Author Archives: KBarton10

Dyeing and Bleaching Natural Fly Tying Materials

It's not Best's Best Being the only book of its kind might tip the scales somewhat, but I was hoping for a bit more.

I purchased a copy of A. K. Best’s, “Dyeing and Bleaching Natural Fly-Tying Materials” and spent last week intent on learning some of the differences in style and cautionary information the author has for prospective colorists.

There wasn’t a great deal of information for those having already trod that path. He is generous in the degreasing, he wears gloves, has been banished from his kitchen, and is overly fond of things he can buy at a supermarket.

… and he mentions a “dyeing room” while I’m dealing with Ma’s Kitchen – suggesting Mr. Best may be fastidious in preparation and clean up, and I may be the Oscar to his Felix.

Of interest to me was the use of coffee urns, stainless steel food containers, and hot plates as a heat source. I assumed he’d slurped something onto the Missus’s linoleum and he’d been banished from the kitchen much earlier in his dyeing career, and these implements were forced on him as was the garage.

Hot plates are something I don’t use much, only because of all the apartment fires they caused in my youth. Considering their built-in thermostat it would give more precision to a heat source than raw flame and a thermometer. You’ll just have to remember to turn them off to be safe.

Small batches of material would dye nicely in a 12 cup coffee urn, as it would preserve both dye and keep the dye liquid small and manageable. Nor would it hurt to have a few extra nearby should the real coffee urn take a tumble and shatter. Glass cleans so much nicer than metal or porcelain lined containers – and is impervious to salt as well.

As a first book on dyeing the text may offer good service. Its focus is almost entirely using RIT dyes, and while mentioning Veniard (acid) dyes, there’s not a lot of discussion on frailties or virtues of one over the other. RIT being as close as the local store and therefore gets the nod.

Which is a disservice to the pupil, as RIT and Tintex have their moments, but the acid dyes possess superior color to their salt-fixed brethren, and so long as you don’t shirk from mail order are every bit as available.

There is some brief discussion of the virtue of the artist’s color wheel, a chapter with a dozen RIT-based formulas for common fly tying colors, another on stripping chicken and peacock quills using bleach in a destructive manner, but discussion was largely superficial, with not a lot of material on the all-important why’s of the colorization process.

I would have expected some thoughts on color from his fishing experiences, perhaps a dab on color as compared to trout vision, or a mention of how colors perform with water depth. Instead the last couple of chapters were devoted to biots and fur blending, and offered only brief commentary, about as long as a magazine article.

I thought biots were an odd choice for a dyeing book as there’s nothing terrible special in dyeing them compared to any flight feather, and a much larger text is necessary to address fur dubbing. Five pages wasn’t much of a treatment given the permutations and use of color possible with furs and mixing different fibers.

The chapter devoted to color removal was my favorite. It’s one of those odd tasks we don’t get to practice very often, as most of our material preparation involves adding color versus removing it. Learning that bleach behaves differently on clothes versus raw fibers, is one of those painful lessons learned once and never forgotten.

I suppose when your kid shows up at the door and reveals the blue lightning bolt down his scalp – it’s nice to know what options you have in the matter.

In summary, I find the book useful but odd. Two or three topics that don’t belong well with the overall topic, which should have been omitted to make room for resources a budding alchemist could leverage to perfect his craft, or a bit more on the science of color, or perhaps more recipes and photos of color samples.

Most of the work relies on references to RIT and Tintex colors which were common when the first edition was published in 1993. As most dye companies add and subtract colors routinely, and what’s left of the Tintex company is in Australia – some of the colors referenced may no longer be available.

It’s a “good” starter book and nothing more. As it’s the only thing available on the topic written for fly tiers, it may warrant a second look.

Full Disclosure: I purchased the book used from Amazon.com. The price for a second edition hardcover was $17.00 in excellent condition.

Fresh out of X’s, so we’ll let the fly mark the spot

Last night’s thunderstorm had scrubbed the Little Stinking as clean as I’d ever seen it. I woke Sunday expecting to see more of the same, but all the weather was at a distance and I had a large chunk of blue sky to make a mad dash for the creek. Enough time to get muddy and perhaps lock horns with that big smallmouth.

Fishing on the heels of a weather system is never very productive, but since every living thing had been dodging lightning bolts last night, I was hoping I could get something hungry to stir.

Not a chance.

… even the small fish weren’t interested.

Little Stinking Fall color

… and with the people still abed, and all the candy wrappers, water bottles and toilet paper washed away, the cattails gave a glimpse of brown water majesty – the Valley version of Fall colors.

