You take the green Nyquil and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red Nyquil and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

I don’t think someone sits down to invent anything, genius just doesn’t function that way. Great ideas are unasked for and come unbidden with roots enmeshed in frustration – and what starts with a lack of #16 Elk Hair Caddis, morphs into some small structural change that survives additional abuse – or rides more gracefully, add a half dozen colors and it’s a viable new fly.

With most of the gaps in my flybox filled compliments of much needed wet weather, and an upright posture is preferred to prone – due to the ravages of the flu, much of what I’ve created recently are experimentals and variations on a theme, color, or just delirium.

… and as I plug away with Olive’s and Orange’s, Brown and Puce – I find myself tying a lot of standard patterns using only color substitutions, as their construction method is sound and reliable.

… or perhaps mucous has least affected the color centers of the brain, and the rest is tying via rote.

I suppose those tried and true construction styles are hard to beat, and changing the color of the hair or body is often more rewarding than reinventing the wheel.

Periodically I have to tinker with some of the classic styles to address deficiencies of their fishing design, hackle being the bane of the underwater bug. With its fragile stem and proximity to the head, and prone to Harm’s Way when sunken or aerial.

Brass beads aid in shielding hackle from most rocks and errant casts but eventually something is able to part the stem and the bug is lost.

I was emboldened by the Nyquil – as I’m prone to lightheadedness when airways cinch closed and crumpled Kleenex marks my shuffle between bed, bathroom, and tying desk.

Keeping the stem inviolate is the trick – whether it’s fish teeth, sharp rocks, or tree branches. On the above fly the hackle is parachuted around the wingcase butts, then a slip of vinyl is folded over, and finally the wingcase itself (which is also fragile). The vinyl will persist if the Pheasant tail is shredded, and the fragile chicken stem is never exposed to the elements.

It started as a wild enough idea, parachuting the hackle around the wingcase then folding the material forward per normal – as in the below.

… but then I realized the wingcase was every bit as fragile as the chicken hackle, and hiding the entire assemblage was the better idea. It’s an interesting take on an age old problem, and as I’ve not seen it before, the idea may stimulate your creative juices.

Tags: fly tying, parachute nymphs, fragile hackle stem, durability, fly style, test post