As much as we’d like it to warn us, great flies have no aura about them when removed from the vise, no halo to clue its creator to cease embellishment, as his creation will be the bane of local gamefish for the next couple of decades.

We’ve taken it for granted we can spot fishy potential and great colors, most of us have fly boxes bulging with imitation bug parts, gooey soft textures, and colors dripping with authenticity.

The fact we carry so many is clue that we really can’t tell what a fish thinks, likes, or eats.

To remind me that I know nothing of fish vision, let alone what stimulates taste, I would add special flies to my driver’s side sun visor. Flies that caught 20” fish and those whose consistent greatness had earned them a place in what would become a testimonial to what large wary fish preferred …

… and why gooey textures, feelers, and bug parts didn’t appear in any of the really successful flies, most of which didn’t even look buggy to my eye.

Chartreuse floss body overwrapped with fine copper wire, no particular pattern – just lay on forty turns until about half the chartreuse has been covered. Two turns of dark partridge hackle and a grizzly tail completes this unknown work.

… no eyeballs, no individual legs, and a primary color that you’d be hard pressed to find in Mother Nature…

No name that I can remember, given to me by a client that swore by it, and after my lip curled uncontrollably, I let him try it just so he’d stop fidgeting with his flies and start fishing all my better ideas.

… fortunately we didn’t need any of my flies.

Tied in sizes from #10 – #14, he mentioned how he’d assumed the fish ate it as a green caddis.

As I’ve recently unearthed the box of flies I removed from that visor, I figured to share some of the nameless patterns you’ll never see in any fly shop, just to give those that are struggling with invention a glimpse of pure death – and how little refinement and entomology is really needed.

With a bit of sun poking through the weather, I’m reminded that fish exist and I’ve got holes aplenty in my fly box from last season. This time it’s the flymphs that took a beating – and it being the self pronounced Second Coming of the Attractors, I’m restocking not the dull and drab – but all the colorful patterns I hid from prying eyes while telling the crowd it was something I’d made from ocher sock yarn …

… which reminded me further of the hellish time I had learning how to reduce a dressing down to just enough to be ate consistently, but not smothering the pattern with too much material.

The lower left fly is tied with an intact Starling hackle, while the rest of the flies are tied with one side of the feather removed. Four or five strands of starling will give plenty of motion, more just dampens the wiggle as a neighboring strand blocks movement.

Starling feathers being under two inches long and quite fragile, you’ll need to prepare the feather by removing all the gray fibers off both sides of the stem, before carefully removing all of the right side fibers (if wrapping clockwise, left side if counter-clock) and tying in the feather where the hackle is to be wound.

As we only have one side fibered, two turns is just enough to apply a single turn of hackle, perhaps five to seven strands.

The reduced dressings look simple, but often have subtleties that reveal themselves when you’ve got a handful of gossamer and are only partway through a mighty oath.

Both body and head use a bit more fancy threadwork than meets the eye. The bobbin is spun so the thread ties flat like a floss rather than round like thread. Us old guys set store by this quality in the Nymo days of the 70’s, and it still works with 6/0 and 8/0 threads that are not unifilament style. Simply let the bobbin dangle and it will spin flat to remove all twist you’ve added via previous turns. Once it stops spinning the thread will lay flat like floss, until you add more torque by wrapping. Flat thread has less bulk than round thread, so it spreads itself onto the hook like a film versus a tightly wound single strand of material.

It’s a nice effect, the body is uncommon smooth and the head is small and dainty.

This is a Redditch scale #12 heavy wire hook. That would be a #14 in today’s longer shank hooks. The heavy wire adds enough weight to drag the reduced dressing down to fish in mid column – great for emerging bugs and pre-hatch feeding.

At times I think an entirely separate blog is required to cover concepts of fly design, material handling, and methods of attachment.  We’re often focused on visual imitation of the natural that we lose sight of the practical issues of swimming behavior and attitude in the water.

