the thread when the vise was rotated. Dyna-King provides and arm attached to the vise that allows the bobbin to be rested away from the working area. Unfortunately, the eye of the hook often catches the thread as it is rotating, requiring you to remove those turns once the rotational portion is complete. This added time to each rotational step, making it a hindrance versus a nicety.

In summary, I did not feel that the rotational capabilities of the Dyna-King Excalibur (or any fully rotational vise), outweigh the costs associated with its purchase. Rotation in of itself was often a hindrance instead of a benefit, and for the average trout fly tier, it is really questionable whether a full rotational vise provides any advantage whatsoever.

Dyna-King Excalibur

Dyna-King Excalibur Vise Review

No, I don’t need another fly tying vise, especially one that possesses a nose bleed price.

I had been an extra good fellow this year, and therefore opted to treat myself to the last vise I’ll ever buy. A thousand dollars is my limit for any fly fishing item, and the speed with which prices are climbing suggests I’ll soon be unable to buy them entirely, as I avoid paying nose bleed prices for anything that isn’t rare or antique.

Once the price point on any any fly fishing item approaches a thousand dollars, technical detail and feedback is necessary to determine function, value, and its ranks among peers, and the fly fishing industry does a miserable job of giving us good information other than, “it’s awesome.”

Fly shops and the mainstream media are incapable of giving us real reviews of products for fear of offending manufacturers simply because they didn’t use enough superlatives … ending their supply of gifted freebies to review, and leaving us independent louts to do all the heavy lifting.

What I cannot do, is tell you whether this is the best fly tying vise ever … That type of rigor requires owning all of the vises of similar repute and quality, and then doing an exhaustive analysis of the features and foibles of each.

What I can do, is run 10 or 12 dozen trout flies through the Excalibur, which will be enough for me to find many of its attributes and flaws, and formulate some solid information and impressions of its performance to help you decide whether the high price of the vise is warranted – for you. I will follow up with another review in six months, once I’ve had the opportunity to add bass and striper flies (big flies and larger sizes) to the mix.

What possessed me to purchase this vise?

I have two other high quality vises and and wanted one of the newer “offset” style vises. “Offset” being my term for a vise whose jaws are removed from the stem or upright, and are several inches from the centerline of the vise. Offset vises use less force to tighten the vise jaw, and have a smaller handle commensurate with this reduction in effort. The mechanics of the jaw closure and adjustment are the same as traditional vises, offset vises simply do it with less effort.

I hoped that this design might offer some new advantages than the centuries old standard we’ve used for so long.

Why buy a rotary vise if you’re not going to use it?

After watching dozens of tiers and professionals at shows and exhibitions, I have yet to see a rotary vise used as such. I’ve seen the jaws rotated slightly to access the side of the fly or to inspect the ribbing, but full rotation and applying dubbing, wire, and other body materials using the rotational capability is something most tiers appear to find marginal.

I have watched a professional Glo-Bug tyer use the rotational feature exclusively to tie Glo-Bugs, and the rotation feature was extremely useful for his flies, but small trout flies and their ilk, leave little opportunity for rotary applications.

My assumption is that I’m no different than these other fellows, and the full rotation of the vise will merely be a “gadget” rather than a must-have.

Like a small child at Christmas

Upon receipt assume you’re not the only fellow that’s handled the vise. Every fellow that works at the fly shop you bought it from – has jiggled its handle, fiddled with the knobs, and tested it a few times before you even showed up. There’s the possiblity of damage in shipping, someone dropped it at the shop, or someone crossthreaded a fitting, or simply because they were unfamiliar with the vise’s function.

Lubrication: The first thing I did was remove all adjustment screws from the vise chassis and apply a dollop of lithium grease to each threaded screw post. This ensures lubrication of threaded elements and ensures each type of adjustment operates smoothly and with little effort.

Dyna-King uses some hideously thick silver goop for lubrication (think JB Weld), and I’ll assume it’s their means of ensuring the lubrication will survive a decade of use. I removed several globs of their lubricant off of the forcing cone and jaws and replaced it with a lighter grade of lubricant. I typically will regrease all components on a yearly basis, especially those in continuous use like the forcing cone.

Test the Fit: Once lubricated, tighten down all adjustment screws and test the vise for looseness in fittings or wobble in any of the machined parts. If you find any persistent wobble or looseness it’s possible the fit or milling is incorrect or the vise may have been damaged via someone dropping it while fiddling at a shop.

  1. For a rotating vise, check for rotation when the vise should be locked in stationary mode.
  2. For a rotating vise, check for tension while rotating to ensure all feels smooth. Dyna-King has a teflon tipped screw that applies the desired tension to the rotating element to ensure it rotates with the resistance you prefer, versus simply being “sloppy loose”.
  3. Test the vise jaw height adjustment to ensure the barrel of the jaws slides smoothly up and down. This is the screw under the jaws controlling the jaw (and hook) placement when the user rotates the assembly, allowing the hook to be in the same “plane” as the rotating body.
  4. Test the Forcing Cone and its collar to ensure smoothness of operation. It should turn smoothly to adjust the width of the jaws.

My Dyna-King Professional developed a wobble early due to a soft steel cog on the top of the stem that spread slightly with use. The Dyna-King folks were unable to repair it, so I added a matchbook cover spacer to the cog “valley” to take up the play and reduce the wobble of the vise head. Knowing the vise arrived in perfect condition allowed me to understand that I had likely dropped the vise while transporting it to a fly tying class or show, rather than a manufacturers defect.

Purchase all the accessories : I purchased a set of midge jaws for the Excalibur, a second forcing cone, and extra tension screws for the rotation adjustment (teflon tipped) and the rotation lock screw (rotation on, rotation off). More on this later.

This vise is likely to last several decades or more and the vendor may no longer be around or making parts for older models. If you drop nine hundred dollars for a vise, you need to buy all of the accessories that you will need, lose, or break, now. Buy them now while they are plentiful. Screws were $15 each, forcing cone was $35, and the midge jaws were $124.

NOTE: The Midge jaws for the Dyna-King Professional are not identical to the Midge jaws for the Excalibur, they are of different lengths. If you buy the Midge jaws ensure you are getting the correct versions for this vise, as the person filling your order at the shop may not realize this is the case. Place the order via phone if buying from a third party fly shop to avoid disappointment.

Forcing cones are the element most likely to break over time. Each time the vise handle is depressed the jaws are pushed through the cone to force them closed. Should metal fatigue eventually surface these cones will be the item that cracks under pressure, so having an extra is a really worthwhile investment.

Environmental Issues

Long tube bobbin allows only about 3.5 inches of clearance under bobbin

“Offset” vises like the Excalibur have a different footprint on your tying desk. Firstly, the vise assembly now sits five to six inches away, due to the distance the jaws protrude from the vise stem, and the pedestal base is now square instead of rectangular.

Due to the shape, the tying activity is removed from the center stem area, and the vise base needs to be bigger to ensure pressures exerted on the jaw from any direction doesn’t tip the vise over. Rotation use may mean you’re pulling up, down, or from either side, and winding materials under tension puts increased force to work in potentially any direction.

In a normal configuration, the jaw of the Excalibur is six inches from the pedestal stem. The pedestal base of the Excalibur is square, six inches wide and six inches long, considerably larger than a traditional pedestal vise base, which has always been rectangular.

