Category Archives: Fly Tying

Where we stumble across the Good Old Days, and buy a couple of armloads of the stuff

Mustad 3116A As today is the much dreaded “Tax Day” I thought I’d interrupt that lethal mix of sulk and stress with a return to the 1950’s – more importantly, a return to 50’s pricing…

I stumbled on the Motherload of antique Mustad and Sealy Octopus hooks from a vendor on eBay, tracked down his store and wielded MasterCard’s Terrible Swift Sword to lay in a significant supply.

… we’re talking 1950’s Mustad iron; sharp as razors, with long lethal points, strange hook numbers you’ve never heard of and never seen except in picture books featuring flies by Darbee and his ilk, who bemoan the loss of all that quality iron common to the “good old days.”

They’re here, now – and you’d better jump on them before they’re all gone.

The smallest lot the vendor sells is 500 hooks (5 boxes) and the cost ranges from $6 / 500 to about $12 /500, unless you want salmon doubles ($49 /750) or something really large.

Grab a cup of coffee and settle in – there are hundreds of variations available and you’ll need to look close and read the description to get what you want – as the hook style numbers will be unfamiliar.

If it says “reversed” or “offset” it’s a Kirbed hook, whose point is offset from the shank (like many of the Czech nymph patterns). “Offset” means the point is 5-10 degrees to the right, and “reversed” means a similar move to the left. As most of you are unfamiliar with Kirbed hooks it’s something you may not appreciate, and therefore should be avoided.

They even have the old “Sneck” bend dry fly hooks (#10, #8) which are the old square bend hook that were popular circa WWII. The hooks and boxes are largely pristine, with no rust – the occasional discoloration of the paper bindle – but even collectors will be enchanted by their condition.

They have a lot of hooks in 2X strong – and I loaded up accordingly. Contemporary hooks have lost so many of the specialty styles used for steelhead and shad that these are completely irresistible. Today’s vendors are nearly mirror images of each other – having dropped the marginally or seasonally popular hooks for the consistent sellers.

Sneck Bend Dry Fly wire (offset) Take a close look at the 3116A, 36712, and 3667 styles, as these are superb hooks.

Many of these have only two or three sizes available – and some of those are the old odd designations; #7, #9, #13. There are plenty of hooks in the 12-13-14 range, so they must’ve found an old warehouse full of hooks, rather than a picked over, former fly shop inventory.

It’s furrowed brow material. The fellow across the creek inquires what you caught that last fish on and you blow the water off it before busting his bubble, “ … it was a #13 Adams..”

This is one of those finds that isn’t supposed to happen, so look through all those bends and styles and jump on something, hard. It’s 20 twenty-five packs for less than a sawbuck – and I’ll guarantee to use most of them in future posts – insisting the hook is the real difference.

Eyeball the points on the above pictures – it should be enough to make you reach for the wallet. Be sure to look at the Sproat, Limerick, Round, and Viking categories – most of the fly iron is contained there.

Tags: Harlee Rod, antique Mustad hooks, limerick bend, sproat bend, sneck bend, offset point, reverse point, kirbed point, fly tying, bulk fly tying hooks, Harry Darbee, 2X strong, jump on it

The giggles die right about the time the fly gets wet

There was no genius on my part, Gary Warren presses a handful of aesthetically horrid flies into my hand – and while I’m recoiling in abject terror and mock offense, he’s cackling madly “trust me Bubba, you gonna want those..”

Only the best damn stonefly nymph ever

I’ve got a handful of bulky and garish panfish flies and we’re supposed to assaulting one of California’s pristine spring creeks…

I’m thinking my leg’s being pulled. Gossamer and precise I could handle, small and delicate I was expecting, but large-lumpy with a taste of cathouse was what I got.

Chenille has been one of many casualties over the last couple of decades. Once common on all manner of trout flies – wet or dry, it’s now mostly relegated to large flies. Smaller synthetic chenille saw a brief resurgence, but the steady onslaught of synthetics with similar yet more forgiving qualities have eroded its use considerably.

I keep skeins stashed in most of the colors, but my fishing has the diversity that warrants such a collection.

Variegated Orange & Black chenille, the Forbidden Color

After that evening on the creek I called it the “Forbidden Color” – whose name can only be whispered among life-long pals, as everyone else is slapping their knee and laughing at your sincerity.