The RootBall

Hisself lives on the right side of that downstream root ball.  With the beaver dam raising this run about two feet in depth, it’s nearly eight feet deep. I managed to swim the fly through the area effectively, but nothing was eating.

Once the rain starts in earnest his protective cover will be a distant memory – and with it will go the beaver dam providing the safety of the extra depth. I’m sure he’ll stay within the area, but there’s no telling whether some big mass will wash down this winter and either change the character of the flow, or mash life out my quarry.

Little_Stinking_Christmas With a stiffening breeze and a mass of dark clouds bearing down on me I opted for the safety of the car.

I snuck over and dragged the fly through the deep end just to let the fish know I meant business, then forgot my surrounding during one overly ambitious cast and got a jump on the holidays and tree decoration.

Which gives me ten left, and moot testimony why some of my good ideas are tied in quantity, versus carrying one or two.

Fly fishing crime while colorful, may not pay

I figure all the talk of “extreme” went to the lad’s head, and eager to jumpstart his fly tying materials collection he knocked over the natural history museum as an act of “extreme feather collecting.”

A fly tier's dream

At the time of the theft it was postulated that one of the markets these rare birds carcasses might be headed for was the Atlantic Salmon Full Dress Featherwing crowd, whose morals regarding rare feathers are non-existent.

We may never know his intent, but the 22 year old perpetrator has been apprehended in England, with nearly 300 rare bird carcasses recovered.

To make matters worse he was an American …

… that smelled like moth balls.

Steelarsed Trout, thankfully they won’t run far

Steelarsed Trout Now that researchers in Australia have discovered that hatchery trout can be raised in the ocean – with a growth rate three times faster than freshwater, we can all rejoice …

“For trout to reach 2 kg in fresh water would take about two years, but in salt water it is only eight months,” he noted. “If the trout is grown in salt water it is a better tasting animal with better quality flesh.”

-via Fis.com

As consumers, we’re no longer eating pale and flaccid under the guise of trout. They claim the resultant fish has better texture and color, and therefore tastes better.

Now it’ll be pale, flaccid, and salty. Woot.

The inevitable escapees will make a bee line for the local creeks as everything swimming nearby is three times bigger and has sharp teeth, causing a flurry of activity in most of the long dormant tailwaters. All those former steelhead rivers now home to the “steelarsed trout” which lack the muscle mass to heave their bulk past the first pool.

As most of the steelhead water in California is limited to the first bridge, anything above being off limits, they’ll be a silver horde of half-pounders milling about snapping at the brightly colored, intent on building the muscle tone to move upriver …

With us fishermen insisting on being their personal trainer.

Now that fly fishing is all mainstream and snuggly

I always wondered just how much the fishing angle would play if I strode up to the voting booth and was faced with the unenviable choice of Tweedledum, “I love the out of doors, some of my best friends live there” – and Tweedledee, “I love the out of doors, I fly fish there often.”

As both were generously financed by Goldman Sachs – and all other things being equal … would fishing tilt the balance ?

The Palin Infomercial

… not after last weekend.

But the publicist that dreamed this stuff up should be elected Lifetime Press Secretary, as this is the logical conclusion to a decade of reality TV, the Celebrity Infomercial.

“Infomercial” because you can’t call them candidates, as the Law requires all your opponents equal time to fidget with guns, snow, and fly fishing – and try to look polished in the doing.

It’s the same dance seen on your TV each night. Commercials with ornaments and pine trees, snow, and smiling white teethed children – only nobody dares say the C H R I S T M A S word, as the Thanksgiving turkey hasn’t been carved yet. (Part of the deal struck with the major networks when they swore never to call the election before the polls on the West Coast had closed … you can’t say “X-Mas” until turkey’s been served.)

In four years time, it’ll be Jerry Brown’s California – where they’ll prop up an aging Linda Ronstadt, slather her with ‘dark tan’ pancake ending around her Adam’s apple – prop her next to a surfboard, and let her crack wise about Sushi …

Episode 2 through 8 will feature Jerry peeling off his Birkenstocks so he can tout “green” jobs while barefooting wine grapes, then posing nest to a waving field of premier bud – while he rationalizes balancing California’s budget by exporting reefer to the rest of the lower 48, and specifically your block …

He won’t mention that his plan to balance the Federal deficit involves similar trade with most of the European Union. The Cartels will have to be content smuggling Bananas, as they’ve got plenty of foot soldiers, but they lack Cruise missiles and the half dozen nuclear carriers needed to make us take them seriously.