The only thing close to fiddling with someone else’s great idea and making it yours is cooking. You add additional tasty things hoping the sum of all parts is even better … and that’s not always the case.

To mitigate the fervor of inspiration and the wild frenzy it induces, I use three separate processes to adapt someone else’s idea to my fly box and style of fishing.

Combinations and Permutations:  Fiddle with the idea alone, just to see what else it can do, and what else it would be good at …

Optimization: examine the rest of the fly to ensure other materials are matched with the new functionality, or assist its unique quality.

Swim Test: use the fly in a stream, lake, or bathtub, in the same manner it will be fished in the real world.

One or more of the phases will show a bad or impractical modification, a weakness in the materials chosen, or an attitude shift (caused by a material choice or attachment style) that cause the swimming fly to appear different than the natural or phase of the real insect you’re imitating.

In this case I’m still enamored of the bead-chained body from last week. and the feature being the massive weight of the body after attaching 4 – 6 brass beads.

Here’s an example of the Combination & Permutation phase, the full dubbed variant. I’ve merely topped the mess with a waxed nylon fiber wingcase as a placeholder for whatever I finally decide upon.

It certainly looks good if thrown with an eight weight. I’ve inserted dubbing between every joint in the chain, which extends all the way to the eye (7 full beads). The body remains flexible but is no longer droopy, and the nylon fibers are indestructible so the wingcase choice is actually an Optimization decision.

Seven brass beads mounted on the top of the fly will cause the fly to ride upside down, so the wingcase is mounted underneath the hook as a Swim decision. All that weight means it’ll be hitting every rock, every sunken tree limb and incur a great deal of damage. The nylon wingcase is impervious to impact, so it’s mounted for Swim, with material chosen per an Optimize quality.

Were you to mount the traditional slip of oak turkey as a wingcase, it would probably last about four casts before being broken to pieces. Which might be just fine – as you’ll probably leave this in a sunken tree limb every second cast …

Here’s the same fly tied in the Czech Nymph style. Beads follow the curvature of the hook and are secured at each joint. I’ve used the same black nylon fiber for the wingcase – but this time it’s distributed all the way around the fly – and the fly’s attitude in the water is now moot.

All Czech nymphs ride upside down, their attitude being a combination of shape of the hook and placement of the lead wire underbody. Its a mystery to me why they aren’t tied upside down,  that waxy and grub-like shellback points at the river bottom and not where the fish can spy it.

In extending the “wingcase” material completely around the hook means I’ve eliminated the top and bottom of the fly, and the fly looks identical from every angle.

All the same rationale explained above applies here. Material choices made for banging on rocks and surviving, fly tied to swim as the real bug might – if it were curled to protect its nuts while tumbling downstream.

I suspect that the steelhead version will retain the brass bead chain, but the trout flavor will be moved to aluminum anodized beads. The properties of bead chain are identical, only the weight will differ – and the aluminum will allow the bug to be cast versus lobbed – and fished only on the short line.

It goes without saying that fishing in Minnesota has been denied me. Roughfisher and I split the entire world of fly tying between us, he gets all the Tungsten in North America, and I can have an occasional dry fly hackle …

… maybe, and only if he gets to pick which one.

In the face of true Genius, I had to risk it all …

Hatches Magazine sent an email featuring some of their latest patterns, and the above Chain Gang Stonefly (by Dean Myers) is to die for …

The fact that it weighs a quarter-pound will only be off-putting to the dry fly contingent, who’ll wish they had a dozen or two when they meet that shadowy plunge pool with the rock overhang. The self-same pool that defies a good drift – because of the speed and direction of current.

I recognize it’s one of those must have flies that offers access to the dark depths where that enormous and cagey 13” lunker calls home, denying the lie to all the 10” pretenders.

I would think the steelhead crowd just went into salivate as well.

As I saw it first I’m allowed a bit of artistic license – somber and its steelhead cousin, tied in Espresso-Claret spectral. I simplified the pattern as this is a fly you’ll snag in quantity.