“Honest, this stuff is patented fish death!” and strangers backpedal making helpless motions when you offer some – like you were insisting “they’re eating Vienna sausages, just put one on a treble hook.”

If it had a name I’ve forgotten it, and Gary never claimed ownership, only insisting that no better stonefly nymph had ever seen fresh water …

Best Stonefly wet

If any, the secret is getting the fly wet (above). Garish oranges become shades of brown and giggles are stifled as it’s suddenly predatory and eatable.

Early season I’ll carry no less than a dozen. It’s heavy, packed with lead or in bead head variant, one of those classic “money” flies that look right at home once you wedge it repeatedly in a trout’s maw.

Tags: variegated orange and black chenille, gary warren, stonefly nymph, early season nymphing, weighted nymph, bead head

All superlatives taken with a grain of salt

There is a place in every burgeoning entrepreneur’s repertoire for daytime soaps or Judge Judy … Some hideous repetitive task looms, and as you eyeball the points, run your hand over the assembly for burrs, loosen or tighten screws, and whack a chunk of whatever is close by, the Good Judge is sending some sobbing teenager into the steely grasp of the bailiff …

Such has been my fate of late. The gloom of my living room and the toil of quality control leavened with the glow of the boob tube. It’s something learned from commercial fly tying; find a show that’s uninteresting – and focus on the task at hand, glancing up only for the obligatory flash of breast-meat or the dismemberment scene.

… and I even oiled the damned things, because I knew you never would.

I received the first shipment of tungsten-imbued Sixth Finger scissors this week. After paying off all the owe-sies, vendors, and blood relatives, it appears I’ll have nearly 50 sets available of the 4.5” (original size) model. The “General Purpose” large size will be arriving next – as I’ve just approved the final design and finger hole placement.

5.5" Sixth Finger "General Purpose"

The last six months were spent testing three different fingerhole placements, and the hard part was choosing between the last two (shown with blue handles) – but the right-most won, allowing the 5.5” General Purpose to extend beyond the hand the same distance as the smaller 4.5” Original design.

This allows you to switch back and forth between the two styles without changing your grip or suddenly poking out an eye because you forgot which set you were holding.

The longer heavier blade comprises nearly half of the extra length, and we’ve shortened the spring without affecting the effort needed to press the blades closed. The adjustable screw allows for complete scissor disassembly for sharpening, or just give it a quarter turn every couple of years if they loosen with use (and abuse).

Care and Feeding of your New play toy

I’ve witnessed many hideous crimes committed on or with scissors – and only occasionally was it some other oaf – most were of mine own invention.

The 4.5” scissor is a “light duty” precision scissor. Adding faster colors, adjustable screws and tungsten inserts makes it a extremely sharp, light duty scissor.

… it doesn’t make it invulnerable to your hammy handed enthusiasms, nor should it be used to chew concrete.

The sweet spot for this design is the countless tiny snips and trims associated with preparing feathers, positioning, and the finishing of the final product. It will cleave moose hair off the hide, it’ll whack copper wire into pieces, and accomplish most of the fly tying tasks you’ll ask of it.

Do you think the new scissors would work well for tying glo-bugs? I’m looking for a super sharp, heavy duty blade that will last a while tying egg patterns. I’ll try the sample you sent and let you know.

… and my response:

The 4.5" is still a light scissor. While the tungsten allows it to plow through heavier materials, I’d use the 5.5" scissor instead. The larger size has a beefier blade as well as the tungsten – and glo-bugs are heavy work. I’d use the heavier blade only because it’s less about "can it do it" – than it is about "can it do a million of them."
Proper tool for the proper job rules – that heavier blade should allow you to chop a fistful of yarn a million times – the lighter scissor might be able to do it – maybe even well – but the pressures on the screw hole will chew the scissors up … the blades will loosen … and you’re left reaching for a new set.

The answer was in the question, “ super-sharp, heavy duty blade.”

Depending on what we were raised on as fly tiers warps our judgment completely. Surgeons have a thousand different kinds of scissor – each suited for specific tasks, yet us fly tiers insist that one pair of scissors be capable of mowing the lawn, mixing drinks, and walking the dog …

Just because you can cut the stem off a turkey quill with a pair of scissors doesn’t mean you can do it a million times without damage.