Then some fellow from Wisconsin will want thirty minutes on Sharp Cheddar, before yielding the floor to his colleague from Hawaii who’ll pimp pineapples and grass skirts.

Trust me, you’ll love it.

Oprah Winfrey Infomercial

Oprah Winfrey’s retiring from the little screen, can she be part of this burgeoning trend seeking office?

She’s got the docu-drama in the can, featuring fly fishing and Oprah’s Top 10 List, and most fear executive office may be one of them.

You cheered the new fly fishing movie thinking it was going to bring flocks of young folks to fill gaps in our line, how it was going to mainstream our quaint little craft into a marketing juggernaut like NASCAR, and now look what we’ve got …

Guys older than us airbrushed into health, adding to the burden of empty water bottles in your riffle.

While you’re up in the parking lot barred from the water, with those nice professionally dressed – yet unsmiling men with sunglasses examine both your fly box and your colon.

We’ll name it properly once we’ve been introduced

I’ve always fought shy of naming fish, mostly because it can mark the angler as a bully, some small indication that camping on known water might be preferred to something new or unknown.

That’s not the same thing as a pool within feet of some cabin, where the fish are known so well simply due to proximity. Driving a couple of hours to catch “Charles” or “Bob” however, is a bit disquieting  …

… and why are they always masculine names?

It must go back to our playground days, where you kicked Bob’s ass when he reached for your cupcake, or owned Charlie in four square or kick ball. The retelling sounds pretty good, only Bob is about half your size and Charlie was the kid with braces, who was nearly 60 pounds when soaking wet.

Naming a big fish, especially one that’s been hooked and lost is another matter, as both honor and Jihad may be involved …

While pounding gravel last weekend, I noticed a big root ball near the bank, and taking a breather, I got out some oddball experimentals to test their sink rate in the deep pool made by that mass of tree trunk.

There were a couple of six inch largemouth bass that were mildly interested, and while jigging the fly in front of them hoping for a strike, a big piece of tree trunk detached itself and came over to investigate …

It was the Great White Whale hisself, Moby Dick, the biggest smallmouth Bass I’d ever seen on the creek, and while he sat there inspecting what I was twitching, I attempted to remain immobile so I could eyeball the beast without spooking him.

Looking at the size of the fish and his surroundings, I realized that like Ahab, this was going to be a story of lost flies, fruitless courtship, and obsession, and could end badly for both of us.

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

– Moby Dick, Herman Melville

While working this weekend on chores and raiding the local crop of Pomegranates, Walnuts, and Persimmons, I’m thinking about that big bass and what it’s going to take to seduce him.

… or her, a fish that big might even have a zip code. In either case we’ll name it properly once hooked – which by all indications won’t be soon.

A deep root ball with the limbs facing upstream, nearly guaranteeing the fly will snag, an eight foot pool of water with him at the bottom, requiring a cast that’ll have to sink quickly and avoid all the smaller fish on its way to the base of the tree, and the poor angle I have on his position; water too deep to wade, opposite bank impenetrable, and I’ll have to cast the line where the fly lands on my side of the root ball, and the belly will have to land midcurrent.

The physics suggests that root ball will soon become a Christmas tree of my best efforts, with weighted and gaudy visible on every branch.

LSO Frog Style

Knowing this fish has been sent to haunt me, and we may have even met a couple seasons ago with the Little Stinking Olive doing the introductions, I’ll start with what has worked and update it in light of the fish’s size and surroundings.

LSO_Frogstyle

While the original pattern is a known killer, it needs additional weight, a bigger size, and a larger hook. Originally a Crayfish design, I added some frog-like features so it’ll serve double purpose. The above is a weighted #2 hook tied to ride upside down.

With weather in his favor I won’t get too many opportunities before the winter floods, which will likely remove his precious barricade and deposit it many miles downstream. His Whale-ness I’m not worried about, a fish this size is a survivor.

You may want to apply it the night before, for fear of spilling it on your waders

Great_White_Love Deep down I’ve always postulated the source of fly fishing’s elitism stems from the lack of goo on our fingers.

Professional Bass fishermen use artificials and barbless hooks just as we do, only they spatter and paint their offerings with everything from tobacco juice to the Scent of a Thousand Nightcrawlers.

Scent being the Unclean Thing, akin to Doe Urine, only more pungent.

Whatever superiority we feel has to have roots in hygiene. Fly fishing being the lack of anything you’d have to wipe on a pants leg, or lick off a finger, prior to eating lunch.

Unfortunately that’s all about to change.