I just want to see Roughfisher eat his cork grip when he sees the gravitational pull of Brass as it blows past his Tungsten enroute to an impact crater in the creek bed.

Some flies you lay eyes on and rush to the vice, this being just the ticket to send the most jaded tier scrambling for colored bead chain. Significant out-of-the-box thinking on the part of Mr. Myers.

This winter I’ll be busy restocking tiny and gossamer, as each trip has required both small and unique dry flies. With failing vision it’s not realism that’ll motivate the sizes and patterns needed, it’ll be small yet visible as the requirement.

Both trips North featured few organized hatches, and the evening grab was comprised of a smorgasbord of terrestrial and aquatic insects, some struggling in the surface film, and the rest emerging per schedule.

Ants and midges are my top priority, using Redditch Scale hooks they would be #18 or #20, as I can’t see smaller at distance (Mustad & Tiemco aren’t using the Redditch Scale, so they would be #20 and #22).

Early in the year it was a Mustard-Orange midge that was needed, and this weekend featured a newer variant in Key Lime Pie – which will play havoc with the traditional somber bug colors, but will be fun to tie – and even more fun explaining to the curious …

The Mustard-Orange Midge above (Redditch #18) was consistent with the emerging midges, it accounted for all surface casualties.Tied in traditional mayfly-parachute style so it doesn’t disappear in the surface film like more traditional down-wing midge patterns. Dun gray deer hair wing, grizzly hackle and tail, and Singlebarbed’s Yellow Orange dry fly dubbing…

… I threw that in just so you’d clutch chest and exclaim, “Crap, I ain’t got none …”

Any dubbing the color of natural orange juice will work fine. Picture the above with a Key Lime body and you’d have the latest variant covered nicely.

I tied half with white wings and half with dun deer hair. The white wing shows better when contrasted against the darker water of evening, and the dun deer hair shows better contrast against light colored water backlit by the sun. Tiny flies and diminishing eyesight means any trick is fair game.

Early in the season the ants were enormous, this weekend they were just as plentiful, only small – in sizes #18 and #20. I struggle with how I’m going to make the smallish-black visible to my old eyes, but it will likely feature a mayfly upwing just so I can pick it out from among the naturals. Ants aren’t graceful in death, nor are wings precisely folded. I should be able to poke something skyward that I can see, without compromising realism.

The top fish getter for Hat Creek was something I’d tied for the brown water. A simple bead headed caddis worm tied in a frosty blue/green, compliments of Berrocco’s Crystal FX yarn, in an odd color called National Velvet.

It’s a multicolor yarn, predominantly blue, that fades into a blue green, then back to light blue.

I’d read that trout lack the cones for blue, so I’d dismissed it as a trout fly, and intended to use it for Carp and Pikeminnow.

When wet the yarn color trends to blue green, which proved irresistible to wild trout.

If the ability to resolve blue is an issue, I would guess the fly was a neutral hue that retained the green elements, coupled with a light halo of transparent mylar fuzz that gives the yarn its signature look.

That was as much science as I contemplated, as the fish were eating it fast and furiously, and Kelvin was fingering my box for spares.

Berrocco discontinued the yarn in 2007, but you can still purchase it on eBay, there’s five skeins of National Velvet available.

There’s little question this has been a strange year. Intense and prolonged rain upset everything from the tomato harvest to hatch timetables. A lot of the odd insects encountered recently may be hatching early or late compared to last year, which explains why I’ve not seen them before.

With that in mind I’ll not go overboard in stocking up, perhaps a dozen of each color tossed into a single compartment should next year be more of the same.

The last piece of my stillwater arsenal has to be the dry flies. All are custom patterns I keep tinkering with as shortcomings and frailties become pronounced. The Calibaetis mayfly doesn’t help much as it’s seems to be a different color on every lake it inhabits.

I like to position myself on the side of the lake the wind blows towards – as the emergent adults are content to ride the breeze for great distances – instead of popping off the water immediately like a stream borne insect. The breeze will deliver all that food right to me and in the right bay or shallows the fishing can be spectacular.