If you focus your usage in the sweet spot for any scissor, they will last a lifetime.

/end Momma’s lecture

The Avaricious Greed Part

My goal was to keep the price of both styles of scissor below thirty dollars. I was only partially successful …

The 4.5” Tungsten will retail for $28 a pair, and the 5.5” Tungsten will be $29 each. This is consistent with the market maker, Dr. Slick – whose 4.5” tungsten standard scissor is also $28.

But wait, there’s more …

My strident bellow about the inequities of the vendor community require me to trod rarified soil, anything less flirts with hypocrisy. While the gesture will be ignored by the larger community, my ethics require some small allegiance is owed those whose twenty dollars I’ve already pocketed.

Contrary to Harvard Business School and their tutelage, I see the customer as friend and compatriot, not competition.

Therefore, owners of the existing scissor can pick either flavor of the new scissor for $22.

Postage for a single set of scissors is $1.56 – and the padded envelope is $0.42 each, I’ll eat the bubble pack, tape, and the 20 minute wait at the Post Office.

Last time I paid the postage and you got the scissors for $20, this time you’ll pay for the shipping … and get the scissors for $20. This discount will be honored by me only – so asking your local merchant will result in a blank stare.

I’ll keep the offer open until redemptions roughly equal the amount of original scissors sold.

I’ll be working this weekend to update the Google shopping interface (the purchase image in the center column of this blog) to reflect the models and the discount, and dreaming up a surefire way to query you on your older purchase thereby qualifying you for the same.

I’ll mention this option again when the 5.5” models arrive, so if you’re interested in an upgrade decide which flavor you prefer. A rain check will be available if I run out of stock, so there’s little need to rush blindly into a new purchase.

Just my way of saying … thanks.

… and if you simply must be the first on your block, just drop me an email to reserve a set, as this shipment is small and sales look to be brisk.

Full Disclosure: I am the principal vendor for the Sixth Finger scissor and will benefit from any sale of this ~~incredibly awesome~~ scissor. All superlatives used to describe the ~~male enhancing~~ qualities and ~~mind boggling~~ function should be taken with a grain of salt.

Tags: Sixth Finger scissor, tungsten carbide insert, scissor upgrade option, light duty scissor, precision scissor, Google shopping, daytime soaps, Judge Judy, thanks for your patronage

Following my advice was the real mistake

Singlebarbed reader Spencer has trod where only the crazed and obsessed have dared and in traditional fashion I’ve started making excuses while flailing about trying to help.

“ … you mean you actually took my advice? That was your first mistake.”

The issue is simple. A dye manufacturer boasts of an olive or brown and both are complex colors made of multiple sub-colors. From your watercolor days, brown can be made a thousand different ways (usually by all the colors running together), but most vendors use a combination of reds and blues or orange and purple to get brown.

Spencer dutifully tossed in his really expensive Whiting neck he hasn’t owned up to inexpensive rabbit fur test chunk and wound up with a nice purple for his trouble.

Been there. Spent most of last weekend in the exact same place with RIT dye. If I knew more of what comprised color on the mineral side I might have a definitive answer, right now it’s lumped under “sucks to be you.”

Dyeing destroys a lot of materials during the learning process but over time you can handle certain types of calamities, the rest you dry and do your best to find a use for – the material hasn’t been destroyed, it’s just not the awesome medium olive you’d hoped it would become.

If you can’t get a brown to dye brown , there’s little you can do to fix it – and the only variables are listed below:

1) Heat – make the dye bath hotter or colder from the failed temperature. Some minerals may only dissolve at certain temperatures, so if you dye brown and get bluish purple, it could be the red is activated only by higher temperatures than the blue. Purple means that some red and blue fired, but blue-ish purple suggests more blue than red fired.

2) Over-dye or tint the color back into the acceptable range. It works best for lighter colors as you’re adding additional color to an already dyed material. Dyeing dark purple with yellow will have no effect, but dyeing a light green with some brown and yellow will yield an olive or olive tint.

3) Time – leave the mess in the pot overnight. This should only be done on the darkest colors as even Tan left overnight will yield a brown feather. Perhaps time is required to get the other color(s) to precipitate onto the feathers.

Over-dyeing is also not for the faint of heart, but it’s one of the ways you can get the rarified colors like bronze blue dun or a multi-colored feather.