Excalibur Pedestal compared to Dyna-King Pro Pedestal vise

As the Excalibur is actually the shortest vise I own, using a long tube bobbin coupled with the shortness of the vise means you only have 3.5 inches of clearance under the bobbin when it’s at rest (see illustration above). This is plenty to tie flies, but if you do a lot of tying with dubbed loops, which are often longer than three inches, it means your dubbed loop and tool may need to rest on the table edge versus hanging vertically from the jaws.

Six inches from vise stem to jaw tip, Excalibur takes up more room

In a default configuration the vise jaws are 7.5″ above the table surface. Compare this with the vise you’re currently using to see how that will change your visual plane. The Jaw adjustment knob used to center the hook shank with the rotation allows you to increase the jaw height about half an inch, and I have incorporated that extra height in my vise’s configuration.

Many tools have long handles, like the dubbed loop spinners, the Cal Bird tools, and a few others, and that extra half inch may allow a favorite tool to hang vertically from the hook shank, versus hanging off the edge of the desk.

It appears possible to loosen the allen screw on the jaw arm to tilt the jaws slightly higher still, or loosen the jaw arm to tilt the entire jaw assembly upwards, but it doesn’t appear to offer a great deal of additional height.

Note that the height of the vise is not that much of an issue, nor do I feel cramped, it is merely an environmental issue any tyer should be aware of as part of a pending purchase. Do you have the extra room on your desk for the pedestal, do you have the extra room for the six inch jaw offset (moving the vise to the left or right six inches), and does your tying include lots of long tools and materials hanging off the hook?

I find that due to the height of the vise my perception of the fly includes the ability to see both top and sides without rotation. The lower hook gives me a little higher sight plane, which translates into seeing a bit more of the top and sides.

Remove all unused or uneccessary gadgets

I won’t be using the rotation feature very much, so I removed the long bobbin arm off of the vise stem. This big clunky arm is for resting your bobbin on when performing full rotation, and it’s not likely to see much action. The size of the arm makes it necessary to move out of the way when tying, and it’s 10 inch length is exactly the thing that will knock over head cement bottles when swung out of the way. When attached to the vise stem it protrudes about 9″ from the stem, requiring you to have at least a foot of unused space around the stem to swing it out of the way. I jettisoned this with great glee.

I removed the arm clamp off the vise stem as well. This is the collar that clamps the arm to the stem. The arm and collar I returned to the box should I need them later.

I moved the material clip back to the rotating body to get it out of the way of fingers, knuckles, and other tools. “Offset” vices have more things in the way when operating behind the jaw, so clearing additional space will let a fellow with large hands not bump the material clip repeatedly. Traditional vises feature the jaw and hook the highest point with the remainder of the vise and handle below the fly. Offset vises have the arm holding the jaw at the same height, with a “valley” behind the jaw which rises to connect to the arm holding the jaws. That means big hammy handed tiers may have find things in their way, and the material clip is one of them. Big flies have a lot more big or long materials, and for the moment, most of my tying will be smaller.

The Purpose of a fly tying vise is to hold a Hook

Once I had the vise lubricated, and explored all the working knobs and dials, removed all the unecessary parts, I was ready to actually test the function of the vise. A fly tying vise has but one core purpose, holding a hook immobile while you whack at it with bobbin and mats.

The trick on any of the Dyna-King vises is understanding how to manipulate the forcing cone for the hook you’re about to mount. The cone is tightened for smaller sizes and loosened for bigger hooks. For trout sizes, it appears about a quarter turn adjustment on the forcing cone is warranted for the size 14, to 12 transition, or from size 12 to 10, and on the smaller sizes, often a forcing cone setting will work for two hook sizes. 16’s and 18’s were similar, and I expect this might hold for even smaller hooks – as the wire doesn’t deviate as much as the hook size gets smaller.

Once we hit size 10 and larger, we had the same issue with the Excalibur as we’ve had on the Professional. The hook is large enough to have to move it back from the tip of the jaw, which brings the bend in contact with the two grooves scalloped out of the jaw for big hooks. This can lead to hook movement when tying, as the groove doesn’t grip the hook – and the hook isn’t inside it, so you have a partial grip on the hook that might pivot under stress.

This is not an insurmountable issue, just something you have to be cognizant of … mid range sizes should be placed with a bit more thought to avoiding the bend partially in the groove for larger hooks.

Learning the nuances of the forcing cone takes a bit of time, but the results once mastered are fantastic. The “offset” design, with its small handle and reduced force, coupled with the feel of the “clunk” when the hook is locked into place, is really superb. This was consistent with what others had mentioned of their offset vises – and why I wanted the new design, as the feedback it gives makes the process less forceful and hammy handed.

Dyna-King Professional Midge Jaw: Note grooves or striations in the tip only

I tested the vise with the standard jaw, then replaced those with the midge jaw. There are numerous differences between the Midge jaw on the Professional and the Midge jaw on the Excalibur. We already mentioned they are not interchangeable, the Excalibur jaw being smaller than the Professional, but the milling on the interior of the jaw is also different.

The Professional Midge jaw has a view striations on the vise jaw at the tip only. The Excalibur jaw is both sharper and thinner, but also has striations of metal the entire length of the jaw (see pictures)

Excalibur midge jaw: striations (grooves) extend full length of jaw

Both jaws for the Excalibur worked quite well. The Midge jaw held hooks as secure as its larger cousin, and sharper tip made it a bit easier to tie really small flies. There is a bit of a learning curve to using the Forcing Cone, mostly learning how much to rotate the cone to increase or decrease the hook by one or more sizes, but in my testing I blame all of the hooks that wobbled or slipped were the result of operator error, not the vise or jaw itself.

In summary, with the proper forcing cone adjustment, the hook holding ability of the Excalibur is outstanding.

Design Oversight or Flaw?

The only issue I would characterize as a design issue or flaw is the location and function of the rotation “lock” knob on the chassis itself.

The knob on the far side of the vise is the teflon tipped rotation control screw that determines how freely the rotation occurs. The teflon tip presses against the rotational body and that resistance must be overcome before the chassis rotates further. In this manner you can rotate the jaws 90 degrees and it will hold that position.

The threaded knob on the bottom of the vise is the rotation “Lock” knob. It must be unscrewed about one and half full turns before the chassis achieves the ability to rotate. There appears to be a slot in the body of the vise that the screw head must withdraw from before the vise will turn freely. One and a half turns of the knob achieves the complete withdrawal of the screw head from that slot.

The problem is you have a loose screw that has gravity operating on it. If the screw loosens further with vise usage, and then you toss the vise in a backpack once the fly tying class is over, I can see this knob dropping out of the vise body, to be lost forever. Note: this knob is not dangerously loose when unscrewed into the “rotation unlock” position, it’s simply loose enough to wobble free over time, and under the right circumstances.

Now you know why I bought a replacement in the list of accessories above, The teflon tipped screw is liable to wear with use, and the rotation lock screw could drop off the vise entirely – simply due to gravity and me forgetting to tighten it back down after extended use.

Warning, below this line is all non-scientific opinion, and impression

You actually have only one REAL question about this vise, is it worth the price?

It is a superb vise. It holds the hook better than most, is of solid construction, will last a lifetime, and is a bonafide engineering marvel.

It is not worth the price.

My rationale is simple. Does the capabilities and construction offer a marked improvement in vise function and are the new capabilities offered by the device either unique – or do they measurably assist the tier in the perfomance of his craft?

The answer is no.

A lot of vises (both cheap and expensive) hold the hook well. Those same vises have both rudimentary or advanced rotational features, and therefore the only feature that has shown marked advancement from my current quiver of vises is the rotation.