The war on aquatic invasives has started to spawn all manner of technologies that will find a place in your vest. That goes double for anything as unobtrusive as a squeeze bottle that resembles fly floatant but is filled with fish pheromones.

“By putting female carp implanted with osmotic pumps inside traps, we predict that we will be able to attract and capture large numbers of the sexually mature male carp from reaches where the “pheromone traps” are set.”

… and because traps are inhumane, especially for large fish that love to eat flies and peel plenty of line, we’ll have to protest their deployment while applying a generous dollop of Lust in the Elodea to everything in our fly box.

It’s only a matter of time before the same process produces a raft of pheromone based ointments covering every gamefish from Jack Smelt to a Great White Shark. Fly tiers will be soaking it into the underbody, and guides will be ladling it into the boat’s wake, removing the inhibitions of most of the fish downstream, as well as any locals that depend on the creek for their drinking water.

There’ll be a great debate over whether it’s fly fishing or not, and a few whispered stories about some fellow spilling the bottle on his waders, but complete success always breeds a certain understanding among us gentlemen.

A testosterone fueled dance with Death

Plenty of 'Tude, not much to back it Just when we think we’ve got a handle on this entomology thing, we’re jarred awake with the realization that our grasp of terrestrial and aquatic science is miniscule compared to what we don’t know.

Scientists have always insisted that the terrestrial grasshopper becomes available to fish as a byproduct of high winds and awkward aerodynamics, assisted by animals grazing nearby. New science suggests the lowly and amiable grasshopper has the largest testicles in the world, and is actually taking part in a testosterone fueled game of chicken with voracious trout as unknowing accomplices.

… and explains why they persist in a similar ritual on nearly all the major interstates during hot summer months.

Compared to us less well hung humans, a male Grasshopper has testicles the size of the human abdomen, two in fact, and like most Jocks, is incredibly proud of them, despite not knowing what they’re for …

… plenty of attitude, but damn little to back it up.

While it’s tough to find out you may no longer be at the top of the food chain, it is an opportunity to add more pink sponge rubber to the butt end of them big dry flies so they ride proper.

A little Orange Visqueen would’ve been an easier sell than cleated rubber being the New Felt

ATT-Cell-coverage All them wading shoe companies and their capitulation to soft-sticky rubber soles may well rival the disaster of New Coke. A couple years spent trying to convince us they actually grip anything other than dry pavement – undone by basic science and five miles of black VisQueen.

Meanwhile, scientists at Lake Tahoe are busy laying waste to beds of Asian Clams, merely by deploying rubber mats to cover them.

… and when fabric artist Christo insisted on loaning his artistry to cleansing the Arkansas, he was promptly shot down. A selfless act blending fabric imagery with ridding the Arkansas River of invasives, misinterpreted by bible thumping local officials intent on “not having some long-haired weirdo screwing around in our river.”

The local citizenry might’ve had reservations about explaining why six miles of river had an orange streambed, not realizing there’ll be twice the questions once the bottom looks like toilet paper, and everyone is scared to go near it.

Us cash conscious lay-environmentalists would’ve gladly rolled up the orange sheet once the novelty had worn off, and redeployed it systematically until we’d cleaned everything down to the ocean. Then we’d have called the local news station and insist it was material left over from AT&T’s cell phone coverage beef with Sprint, and insist they come and remove it.

I think they meant to add “in graphite” …

Hollow hex shaped rod shaft Thirty-one starting quarterbacks in the NFL, and only one possessed with signing a spokesman deal with a rod company?

It’s the classic rookie mistake, jump at the first thing offered when you should be practicing, “I’m going to Diddneyland.” Then again he plays for Cleveland, and it might be a cold day somewhere before he may grace the venue of the Big Game…

But think about the rush of adrenaline when he collides helmet to helmet with the opposing linebacker, and while the coaching staff has him propped up counting fingers, he says, “I … I going fishing.”

His handlers will be making throat-slit gestures to the sound man, officials will be hustling the camera crew off the field, champagne bottles will be frozen in midair – while the Disney contingent sets down their wine glasses and disappears in a hail of icy glances and throat clearing …

“The idea for hexagonal rods was actually dreamed up back in the 1980s by a guy named John McGinn,” explains Colt CEO Peter Lombardi”

– via Tackletrade World

Then the fellows from Colt Rods will seem like geniuses, for a couple minutes at least. They’ll suddenly remember that a couple hundred years of Bamboo came first, and claiming a rod based on the structure of Okra doesn’t warrant “HeXtreme” as that sounds like something sold with the Pinto, that caused all those gas tanks to leak …