Last weekend I’d agreed to reproduce some of Cal Bird’s teal colors and had approached the issue with great trepidation – Cal being a trained artist and therefore fully fluent in the manipulation of colors and tints.

Left overnight RIT Tan yielded Dark Brown I’d dutifully followed the vendor’s color guide and built an olive and a brown from other colors. RIT lacks an olive, and their brown was too dark, so I mixed the custom colors in a proportion that I thought would yield something close…

It didn’t, and I was left scratching my head like friend Spencer.

The dye was largely RIT forest green with about 10% RIT tan, but the green vanished no matter what temperature was used.

I yanked the feathers before they became too dark, but left a pinch of Green rinse water them in the pot to test the overnight method. The result is above, a rich dark brown.

It didn’t matter what I tried, more heat, fixative, or dye yielded a pan full of forest green water and tan feathers. Over-dyeing was the only option, as I’d run out of suggestions from the manufacturer – who insisted I’d get an olive with the two colors mixed.

This drab, cold tan is shown below. It was yanked from the 90% green bath earlier – at the point when it had added all the tan needed to make the base color.

The "Cold" tan fellows yanked earlier

It has a miniscule amount of green in the feathers – just enough to turn the color cold.

I lump quasi-colors, those that I wasn’t expecting, under the destroyed feathers outcome; the colors are useful and the feathers are undamaged – only the end result is unexpected.

A couple days later I subjected the now dry “cold tan” feathers I’d pulled early, to a bath containing only green and a bit of yellow. I needed only the smallest tint of color added to warm it to the sample color.

Sample shown with the feathers after the overdye process

The second bath applied what was missing to alter the color into the successful range. Green being equal parts yellow and blue and adding additional yellow – allowed the color to “warm” the feathers without obscuring the tan. There are hints of green in the feather duff at the base of each feather, but this is a brown-olive as dictated by the sample on the right.

Cal’s instructions are shown on the envelope, “olive and maple sugar.”

You can destroy feathers in millions of ways, with only a couple options to salvage the result. Consulting the color often allows you to pull the feathers when the unexpected results – and alters the problem from imbuing a light item with the finished color, to altering the existing color to match a desirable range.

Sorry, Spencer. It’s all part of the craft.

Tags: RIT, Cal Bird, teal, over-dyeing, tint, brown olive, bulk fly tying materials, custom dyed feathers, TINTEX maple sugar, whitefishcantjump.com, feather dyeing

Thirty Six miles of Maybe

Sure I was moving a little fast for my own good, but I was convinced I’d discovered the Holy Grail of Cloisonné (klaus-un-nay), that multifilament braided mylar tinsel we’ve adopted for steelhead flies. It is great stuff, available in silver and gold, never tarnishes and was a fly tier’s dream compared to all the thread-cored mylar tinsels of recent manufacture.

My $39.95 covered a lifetime supply plus postage from Asia.

… Oh, it’s a lifetime supply sure enough, only I missed the yarn sizing and wound up with 45000 yards each of Dark Olive and Pearlescent superfine tinsel-thread…

Imagination meets Desperation, the one pounder

… that’s eighteen miles of each color.

Now I’ve got to figure something that uses a ^%$# ton of it.

It runs contrary to my ethics to invent a couple dozen patented killers, then claim how much of a favor I’m doing you by selling you some teensy dust mote of the stuff … the fly shops have plowed that ground thoroughly.

But it does represent the last unspeakable variant of fly tying creativity, the collision of Imagination and Desperation. Us “scroungers” have been here many times and can only be thankful it’s not a full Bull Elk hide dripping in my driveway.

It’s too wide and breaks too easily to use as thread, but it would lend itself to being doubled over and used to replace all the other pearlescent components we’ve accumulated over the last couple of years. I could make a spun round tinsel, shellbacks for nymphs, wingcases, Easter basket dressing …

DkOlive_Tinsel

… or I could tie the entire blessed imitation out of the stuff and hope for the best.

It’s dry, doesn’t stink, and can be stashed away from prying feminine eyes eager to pounce on my mistakes (after the obligatory lecture or two).

Trout flies come to mind and I managed to burn a foot building the little mayfly nymph above … 149,000 more and I’ll wish I’d bought two cones instead of the single …

I prefer the term unrepentant – society locks up those other fellows.