Which I won’t be using much …

Why? Because if the bulk of my flies are trout sizes, the greatest number of turns of material on a size 16 or 14 hook, is five or less. The benefit to using the rotational feature to apply four or five turns of ribbing, is negligible.

Example: To rotate on the ribbing, I have to throw a half hitch or two on the fly, then swing the bobbin arm out to rest my bobbin on (a ten inch wide swath across the worksurface of my bench), clean up the head cement the bobbin arm just knocked onto my Grizzly neck, swear profusely, feed five turns of gold wire, then recover my bobbin from the arm, swing the arm out of the way, and tie off the wire.

That’s neither an improvement nor a lessening of effort, so for the trout tier, it doesn’t appear the rotational capability has much use. For larger flies that may take ten or twelve turns of chenille or ribbing, perhaps there is saved effort …

I will certainly attempt to become enamored of unfettered rotation later, on larger flies …

After ten dozen flies tied, what’s my basic configuration?

After a great deal of fiddling with knobs and dials, I run the vise with the rotational lock off, allowing the chassis to spin with tension or pressure applied. This allows me to place my left hand on the chassis and rotate the vise in any direction to examine the ribbing I’ve just applied, or the location and attitude of tails, wings, or anything else.

This free rotation style is why I object to the rotation knob hanging under the vise and subject to gravity. Since this is ALWAYS loose due to my style, a prolonged tying spree may loosen it further. Only experience and use can answer the question, ” Will I find the rotation lock screw in the bottom of my knapsack, later?”

I run the vise with the jaws fully slid upward to get that extra half inch of height. This “slide” is controlled by the knob under the jaw, and is loosened, the jaw moved, then tightened down again.

Stay tuned for the follow up review later this year. I will post additional configuration information and technical detail as I learn it, likewise on impressions for large hook use.

Full Disclosure: As with all of the products reviewed herein, each was purchased using my own money. We don’t do freebies or being gifted stuff so we can write glowing reviews of marginal items. Instead, we write marginal reviews of the really good stuff …

Cactus chenille on cards

Kreinik by another name is still Ice Chenille

I made the mistake of trying to track down “cactus” or “ice” chenille, and rather than emerging victorious I am scratching my head over the outcome. This type of chenille is commonplace in the needlepoint industry where it’s sold as “edging”, something to border a needlepoint applique or fanciful throw pillow.

It’s a search engine nightmare, and tracking down the different types resold to us fly tiers is a real headache. You can find it under “eyelash” yarn, iridescent chenille, “scrubby” yarn, iridescent chenille thread, as well as using the familiar, “cactus” or “ice” chenille. Numerous vendors exist, many of which are in Europe, and use a different nomenclature for these products than we do. Mylar is called Lurex in Europe, so the search string changes depending on which continent you’re on. In addition there are many colloquial names like, “Cactus” chenille, “Ice” chenille, “Iridescent” Chenille, “tinsel” chenille, “Glass” Chenille, “Mylar” chenille, “Estaz”, and Lurex Chenille, Lurex Garland, among others. It’s made with a variety of materials, some with soft plastic like Estaz, or Kreinik’s “Micro Ice Chenille”, and some flavors feature a much coarser plastic, which we tend to call “Cactus” chenille.

What seemed like a simple item to track down quickly devolved into a multi continent , multi product mess, not the least of which was that fly tying shops sold it for less than needlepoint shops, which added additional mystery, besides being a first …

As I was looking to stock up on what I’ve known as “Micro Ice Chenille“, which is among the smaller versions of the product, I decided to leave all the other products for another day – or another fellow braver than I am …

“Micro Ice Chenille” is a trade name of Kreinik Threads, which is owned by another company called “Rainbow Gallery.” Searching for this product yields a few colors available from a dozen or so needlepoint shops, none of which have a comprehensive selection of colors. Likewise for the fly shops, as it seemed the selection was as sparse as the needlepoint shops. This is typically a bad sign in the yarn business, as it often precedes the vendor going out of business, or the discontinuation of the product itself.

I attempted to track down the status and found a couple old references to discontinued colors, but it appears the company is still making the product, although in less colors, and more importantly, they no longer make the “Fern Green” that is a staple of my warm water damsels and some of my better bass flies.

I’ll live … but only because I bought the last few spools remaining.

Kreinik’s base colors are available on their website, and many fly shops echoed this list, so it was obvious they were stocking the Kreinik product line, as the colors matched. Many shops had additional colors, so more vendors exist, but trade names and manufacturer information is scarce given the repackaging happening in both fly and needlepoint shops.

The best replacement I found was the result of using the search string, “Iridescent Chenille Thread” and while the size and texture was a match, they sold two different styles under the same name. One style of yarn is wrapped on a card (this is the identical version to Kreinik), and the other version was wrapped on itself, no card, and featured a thicker core thread holding everything together. Both worked well, but the tie off of the non carded yarn was bulkier due to the heavier core threads.

I ordered a couple of colors in both styles and they looked good, same soft mylar texture with several dozen new colors – including vibrant florescents, and available as a 10 meter skein, which is double the quantity of the Kreinik product, and about half the price ($2.39 vs $4.30), a great combination. The carded colors have the same thread core as the Kreinik Micro Ice and behave identically on both application and tie off.

Note this vendor uses the heavy thread core in its Cactus Chenille, better used on larger flies, not on the smaller trout offerings

The above picture shows the heavier thread core used in many vendors variants of these yarns, and you need to be concerned if you’re tying small flies as the heavier core will make a bulky tie off point.

The point of all of this is two fold, there is more than one name for cactus chenille, and once you find some you’ll find many more kinds and types of this yarn available. You need to choose your labels wisely, be mindful of the continent you’re on, and you probably need two or three different vendors to get a semblance of a color selection. Kreinek doesnt’ appear to be adding colors, so it may not be a credible source much longer (my instinct, not fact) .

Most tiers are using the subdued “trout” colors as that’s what’s sold by our fly shops. Mallard, Peacock, and Emerald Green, are the only greens available (Kreinik) , and myself and others would like some Olives, more Browns, and perhaps some Golden Stone type colors. Sprinkle in a few bright colors for Steelhead and everyone’s happy. The Kreinek catalog is sadly lacking all of that, which is a bad sign, so start looking for an additional vendor soon, and you may want to stock up on the colors you use most frequently.

Korry’s Little Shop in the UK has the best color selection but most of the colors we’re looking for are also out of stock. Remember to purchase the carded colors to ensure the same thread core, perhaps buying a skein of the non carded (thicker) core to eyeball before buying more.

I spoke with the proprietor of Korry’s Little Shop and she echoed the same issues I am having. Colors last for only a short time before disappearing, the landscape is ever-changing with most of the product lacking anything in the way of trade names, as it originates in China. Chinese cones are made into small cards for the millinery industry and the manufacturer or common name is neither translated nor transferred to the carded product.

Which puts us flytiers, in a bit of a quandary. I have confirmed the colors on a Chinese website, suggesting they are the supplier, but few if any of the colors are making it to our shores.

I’d like to find a cone of Olive, but it appears that’s not in the cards … and while that was a pitiful attempt at humor, it seems we’ll be dealing with the lack of cactus / ice / glass chenille colors for the foreseeable future.

ICE yarns sells a flavor called Metallic Glitz, but the colors available are fine for steelhead, not so much for trout fishing. ICE (vendor name) yarns is one of the larger players in this space, so this illustrates the paucity of our color selection. No one is making “nature” colors – most vendors are making “Christmasy tinsel/garland” colors instead.