For most lake mayflies I’ll toss the classic proportions and make special flies tailored for an extended float. A traditional size 16 will get the wing and hackle of a 15 (sometimes even larger if the lake is known gusty) – as the tall wing is what fish see when cruising for prey.

… and it allows me to pick my fly out from the pack, allowing me the courtesy of setting the hook when it’s eaten – rather than yanking when it’s the natural next to mine … On breezy lakes, the tall wing allows me to maintain visual contact despite the fly dipping into a wave trough – increasing my chances of seeing the strike.

I cast about two thirds less than the average fellow, as once positioned on the windward side I’ll usually find the fish cruising at my feet. As that ever-present breeze blows my “sailboat” back towards me I’ll slowly take up the slack and recast only when the fly is within a rod’s length.

It’s flirting with bait fishing, but that extra breadth of hackle and light dressing allows a greased fly to float forever.

I’ve settled on both brown and a grey bodied flies for the same hatch. One will have a distinct brownish appearance, the other will be tied mostly gray – and as the emergence is midday – there’s ample light to discern color. I’ve given up theorizing or second guessing and just make sure I have a couple dozen of each.

The nymph is the easiest part; somewhere between a Pheasant Tail, a Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear, and a Zug Bug is the proper flavor, and like the dry fly it varies a bit each year.

I like the speckled hen saddle wings as they present the perfect opaque silhouette, and when riding among naturals are nearly indistinguishable. Note the oversized wing and hackle mentioned earlier. Once damp those wings can overpower a traditional hackle and flop the fly on its side. The broad footprint of the oversized hackle stabilizes the fly and ensures it’ll ride upright with wings prominent.

All these unknown experimental made-it-yourself flies comes with a hideous burden, after the fellow next to you inquires and you tell him to “try an Adams” – you’re obliged to hand over a double-fistful, it’s the law.

Tags: Adams, stillwater dry flies, oversized wing, speckled hen saddle, Calibaetis mayfly, parachute flies, hairwing, dyed elk, grizzly hackle, fly tying

It was a bit of an imposition, watching the steady upward march of a horde of damselfly nymphs – and realizing I’d never considered my camouflaged legs part of any textbook underwater migration. Science held me in it’s grip until the first slimy little sucker made it past the neckline of my shirt and insisted on molting somewhere near my navel.

… and they swim like true fish, not awkward or ungainly like other aquatic insects. That elongated body with the three-bladed gill tail is put to good use. And it makes perfect sense that a stillwater insect that swims as gracefully as a minnow would have his gills where the tail should be – as the swimming motion would allow those appendages to slurp all the oxygen needed – even more when flight was necessary.

I liken them to Stoneflies of the Lake, larger than most of the Caddis and Mayflies, yet slender and elongated – giving a fly tyer the opportunity to practice his craft with larger hooks and plenty of shank – versus the minutiae that comprises the balance of a fish’s diet.

I don’t favor the traditional “wooden” long-shank mayfly imitation, as a small tuft of marabou just cannot substitute for the graceful swimming motion so characteristic to this species.

Instead I’ll opt for the tail and body as a single unit, coupled with a short shank hook to provide just enough room for lead wire and a wingcase. Three or four strands of medium olive with a like amount of brown over the top gives me a couple of colors that are proven tasty.

Most of the damsel nymphs I’ve fished over are dark Olive – but occasionally I’ll find them in brown. I take my cue from the lake bottom and its weeds – as the naturals are tailored to match. Putting both colors in the wing allows you to remove one later by simply tearing the fibers off – a modification you can do on the water.

Motion is the key, especially when faced with the color dampening effects of deep water, where warm starts to dull and the fish measured in pounds cluster.

Tags: Damselfly nymphs, fly fishing in stillwater, lake flies, fly fishing for trout, marabou, baitfish, graceful swimmer, sink tip, short shank hook