Tags: mylar thread, bulk fly tying materials, ice yarns, Turkey, mayfly nymph, Cloisonné, tinsel, fly tying

One day the grocery lady will fix you with that steely gaze

The comment echoed as if it were yesterday. My buddy and I frozen in appreciation of the measured stride of some long-legged vision negotiating the corner crosswalk. We’re doing our best not to stare, yet as the thoroughbred approaches we realize she’s still in high school…

… which didn’t slow us down much, but we knew once she found out we were the same age as “Dad” – her drawn out “..Eeew..” would be the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Male Ego, and we’d crawl away broken men.

I mentioned to my pal, who was older, “I’m thirty-something and feel like I just got out of High School.” He replied, “So do I, but old is when the lady behind the checkout counter calls you ‘Sir’.”

As it took an impossibly long time to get old, I figured it would be six or seven decades before I’d even flirt with the issue.

He was spot on. She’s got her hand out for your cash while the “MacDaddy” pose crumbles, the held breath exhales sharply – and you realize she’d dismissed you while you pawed carrots in the produce aisle.

(Cut to present day)

Out of a dusty drawer came “Old One-Seventy-Nine” – a Dyna-King Professional (Serial #179) purchased the first year the vice was available. I’d never grown overly comfortable with the big slotted jaw and realized I’d better get around to purchasing a set of midge jaws before they vanished forever.

Naturally, the old jaws wouldn’t come out, so I appealed to Dyna-King for assistance.

Shannon replied: “ the back end of the jaws have possibly been ‘smashed up’ over time from the cam handle, causing them to be snug through the body. If you still are unable to pull them out you can certainly send the vise in and we can take care of it for you.”

Having plenty of experience busting fine engineering with medieval German-esque hand tools, I opted for the safer course of action.

Shannon,

Enclosed you’ll find the stem and jaws of my Dyna-King Professional, Serial # 179. I’ve secured the replacement midge jaws to the vise via rubberband …

The reply came back quickly, “Damn that’s old.”

Cue the sharp exhale of breath, and the inaudible mumble of protest when the bagger offers to push my shopping cart to the vehicle for me. I’ll just dodder along in her wake …

Tags: Dyna-King Professional, midge jaw replacement, old guy, misspent youth, gene pool, MacDaddy

The Fusion fly: Where we expose our ample hindquarters to scorn and levity

I’m minding my own business and Reed Curry plants an idea in my head that’s been gnawing at me for months:

“What elements of a natural fly are absolutely essential for the trout brain to use…”

… to recognize food.

Better yet, what elements of a natural (or successful imitation) are essential when it’s moving at eight or ten miles an hour, in concert with millions of oxygen bubbles, scraps of moss and twigs, and the sediment your buddy upstream added?

Does a fish eating stonefly nymphs take your nymph because of its size, or because it’s both big and black? Does the grab you just missed on your Pheasant Tail mean the nymph represents the predominant hatching insect – or was it merely the closest, and the fish was bored of the olive ones ….

Hence the quandary, the simplest of all questions – and there’s no single authority to ask for a definitive answer.

Anglers never look a gift horse in the mouth, we’re free with what little fact we’ve established. Some fellow sees us playing a fish and inquires what they’re eating, and the fact that we’ve caught four on a #14 Pale Morning Dun cannot be denied. If our new found pal knots one on and scratches a fish or two, it’s unanimous, the fish are eating PMD’s …

… but are they?

Caddis are dancing under the overhanging brush, there’s something in the water column headed for the surface, and just above us could be slack water with a spinner fall.

It could be that the PMD’s are emerging upstream and only getting to the surface in the fifty yards we’re camped in – perhaps that caddis has a similar body color, and your mayfly imitation is the next best thing to Nature, accidental like …

… or maybe the outflow from the slack water is bunching the spinners into small rafts of wings and tails and the fish are keyed to anything that looks semi-edible and floats.

… but we’ll never know, as we’re intent on sliding that PMD under that big tree limb where the dimples appear larger.

I love posing the impossible question, and hate being the recipient. Friend Reed has dropped an imponderable in my lap and I can’t tease it loose.

Compounding the problem is my binocular vision, and while I can’t see as a fish can, I’ve got a couple hundred years of succesful flies to inspect for those common fish appealing attributes.