“Icicle Tinsel Trim” used in a search string revealed the extent of the Xmas phenonmena, this vendor features the thicker thread core and the colors more appropriate for the holidays.

Kreinik sells 50m cones for about $50 dollars, but the lack of colors means that kind of outlay is really questionable. A cone of Olive would be great for my tying, but your flies will differ, so the value of the larger quantity hinges on your planned use. Finding a backup supplier with additional colors in the Olive, Brown, Golden Stone, range would be a nice hole card to have, given the colors cannot be depended on to last more than three or four years …

For those about to begin their own search, note that all these yarns are called “Eyelash” yarns by the yarn industry. As you wander through vendors supplies this is the category of yarn to use to get close to what you’re looking for – a filamentous yarn with short fibers emenating from a central core. Add the material type, Lurex or Mylar to string and you’ll start hitting options that resemble what you want. Now you simply need to wade through the options until you find a match.

lastin or mobilon tape

That Which Stretches does not like Sunlight

I think every fly tyer learned an important lesson with the advent of the Latex Dental Dam craze of the 80’s. Realistic imitation was “in” and natural latex caddis pupa imitations spilled off the pages of Fly Fisherman magaine and into our fly boxes like maggots fleeing a corpse …

We assumed that the waxy softness of wrapped Latex Dental Dam would make the most wary trout succumb, based on its lifelike look and feel, and suddenly fly shops were selling prepackaged Stonefly nymph latex shapes, Latex insect bodies, Latex hopper bodies complete with legs, and we were about to make wild trout kneel before our collective squishy awesomeness.

… then we opened our fly boxes to restock them the following season, and found all that Latex oxidized into broken bits resembling cooked Chow Mein, and realized we had forgotten one tiny little lesson in Physics.

That Which Stretches does not like Sunlight …

Anytime I am contemplating some form of stretchy synthetic in my flies, I remember the painful lesson of latex, and attempt to engineer the material out of the mix, given how little luck I’ve had with elastics.

I have been tinkering with Czech nymphs and their ilk for a bit, and have been slicing the bags the materials came in to make the thin shell backs used on these competition flies. Plastic bags stretch a little, but are not a true elastic material, and I hoped it would last longer than other materials. As the shellback is typically tightly ribbed with wire or monofilament, these flies are less prone to catastrophy than their Latex kin, where the oxidation of the latex eventually unwinds the entire fly body.

“Scud Back” is a material commonly used as the shellback for many of these Czech style nymphs, and I had an idea that I might be able to find the material in bulk form as there are so few transparent elastics used commercially.

Transparent elastic tape is used in the garment industry extensibly, and is used to seal clothing openings, like necks, wrist and anklets, on a wide variety of sports clothing. The transparent color allows it to be sewn into the lining of the aparture without altering the appearance of the outside of the cloth, and is used on nearly every swimsuit, bra, or strapped garment made.

Called “Mobilon Tape” or “Lastin” it is sold in some form by nearly every sewing store, and not suprisingly, for much less than us fly tiers are used to paying. Scud Back is a 1/8″ wide strip of Lastin, available in both clear and dyed colors. 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ are common sizes of Lastin for garment use, but it can be purchased in 1/8″ wide also. Typically Lastin is available in 0.12mm and 0.15mm thicknesses, just remember that the thinner the material the less likely it will survive hot sun and repeated seasons in your fly box.

Note this is one of the rare times NOT to lay in a lifetime supply. Rather it would prove smarter to replace the material regularly to ensure longevity on your flies. Consider that bras and swimwear see a similar amount of sun and water, it’s likely your flies will last more than a season, but you’ll need to test this due to the uniqueness of your storage method, and your fishing.

I tend to draw the material tight rather than stretch the material over the fly, which reduces the strain on the material and increases its lifespan. My flies are stored indoors in air conditioned splendor, so they are not fried in an overly warm garage, or similar inhospitable space.

Lastin or Mobilon can be dyed, likely with a synthetic dye or acid version, but I am reluctant to weaken the material uneccessarily with colors, hot water, and the mishaps that can occur with increased oxidation. I will dye some later to learn what works best, but that is a low priority.

I have used permanent markers to color the material, but once dry, the color wipes right off.

Lastin Shellback shown on a Czech Nymph

Most of my Czech nymphs use the simple transparent shellback, but I am contemplating a Hot Pink or Flo Orange Shad fly for use in the American, tied Czech style, so I might add a packet from Hareline just to be clever …

Scud Back is made by Hareline, and sells for $2-$3 for three feet. Lastin / Mobilon sells at most stores around fifty cents a yard, or about $7-$8 for a ten yard bag. Considering how many flies you can tie with a single 10 yard bag, I think I would opt to buy it one bag at a time, mindful to toss it every couple of seasons to ensure oxidation is minimized.

The smaller 0.12mm thickness is perfect for smaller flies, as it is noticeably more pliable than the 0.15mm standard. Extra pliability comes at a cost, as the thinner material likely has a bit less lifespan before snapping. When applying the material onto the fly simply draw it tight versus stretching it to the attachment point, as this will reduce the strain on the material as it ages/oxidizes.

I recieved both thicknesses from garment sources, so you’ll need to read the advert to determine which they are selling.

Mandala Crafts sells 33 yard spools of 5/32 elastic tape for about $9. This material is advertised as a thermoplastic, but doesn’t mention the Lastin brand. The material is clear compared to the slight opaque of Lastin tape, and the material can be stained with permanent felt pen. While useful, it suggests more than a single type of thermoplastic elastic tape exists, so you’ll need to try a couple to see which you prefer.

It wasn’t the Charmin Mister Whipple was after ..

Everyone assumed Mister Whipple’s obsession with Charmin made him some sort of closet deviant, but Whipple was merely a fly tier, pursuing his craft.

I had a similar moment when I espied something that could be useful, and while examining it allowed my mind to wander as to which patterns, what water, and what gigantic fish I might seduce by owning some.

Unfortunately, reality brought me back to the vegetable aisle at Raley’s and I noticed strange looks from the fellow restocking grapes, and the lady selecting cabbage pulled her kids in close before rushing past me …

I dismissed him immediately as Homo Starbuckus, that offshoot of male humanity that cannot boil water, and tossed the Onions I was groping into my cart and made a beeline for the checkout.

Like Mister Whipple, when mesmerized by a new material or item, it’s likely my mannerisms and facial expressions seem out of place in the Canned Food aisle, especially so if the observer doesn’t fish. A lifted eyebrow or a penetrating stare puts me in the same company as grocery store creeps; people that talk to themselves while delving Rutabagas, and Vegans – who sneer at anyone holding animal flesh.

In this case it was the netting of the bag surrounding the Onions that had triggered my Post Traumatic Fly Tying Moment (PTFTM), not the Onions themselves. My handling of those glassine orbs may have appeared inappropriate, but it was the netting that held my interest, not the orbs themselves.

Onion netting wrapped as a nymph body

I’ve been fiddling with a fly series that combine soft hackles and Czech nymphs, using fur as the “soft hackle” and the coloration schema of the Czech nymph for the thorax of the flies. These have proven successful on anything I’ve thrown them at – as the fur “hackle” is much softer and more pliable than duck feathers, and the dab of bright color offered by the Czech nymph, makes the fly appealing to both cold and warm water fish.

A mix of Czech nymph and soft hackle fly. I call these Half Dressed.