If you bounce some mayfly nymphs off your desk the impression you get may be a hint of color, perhaps a lumpy front and a thin rear. Throwing some caddis nymphs yields less singularity, tubelike and a flash of color. Stonefly nymphs give you BIG, and dark – and well defined legs, but only if the pattern is biot based or contains rubberlegs.

Dry flies are like caddis, very little detail other than “stuff in front” and a hint of color, sometimes hackle – sometimes it’s the body.

We’ve always been enamored of the static view of flies, and matching the frozen natural, something a fish never sees. Instead, fish have to cull food items from the moving litany of leaves, bubbles, and debris that accompany them, and if they’re not right 90% of the time they starve to death.

Looking at the patterns and construction we’ve used to imitate the Big Three food groups, reveals many common elements that reduce the singularities to a manageable number. Mayfly nymphs use the traditional construction of tail, body, and folded wingcase, and then eight or nine million different things for legs.

Caddis stages mostly look wormlike and almost always have a light body and a dark head – unless it’s a cased pattern.

Stonefly nymphs are big, also dark.

Therein is the crux – those few necessary features that distinguish one bug family from another. An enormous leap of faith is required, but we’ve already done that; that fish eat selectively, whether they feed on the most numerous bug, or the insect that requires the fewest calories to capture.

I started off conventional enough, but the experimental flies looked just like the stuff we’ve been using for decades, which shouldn’t be terribly surprising – as I was imitating imitations.

Then the Czech Nymph book threw me for a tailspin, as I’d overlooked the entire attractor paradigm. I started integrating attractor elements with physical design and came out with stunning bugs – that looked like all the other stunning bugs I’d seen …

… and while I patiently waited for the flood waters to subside, towing first one fly then another through stained puddles on the creek bank – I glanced down at the fly box and the Angels sang …

… a medley actually, featuring Eminem and Jay-Z compliments of the boom box rattling the parking lot.

First Law of Fusion : The best elements of flies can be contained on a single fly – and the result serves as multiple insects, rather than a single imitation.

We’ve trod that ground before, employing countless flies that imitate nothing yet resemble everything. Most of the better nondescript flies like the Bird’s Nest, Burlap, Casual Dress, and Adams, all fit this mold.

Second Law of Fusion : Combine two bugs on the same hook.

That … is truly different.

Fused Hare's Ear

Above is a minor variation of the traditional Hare’s Ear, I’ve added some attractor elements; a little flash blended into the body dubbing, and a hint of Claret and Yellow to the front of the thorax…

Fused Hare's Ear, bottom view

Here’s a glimpse of the same fly only a bottom view. We’ve fused the traditional Czech nymph attributes – the caddis “worm” shellback, with the traditional “mayfly” design of the Hare’s Ear. The hint of claret and yellow is revealed to be the traditional multi-color Czech element, part attractor, part tradition.

Czech Nymph bottom view

Here is a smaller size Czech nymph (tied on a traditional Knapek Scud hook), and the underside is revealed to be the venerable Hare’s Ear.

The idea is sound enough – with the complimentary flies needing a shared body color – although the shellback of the Czech-style eliminates even that restriction.

Tugging flies through puddles demonstrated that anything tied on scud wire, competition or otherwise, rides upside down. Allowing me a blank canvas to build the mayfly on top.

… and for the rest, it’s a homework assignment. There’s infinite possible ways to combine two insect groups on a single fly. Giant stoneflies are troublesome as their size restricts fusion to either Crane fly larvae or baitfish on the underside.

Which of you stalwarts is willing to risk public castigation to offer a better fused mousetrap?

Damn you Reed Curry, you’re the stealthy hand that forced inspiration past the normal cranial pathways and into the realm of outright mirth, as if they’re not giggling yet they certainly will be when I debut the Loch Ness dry fly series.

Tags: fusion flies, Knapek scud hooks, crane fly larvae, Hare’s Ear nymph, Reed Curry, The New Scientific Angling, Eminem, Jay-Z, inspirational fly tying, shellback,

Eat The Fly , a balanced and nutritious tour of the important finned food groups

Alex Cerveniak of 40 Rivers to Freedom and the Hatch’s Blog network is creating yet another endeavor documenting all possible fish foods and the flies to represent them.

Entitled, “Eat the Fly” it’s an ambitious undertaking that will contain the common food items and insects available to fish, offset by some of the fly patterns used to represent them.