Both of the above flies are using a “spectral” mixture of dubbing, which is why strands of red or blue are visible. These lightly dressed flies are proving to be a great mixture of traditional styles, new colors, and the occasional Grocery store material ..

The Onion netting appears to be a Mylar derivative. It offers a dark yellow suitable for use on Golden Stones, as well as a few Caddis imitations similar to the above. When wrapped as above it gives a “waxy” looking thorax that appears tasty to my eye.

I’m sure Mister Whipple had a Czech nymph in mind when he handled the Charmin Bag .. as it would be a suitable carapace material.

Fly tying storage needs are changing

Stamp n’ Storage Drawer Cabinet

I wasn’t surprised I had nearly 32 sizes of brass beads, in 8 colors, it was all the nooks and crannies I’d wadded the little baggies into that was the revelation. Once you factor colors and sizes; Silver, Gold, Copper, Black Nickel, in at least four sizes; 4mm, 3.8mm, 3.2mm, and 2.4mm … add in those Olive and Coffee Brown beads you thought irresistible, and the White 2.4mm that you need for Shad, the four sizes of Coneheads for all the Bass minnows you throw … the combination of little plastic bags tucked into drawers, becomes a mess.

Then there’s the fish hook issue. Old hooks in paper boxes, newer hooks in plastic boxes, recent purchases in those silly plastic sleeves, and even though it’s the same hook in three different sized containers, it’s not possible to save them all in the same drawer, and you have hooks spread out among all of your storage choices.

You might say, I’ve had enough …

It used to be a few thread spools we couldn’t find a place for … or an odd lot of tinsels, but now our craft is full of little bits of plastic, little metal beads, things that rattle, things that sparkle, and all of it changes shape everytime the vendor has a fit of pique, regardless of what our storage can handle.

When I started tying it was the Porcupine purchase that made me realize I needed to upgrade my storage. Back then everything was in a cardboard wine box. The smaller the item the deeper it sank into the mix, so routinely I would plunge into the box looking for yellow hackle and have to dig. One day I plunged into the box and came out attached to my chunk of Porcupine hide, and the plasticine baggy it was in offered zero protection to my now-bleeding fingers.

I upgraded to a desk dedicated to fly tying. This meant the Porcupine could be safely stored away from both my loyal hound, and my grabbling digits.

I think we’re there again. Desks no longer offer the kind of small item storage we now need, as their drawers simply aren’t segregated enough to offer their contents efficiently when searched. Little boxes cannot be stacked next to envelopes of fish hooks, as we cannot see their labels and must “deal” them onto the table like cards, to find the Dry Fly #12’s.

Options for compartments are available for this cabinet

What’s needed is the ability for us to decant the vendor’s containers into a standard container of our own choosing, that will allow us to label and store with others of the same size and type.

… and that’s the easy part of the quest, defining the problem.

In all my wandering through craft stores, only the beading community seems to share our problems with storage and container. They’re afflicted by countless small beads and the need to keep them all seperate and within arm’s reach. Figure they got a dozen different sizes and unlimited colors, and their work surface is as cluttered as ours …

I’ve been eyeballing some of their storage solutions. Lots of wonderful little jars that would accomodate hooks swimmingly, we just need the jars to fit within the confines of our existing furniture solution … or add something they will fit into.

A 1″ inch jar is perfect for all the small hooks up to and including 6’s and 8’s, but the big hooks for poppers, saltwater, and the long shank streamers will require a larger jar.

One thousand 3.8mm brass beads will fill a one inch jar to the brim. 5mm beads will fit about 500-600 in a one inch container, so it looks like both the one and two inch jars are needed for a comprehensive solution. The two inch jar can handle the big hooks (by the one hundred pack) as well as the larger beads, coneheads, rattles, and fish heads needing storage.

The above links are for glass and plastic jars. I opted for glass over plastic, given many forms of plastic age poorly and become cloudy, brittle and opaque. Glass allows me to attach labels either to the glass or the metal lids – allowing me to peel or scrape them off year’s later with no damage to the container. Glass is heavier, and if I leave the container on the surface of my tying bench, will resist being brushed off onto the floor much better than plastic. Think several hundred size 16’s sprinkled onto your sock feet and carpet…

The small jars are part of the answer, but what to put the jars into is the balance of the question. Most desks contain four or six drawers in several sizes, and not all are suitable for the one inch size without stacking them. Stacked jars work, but it makes searching for the hook you want a little harder than specialized storage that shows ALL the labels on the jars at once.

I’ve opted to start with the Stamps and Storage Wooden Drawer Cabinet, to test its storage and retrieval of all my items. It can be purchased with different height drawers, so you can choose the jar sizes best suited for your tying. My first purchase was configured with six one inch drawers and two, two inch drawers. I purchased the dividers to compartment the one inch drawers into sixteen smaller squares, ditto for the two inch drawers. Each 1″ drawer can fit 16 jars, so I have a total of 96 1″ inch jars, and 32 2″ jars, or 128 seperate storage vessels.

Awesome. But Expensive.

The one inch drawers have no sides to them, only fronts and backs, so the strips of divider wood that make them into 16 individual compartments are necessary. The 2″ drawers have all four sides, making the subdividers uneccessary.

I’m thinking the 1″ drawers equipped with 1″ bottles are perfect for hooks, the 2″ drawers with 2″ bottles are for everything else. It’s likely that each unit may have a different configuration, should more than one cabinet be purchased.

The size of the unit will allow it to be used on your table, or located somewhere’s else. This is useful to pre-position all the frequently used sizes of hooks and beads, close to the work area for use. Offloading these items out of your desk storage will then allow you to reposition and optimize certain drawers for use with additional glass jars, making your desk hold additional small items.

Stamp and Storage cabinet drawer containing two inch glass jars and dividers
See all the labels at once

With 134 compartments in one cabinet (as configured above) you have all of your small things available in storage that will never change shape, and will always have accurate labels, as you can peel the old and replace with the new.

I will be stockpiling a few flies going forward, as Winter is long and I keep fiddling with new patterns and ideas. If this cabinet works well, I will add a couple more configured with only the 2″ drawers to contain additional jars. If you figure 10 nymphs and 6 dries, that’s only a single drawer out of the six, so I don’t need to go overboard on the small size.

One inch drawer containing one inch plastic containers

The 2″ drawers are better suited for the larger flies, so if I get industrious I might stash some leechs or big stoneflys. I probably not use these for feather storage as the handle area allows bugs access, and a sealed container is always the first line of defense.

Instinct suggests that while a beginning tyer could shift all of his hook storage into one unit, I should not. Firstly, because I have hoarded quite a bit more than your average beginner, and secondly, it’s the most commonly used hooks that i need storage for, not the odd, ancient, or esoteric crap I have squirrelled away. While you might still own Mustad 94840’s in paper containers, plastic containers, and plastic sleeves, you probably only own one type of container for Salmon double hooks, as they’re illegal in most California creeks.

I will be consolidating my trout nymph and trout dry fly hooks to these containers due to the mix of storage types the manufacturers chose over the last decade. The ancient Allcock hooks, and the Carrie Steven’s Streamer hooks I got from Partridge, are hoarded items that I don’t need close to hand.

Whether this makes it to my desk surface is another question. The one inch drawers work well for threads and tinsels, fish hooks, and small amounts of beads, but you’ll need to make sides for those drawers or buy the dividers from Stamps N’ Storage to ensure things don’t roll off the sides when opening and closing them.

The drawers have dividers in numerous configurations, so you need to determine what container size you’ll be using in order to purchase the dividers. I bought the larger size grid, with 16 compartments, but they make many more options. (Note that this 16 compartment option is only available after clicking the Configuration option on the purchase screen, it is not shown)

My desk has several shallow drawers that I had been using for hooks and beads, and now are available for other items, like tools, or packaged dubbing assortments. Offloading the small item storage to the cabinet has freed several drawers to pack with other things that are better behaved in shallow drawers.

The carousels look quite useful also, but I’ll wait on those until I’ve integrated the cabinet. Even without containers in them, I can see filling one with threads and tinsels, wires spools, lead, and bead chain.

This time it’s not Toilet Paper, it’s Fish Hooks

Dry fly hook

For the moment it appears toilet paper is safe, but knowing our President is intent on initiating a trade war, it was prudent to get ahead of the administration’s “Tariff bat” and stock up on all the expendables necessary to continue tying on a grand scale.

Chicken feathers and yarn all enjoy plenty of domestic manufacturers and are immune to tariffs. I don’t need anymore rods, reels, and fly lines, so I dropped the hammer on fish hooks – while Trump dropped the hammer on everyone, and everything, else.

Yes, the price of coffee and chocolate will be going up, ditto for just about everything else produced in Europe, the Orient, or North and South America. The price of duck feathers, Silly Skin, Flashabou, Lead eyes, and everything else needed for fly tying is about to take flight.

… simply because all of these items source from China, which currently has tariffs of 105% levied against them. More if they dare to defy us, and China, being the largest manufacturer in the world, will be calling Trump’s Bluff …

As the American fish hook industry is nearly extinct, almost all the fly tying hooks we need are manufactured offshore. Europe accounts for Mustad, Skalka, Knapek, and Partridge. Asia produces Gamakatsu, Tiemco, Daiichi, Kamasan, and all the Chinese imitators that make our “house” brands, and all will be hit with tariffs.

Japan got hit with a 24% tariff, potentially making Tiemco hooks about $2 more for a 25 pack. Currently Tiemco hooks sell for about $7-$8 per 25 pack, and that makes them nearly $10, or $40 per 100 hooks.

South Korea got hit with a 25 percent tariff on ALL goods, England got a 10% increase, think Hardy Reels, and Norway is somewhere between 16% and 31% depending on which article you read. China? You’ll pay 54%, 125%, 145%, additional on everything they make, which is nearly everything, and as they’ve thumbed nose at Trump and retaliated, it’s likely the Largest Consumer in the World against the Largest Manufacturer, and will likely go multiple rounds before the dust settles.

To avoid all this silliness and extra expense, I looked at the non traditional sales sources; Ebay and a few other vendors to see what was available for me to hoard … and I found plenty.

Captain Hook had a sale on Mustad that made the price about $7 per hundred, so I stocked up on trout sizes to ensure I had plenty. While that sale is over, they still have standard dry and standard nymph hooks at $8 – $10 per hundred.

Ebay came through convincingly with several vendors blowing out what they call “excess” Partridge hooks. While I’m not sure what that means, nor did they offer any proof of authenticity, the price was compelling, as they are selling 500 hooks for about $50, and they have numerous types as well as barbless styles.

I also tried a few Chinese knock offs, from the MaxCatch company, to see how these Chinese hooks fare. At $4 per hundred it’s not much of a risk to see if they are any good. I bought a few barbless trout sizes and some standard dry fly hooks to ensure I had plenty before the tariff bat dropped. China tariffs are currently set for 54%, and I’m sure they’ll be higher as China has retaliated, so this price is likely to be available for only a short time. Note that I have not tested these hooks, I am merely trying them to see if they are suitable, so caveat emptor, and you’ll need to test them as well.

Mister Trump is an amateur, so these tariffs policies are likely as firm as Jello. Our president will cave at the first sign of a deal, as he’s going to need some positive press if the Stock Market continues to plummet. Everyone’s retirement savings are in the Market due to 401K’s, so the breadth and depth of the market loss will likely determine which party remains in power, and who gets voted out.

If you plan on stocking up, be alert to the fact that these “excess” Partridge hooks mimic traditional Partridge styles, and that includes very fine barbs and short points. The barbed versions are best fished barbed, so purchase the barbless versions if you prefer to fish that style. The barbless versions offer a longer point, ensuring some safety when fighting fish.

These “Partridge” hooks are also sized to the Redditch Hook Scale, so those folks used to Tiemco’s will find them shorter of shank. Both Mustad and Tiemco make their hooks overly long, and have done so for years, so hooks based on the Redditch standard have shorter shanks, about a half size smaller on the shank than the Tiemco equivalent. Order a few to test before buying more, as you need to ensure these are suitable to your needs.

Ebay vendors are likely not under the same tariff requirements of manufacturers as many are smaller resellers and private citizens, so will avoid the tariff bludgeon initially, until their suppliers must raise prices further.

In either case, you’ll need to act swiftly if you want to join me in hoarding a few items.

Yarn choices for my dry fly dubbing color selection

Building Dubbing Blends and Color Assortments, and Quickly

Making a dubbing assortment has always been a favorite task of mine, given the amount of creativity involved and the lack of boundaries. I’m fiddling with dry fly dubbing colors, and whether I can port those into nymph colors to minimize additional work. Dry fly dubbing contrasts markedly with nymph dubbing in that both colors and textures are different; dry fly dubbing is typically pastel colors, fine texture and minimal guard hair, and Nymph dubbing tends to be coarser, with pronounced guard hairs and a darker color palette.

I’m rebuilding my prepackaged dubbing drawer with a better suite of dry fly colors; more olives, greys, tans, and a few wild colors to use with the occasional euro-nymph, and will be revamping my nymph colors as well. I might be able to refresh both at the same time, as Dry fly dubbing is almost entirely a “binder” layer of fine fur which is part of the components needed for nymph blends.

I build dubbing like a cigar, with a filler, a binder, and wrapper layer. Each layer contains different color effects AND textures, to give the finished nymph dubbing spike, loft, and a pronounced color mottle. The “binder” layer is typically the finest fibers which hold the mix together as both filler and wrapper tend to be coarser materials, including guard hair.

Most of my blends start as a yarn purchase, wherein I decompose an existing yarn into fur and add other elements to complete the mix. Yarns don’t have guard hairs which are typically unwanted in dry fly dubbing, and I can pick the colors of the yarn to match the shade I’m trying to build. Getting a range of colors is much easier with yarn as I don’t have to dye, dry, and blend furs, which can be extremely time consuming. Mixing disparate colors of yarn is quite easy and will result in “fur” that I can blend with other yarn colors to make the finished range of shades and mottle.

Mottle is important, as this is the mixture of all the colors in the completed blend which yields flies that resemble naturals, as real bugs are never a uniform color. This attribute is why I don’t use “store bought” dubbing blends, as they are almost always a uniform dye color without the subtle hints and shades that a mix of colors can provide – and the natural insect possesses.

Yarn candidates can be chosen based on what you’re attempting to create, a soft dry fly dubbing or a coarse blend suitable for heavy nymphs. A dry fly yarn might start as a soft fur yarn like an Angora rabbit, a synthetic rayon derived from plants, or a fine wool or cotton blend, whose fibers rival the gossamer nature of our aquatic mammals. I often add Mink, Otter, Muskrat, or Beaver to the decomposed yarn “fur” to enhance the mottle and loft of the material, and mute colors to make them more buglike.