It’s a hellish undertaking to be sure, but the rest of us have the easy part – admiring the photographs and remarking, “so that’s what a Black Nosed Dace looks like…”

He’s got species, phases, links to additional resources, flies that represent the food depicted, and where possible, seasons and emergence dates, coupled with locale information.

Horny-Head-Chub

– Horny Headed Chub, Alex Cerveniak Photo

It’ll take some time before he’s scratched the surface – but there’s a great deal of work (and effort) already available, and he could use an assist on compiling all that information, you may want to drop him a note if you’ve got some compelling photographs of known food items.

Tags: Eatthefly.com, Alex Cerveniak, Hatch’s Blog Network, angling resource, baitfish, aquatic insects

He gives Cyprinids the Fat Lip

Friend Roughfisher is adding his expertise to the USCARPPRO ezine, with a monthly column on flies for our favorite Cyprinid. It’s a great fit and a monstrous ezine, 150 pages of technology and insight into all forms of carp fishing – most of which we never knew existed.

Fly fishermen have more than our fair share of snooty types, with the balance either market hunters or fishermen. Cracking the cover on USCARPPRO suggests they have an equal leavening of elite anglers, elitism, and enough precision engineered tackle and angling minutiae to give fly fishermen a run for their money.

We devote four pages to synthetic tailing materials, and they’ve got four pages of hand cast lead weights with finishes that mimic rocks. We’ve got Bimini Twists and esoteric single purpose knots – only they’ve got twice as many, most of which we’ve never encountered.

We’ve got fly patterns in the tens of thousands, and they can match us one for one with boilies, popups, and wafters – all of which sound like Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gob Stopper – only in Vanilla and Black Licorice.

Which gives them the edge on us as they can eat what they throw.

Best of all is the lack of outstretched arm posturing – there’s no need to exaggerate fish size, as most are unable to lift the bloated behemoth past their knees…

… and they’re smiling. Ruddy faced grins celebrate a worthy quarry, something that’s only occasionally seen in our glossies.

If you thought fly competition hooks were expensive – these fellows pay double for theirs – I couldn’t help but salivate over the shapes and reinforcement – we don’t have nearly the options we once did with X-Strong fly hooks.

I found it an enjoyable departure from our media, an interesting glimpse at a sport taken every bit as seriously as our own – with the added comfort of knowing there’s some poor angler paying more for his rods than I am.

Sure it’s bait fishing, but us fishermen do that.

While you’re there – tell Roughfisher we ain’t on speaking terms until some of that homemade sausage makes it to my side of the Rockies. Fly fishing is fine and all – but withholding eats is unconscionable.

Tags: Roughfisher.com, USCARPPRO ezine, cyprinids, boilies, popups, wafters, bimini twist, Willy Wonka, carp

Sulky Holoshimmer, holographic tinsel by another name

I was reminded last night that I hadn’t been completely forthcoming. The fly shops call it “holographic tinsel” – typically charging between $1.50 and $2 for a small spool.

Joanne’s Craft’s calls it “Sulky Holoshimmer” and rather than the traditional size spool, sells it in the elongated bindle for $3.95 for 250 yards. It’s only available in the fine trout sizes (1/32”) under that label – but a little digging will likely find our medium and large variant.

That’s nearly seven spools of the fly shop size, which cuts your cost down to fifty seven cents per spool (30m).

sulky_holoshimmer

I took the above picture at Joann’s showing 48 different colors. On closer examination I see duplicates, so it appears more than one size is available from the craft store. I was harried – and throwing elbows to keep the mob back, and may have missed this important detail …

Sulky_holoshimmer2

Here’s the life-size view so you can see the pattern and effects. Copper (bottom left), Cranberry, and dark Green (top two) are especially suited for those oddball trout patterns that require a little flash.

I love these spools. The top lifts up exposing a small track that the tag end can be wound around – once the top is pressed down your the tag end is completely secure. Consider saving these spools once the tinsel is exhausted – I’d decant other tinsels or chenille onto them so you don’t tarnish the old metal style (with rubberbands) – and you can avoid the unfettered “mylar explosion” of the newer tinsels.

In this economy we’re making war on the two dollar item …

Tags: Holographic Tinsel, Sulky Holoshimmer, fly tying materials, bulk fly tying materials, war on two dollar items, fly tying