Too tight a weave, cannot decompose into fur

Some yarns cannot be decomposed into fur, so you need to test the weave of your candidate to ensure it’s not too tight to be deconstructed. Typically the fine yarns are the worst possible candidates, as their fineness coupled with the weave of the fibers may not allow a traditional grinder to fluff them back into fiber form. Fine yarns resemble woven strands, with each strand resistant to unravelling, yielding a mixture that remains stranded, despite being cut to smaller lengths.

Test everything before spending a lot of money on colors, as some flavors of yarn may be unsuitable for your use. Cut the candidate yarn into one inch pieces and attempt to deconstruct them in a traditional coffee grinder. If they reduce to “fur” they’re suitable for a dubbing blend, if not, toss and try the next candidate.

Things to Consider When Choosing a Yarn

Yarns are like cars, not every color is made each model year. Spring and summer yarns tend to be bright colors, fall fashion tends to be darker, so you may have to select two different yarns brands to get all the colors you desire.

Yarns have a life span, and that brand may not make it more than a couple of years. If you find something truly spectacular, you’ll need to lay in a supply to ensure it will be available to you year after year. Large makers of yarn may keep the product for several years, small cottage makers or artisans may only stock the yarn for a single season.

There are hundreds of fiber types and artisan blends debuting every season, you’ll need to get eyes on a lot of product to understand what’s available to you online. Focus on fiber types and their respective size (coarseness) and loft (spike and curlyiness), as those are the attributes best suited for making fur.

You will need a physical yarn or fabric store to acquaint yourself with the kind and type of fibers and weaves available. Using only online sources is fine, but you will throw away numerous skeins unsuitable for your use as a single website photo cannot compete with a yarn you can visually inspect. Is Bamboo yarn and a Rayon yarn derived from Bamboo the same thing? This can only be determined by a physical examination of the skeins, you cannot differentiate these properties from an online photograph.

Similar issues exist with the different types of wool from specialty sheep. These are all the rage among artisan yarn makers … Some wools are quite fine, other are coarse, a physical examination of the skein will likely answer most questions, where an online photograph will not.

Many artisanal yarns can have incomplete dye results, and many fiber types resist dye and can offer special uses based on this incomplete coloration. Multi-hued yarns also provide a greater range of color for the price, and can make your purchasing easier on the pocket.

Yarn makers aren’t necessarily good at dyeing, especially small vendors intent on raising specialty sheep. You can have a wide range of results from a vendor unskilled at dyeing, especially in the area of consistency of color across several dye lots. Dyeing something Pink is easy, dyeing something the exact same shade of Pink, a second time, is very difficult. Beware small vendors and inconsistency of color.

make a third color by mixing two existing
Mix two existing to make a third new color

Small batch artisanal yarns can be very expensive, especially some of the specialty wools, with a single skein in excess of twenty dollars or more. Try to stay with mass produced yarns unless the artisanal yarn offers some tangible capability the others do not. Small batch typically means inconsistent colors and both inconsistent or limited availability.

Remember Combinations and Permutations when selecting colors

Most of us would rather forget the formula for calculating the total number of combinations, but this is important stuff when determining how many yarn colors from which to build your array of blended colors..

Assume you decide to buy six colors of yarn to start your dry fly palette. Two greys, two olives, and two tans. The total number of colors is 6, and if you mix any 2 colors together it will make a new color. The total number of colors you can make by only blending two is 6!/ 2!(6-2)! = 15 colors. If you blend 3 colors you get 20 colors, and it’s easy to see how quickly you can build a large collection of colors for your use. Because the dry fly palette is much reduced, compared to nymph colors, you can make a workable assortment of colors for your area at minimal expense.

Gold and Pink make a third new color for my area called "Creamy Orange" ...
You may not use it, but there’s no harm in fiddling with colors

I am building a dry fly palette and converting some into a nymph blend, but not all the dry fly colors will be useful to me (nor will all the colors you build for dry flies be useful either) as dry fly colors, nor will be members of the darker nymph palette, so I’ll focus my purchase choices on the colors similar to the insects in my area. If the bulk of the bugs you fish are Olive, perhaps purchasing one less tan, and one less gray, and two additional Olives will yield most of your colors as Olive-ish, which is your Sweet Spot.

For the areas I fish frequently, Olive and Grey are the two predominant colors, so I’ll build numerous Olive and Grey blends to capitalize on this. Recognize that a specific fly isn’t the source of a fish’s sudden weakness, it’s a combination of color, size and silouette that made the fish leave that darkened recess and commit an act of wanton gluttony on your offering …

Why not make flies similar in color to your favorites, as they can be used in a pinch when you run out of your favorite fly. More importantly, when your friends pillage your fly box and take all your extras, you can reach for the Secret Double Probationary Brown Olives … and hand the regular Adam’s to them Meathead pals of yourn …

Things to Consider when building your Blend

Are you building a dry fly assortment or nymph dubbing? The differences between the two are significant, so make sure you have all of your darker colors, browns, blacks, dark olives, if you’re making nymph dubbing. You’ll want lighter colors for dry flies.

How much of each color will you make? Remember that some yarns will disappear in a year, some take longer, if you build these wonderful colors unique to your watershed, how many year’s worth will you save of each color? This is important, as the killer color could run out, the yarn is unavailable, and you are left sobbing in frustration as your pals still have a few they “borrowed” from you last year …

Are you smart enough to write down the recipes for the colors you make? How are you going to build more if you forget what you put in it? You added a pinch of yellow beaver, and a handful of Red Fox squirrel, are you going to remember those a year later when it’s time to make more? DO NOT create colors without writing the recipes down, DO NOT make this mistake (like I did!).

(… and by the way, exactly how much is a handful?)

Stranded yarn turned into fur via coffee grinder
Base yarn colors when converted to fur, much lighter in color than the yarn

Construction of your dubbing assortment starts with you reducing the base yarn colors from stranded form to fur, via coffee grinder. Grinders are perfect for small jobs, just don’t confuse the one used for fly tying with that used for grinding your morning coffee.

Cut the stranded yarn into piles of one inch long pieces.

When building custom colors, use your hand as the measurement for stranded yarn.

Two yarns wrapped around your hand at the same time ensures equal weight
Wrap both around the hand ensures 50/50 blend

Issue: Green is composed of half yellow and half blue, but you need to be reasonably precise with your measurements, and lack a scale to weigh a tiny fragment of yarn … So how to ensure the amount of yellow is equal to the amount of blue?

Answer: Your hand is a constant size. Wrap the yellow yarn around your hand five times, then wrap the blue yarn around your hand five times. Even better, grip both yarns and wrap them around your hand together, the same number of times.

Cut yarn into one inch pieces
Cut into one inch pieces for the coffee mill

Now, when you want to mix two colors, simply wrap the yarn around your hand several times, cut the resultant length into one inch pieces, and grind it into fur. This ensures your color is made from 50% of the first color mixed with 50% of the second.

The last step yields the unknown, as in the samples at left. I don’t think the color will be useful, but not knowing the result of Pink and Emerald added together is likely going to be … an adventure finding out.

blend the cut pieces in a coffee grinder
The resultant fur when finished, not a useful color for me

In this case, the Emerald completely overpowered the Pink, and the result was a cold pastel of greenish hue … not useful at all, but great colors to show how the process works for the uninitiated.

I have taken great pains to HIDE the brand of the yarn I’m using, as this is not a proven winner, it’s a candidate yarn that may prove useful or may not. I do a lot of tinkering with different yarns as they are often priced cheaply, sometimes as cheap as a single packet of storebought fur, and tossing them into the trash will not break the bank.

Because of the regular obsolescence of yarns, I have to rebuild color selections every three or four years, as the old yarn used is no longer made. The process is fun and useful as I usually find a few colors I didn’t have in the previous yarn – that are now available in the new brand.

Because I write down the color recipes, I can reblend the old yarn colors with the new to remake colors that the new brand doesn’t offer, ensuring I can restock most of the useful colors time and time again.

Three colors make up my Creme Orange Dubbing
Mixed three colors to get my Creme Orange dubbing

The above Creme-Orange was an actual color in the old yarn brand I was using, and is a dead ringer for the Hareline Creme Orange used in the original Chuck Stranahan Creme Orange Paradun. In the new yarn I blended Coral, Old Gold, and Sun Glow to make the exact color provided by Hareline.

Row One are the base yarn colors, Row two and three are new colors created by mixing those of Row One
Top Row are base colors, Row Two and Three are new colors made from mixing those of Row 1

Yes, I could have simply bought the Hareline, but then I wouldn’t learn a damn thing about color mixing, decomposing plant and animal fibers into fur, color and blend componetry – that the old timer’s knew and the new generation of fly tyer has absolutely no clue about …

This is a couple hours work during a rainy afternoon. The base yarn colors are at the top, and the below two rows are new colors I am making out of the blended top row colors. Think Tans, Greys, and Light Olives, as the desirable colors.

I start with 14 base yarn colors, which will yield 91 new colors if mixed with one other color, and 364 new colors if mixed with two additional colors. As the Emerald tends to overpower every other color I add to it, most of the emerald blends will not be useful. The Purple color also has limited uses, for similar reasons. I added the Emerald and Purple with the red, yellow, orange, and blue to give me the primary and secondary colors of the color wheel. This will allow me to build a spectral blend of this fiber as another option.

The only Olive that this yarn had was an Olive Drab, and a weak one at that, so I will be looking for a Black, Dark Brown, and two additional Olives from another brand to complete all the colors I plan on making.

Each of the bags has the recipe written on it and the proportions of the colors in that recipe. The top row only has one name written on the bag, that of the base yarn color, all other bags contain their recipe. In this manner, I can more easily remember the contents given they are written down both on the bag and in my notes.

Porting Dry Fly dubbing into a Nymph Blend

While not typically part of my process, in this instance I will take a few of the dry fly colors and make them into Nymph blends. I’m not going to make a general purpose Nymph blend suitable for big Stoneflies, rather I’ll leverage the fine filaments of the original dubbing and convert the Dry Fly version into a blend for smaller mayfly nymphs, targetting the 12-14-16 size range.

The “Wrapper” layer is the component containing the big guard hairs I would add to make a spikier dubbing, and I’ll omit that in preference to simply adding a “filler” layer of fine Red Fox Squirrel dubbing, and a possible “enhancement” layer – that may offer some sparkle in the finished blend.

The process is nearly identical to the construction of the dry fly assortment, with one exception, when considering how much of each color will I make, I need to factor in the different “enhancement” layers I might add.

Example: If I decide to make nymph blends of the above Creme Orange dry fly dubbing, and I wish two packs of the finished nymph dubbing, AND I will add Angelina fibers (Ice Dub) as an enhancement, AND some Antron, without the Ice Dub, then I need to make enough of the base color (Creme Orange) to make four packs of the nymph dubbing. Two packs with Ice Dub as the enhancement, and two packs with NO Ice Dub but Antron as the enhancement layer.

If I know what I will build in advance of creating the dry fly dubbing, then I will need possibly 8 packs of the Creme Orange. Two packs for the base dry fly dubbing, four packs to turn into nymph dubbing with two enhancement layers, and two additional packs to mix with other colors to make new colors … This is why planning what you will be building in advance, and writing it down, will make your job much easier.

Converted Dry Fly dubbing via addition of color muting natural fibers
Three stages of conversion, Original, color Muted, and Color Muted with Enhancement layer

The Color changes are far from Over

Just like mixing the different yarn base colors together to yield new colors, the same thing will happen when you convert your yarn blend to contain natural fur. As most animal furs are greyish, they tend to dampen or mute the original colors made from deconstructed yarn, no matter how much or how little is added.

The above picture illustrates this notion. While most of you likely assumed the Creme Orange flavor of dry fly dubbing had limited use, note its transformation into a nymph dubbing, and how the Creme Orange virtually disappears into a tan or tan-brown with the addition of natural Red Fox Squirrel body fur. Red Fox Squirrel is essentially a giant Hare’s Mask, so I shave the skins into a bag, then add pinches of the fur to whatever else I’m making.

To mute the original color and transform it into a nymph version I added about 30% Red Fox Squirrel to the original Creme Orange, yielding a blend containing fine fibers, and a nicely mottled guard hair that will show up when these small nymphs are tied.

Adding a layer of “enhancement” or sparkle is typically never more than 10% percent of the dubbing. This applies to any of the common enhancements, like Ice Dub (Angelina fiber), Antron, or Baby Seal, or anything else that adds sparkle to the fur. Adding more than 10% will overpower the original dubbing and change it too much.

In summary, by adding natural colors to deconstructed yarn I have turned the raw yarn colors into a buggier version that most tiers would love to own. These changes add to our combinations and permutations, and if you can make 91 new colors from 14 colors of yarn, you can make 3 colors from each of those; original, color muted or buggy, and with enhancement, giving your total options nearly 270 different colors with the use of only a single enhancement layer.

270 colors are way too many to be practical, so when starting this journey start with less colors. One Tan, One Medium Gray, an Olive and a Brown, and a few other colors to mix with them. Don’t be afraid of the wilder colors like orange or purple, as they can be muted with natural fur into a color and form much more friendly to the drab Bug Kingdom. If they fail to impress you, don’t use them …. the fun of the project is in making all the wild colors, what’s useful will be a smaller subset of that.

Focus on the inexpensive yarns so you can accumulate a few skeins, and then cut a few Hare’s Masks up to add to the final mix. This is more than enough to get you started on making your own fur, and will get you incredible colors on the first try, as uniformed dye colors suck by comparison.

Simply contrast the uniform original Creme Orange yarn color (above) with the mottled Red Fox/Antron version to see how complex colors always are better than monotone variants. Note that the Original Creme Orange was actually a three color mix, so it wasn’t monotone, but now it has Red Fox Squirrel and Spectral fibers added to it, making the complex color doubly so. The Spectral Blend contains six colors, making the final product contain 10 colors total.

Drys and Nymph using the dubbing created

The Creme Orange Paraduns, above, show the tightness of the dubbed body, so the yarn candidate has the smallness of flue necessary to make a good dry fly body. The nymph closeup follows, to show the additional “shagginess” induced by adding a bit of Red Fox fur and a pinch of the Spectral blend.

The Red Fox Squirrel addition added a lot of additional “scruffiness” to the fly. It’s a successful transition from tight dry fly dubbing to the kind of unkempt, well used, look that us meathead anglers prefer. This is an AP (Andre Puyans / All Purpose) style of nymph pattern that can be deployed with any color fur. I see a few strands of reddish Spectral blend, not enough to overpower the dubbing color … just enough to catch the light and make a fish think he sees something that isn’t there ..

… kinda like looking at a Denny’s Restaurant menu, lucious red tomatos, icy green lettuce, and when your plate arrives it’s a greasy, drab turd.

Enjoy fiddling, it’s one more thing to while away those blustery Wintery evening enroute to Spring.