Category Archives: Fly Tying

My war against the 25 pack continues

I held my nose while ordering a 25 pack of “balance leech pins”. I needed a sample of the genuine to confirm what these really were – and from which industry they came. Possession of a 25 pack of anything from a tackle store typically requires me to blush profusely and commit the obligatory toe scuff to distract onlookers.

I hate 25 packs of anything, unless it’s Twinkies.

In fly fishing, the twenty five pack is just enough material to fiddle with and then run out when you discover some unknown yet useful quality.It’s enough to give your fishing buddy a handful, then find you only have three for yourself.

Today’s case it was enough to identify that “balanced leech pins” at $2.95 for 25, are simply dress maker’s pins – available at any fabric store for $6.95 for 750 of them. This wasn’t earth shattering as many fly tiers have guessed similarly, but as I noted the pattern recipe called for fly tying beads to balance the fly, and beads being another exorbitant 25 pack item, I thought I’d mention that standard metal beads will work better than the fly tying version – and are much cheaper.

Dressmaker pins are used as they have a flattened head which prevents our bead from slipping off the end of the pin.

DressMaker500

Solid copper, steel, or brass beads are available from Etsy, eBay, or Rings & Things and most hobby stores that cater to jewelry making. They work on barbless fly hooks with model perfect bends as they are not slotted to accommodate barb or sproat-style bends, but are sold for about $4 per hundred, versus $4.5 per 25 at the fly shop.

“Balance Leeching” is tying the fly on a 60 degree jig hook and including a bead on a dress maker’s pin to hold the fly level when suspended from a strike indicator. I had an idea this would work well on shallow weed flats for bass, and was intent on tying a couple dozen to try with minnow imitations as well as leechs.

balance_minnow600

Any chance I have to thwart the sale of a 25 pack of anything is worthy of the effort.I used some “diamond cut” 4mm iron beads to act as the balance element and tied others with dual beads so they would bang against one another (rattle) during the retrieve. Weeds are not yet available in the local lakes but they’ll show once the warm weather starts in earnest.

In Spring a Young Man’s thoughts turn to Cloudy Water

Spring is synonymous with the “Great Flush” wherein increased water levels caused by rain and snowmelt sends leaves, branches, empty water bottles, discarded Pandemic masks, and everything not nailed down – into whatever body of water is downstream.

I always seem to run into dirty water regardless of where I’m fishing and am always fiddling with flies attempting to find a solution to their visual appeal being obscured by debris and dirt.

The drought has complicated matters as well. As the water in lakes are drawn down it exposes loose dirt with little vegetation to hold it in place. Wave action caused by wind will stir that mix into a coffee colored slick that will extend it’s plume into the lake from the windward side of every point.

Wind and shallow water are common to both freshwater lakes and the California Delta. Vegetation tends to cleanse dirty water but a drought, coupled with the time of year, weeds are not available. Much of the underwater vegetation dies back during the Fall and Winter months, and the spring flush often empties into lakes whose weeds have not yet started their new cycle. The California Delta has less water level fluctuation and much more resident vegetation but is prone to wind which stirs the water in the shallows – disturbing bottom debris and sediment which quickly discolors water in the surrounding flats.

As fly fishing lacks many of the sensory elements of other types of fishing, like scent or sound, we are at a disadvantage when water conditions are less than ideal. Watching those Pro Bass shows often tempts me into using “Scent of a Thousand Nightcrawlers,” but I’ve resisted thus far only because the oily mess is likely to mat all materials and render flies lifeless and stiff.

Sound is a viable option on flies, but their method of attachment is a bit problematic. Many kinds of rattles exist for the bass jig market and might be adapted to flies with a bit of ingenuity.

The volume of rattle equipped baits on the lure and plug market suggests both lure manufacturers and anglers believe it attractive to predatory fish. As I’ve not read all the science (yet), I’ll assume the mob is onto something and all those rattle equipped lures are something more than a means to separate a fool and his money … and sound is an attribute to a fly in discolored water.

While not expert on sounds emitted by baitfish – it’s likely digestive noises and excess air are present in the innards of anything that isn’t a plant. Water transmits sound readily but I’m unsure whether “bad” noises exist and whether gastric noises or baitfish flatulence is attractive to predators. The act of swimming, either leisurely or frantically, is likely to add vibration (sound) into the water as well. The receptor on a predacious fish is likely its lateral line – as sound is likely transmitted through water as a vibration.

The bigger question is, which sounds and what pitch are triggers for large fish? Big sound, loud or soft, continuous sound or discrete notes?

I’d guess that the species and feeding behavior of the predator adds a unique mix of triggers, and Sailfish may respond to bigger sounds that would send a trout fleeing in terror. Schooling bait likely “sounds” different than a solitary minnow, so part of the mix will vary with the fish sought or imitated by the rattle equipped fly.

rattle700

Rattles exist in a number of options, most are for jigs and bait casting gear. Three basic styles are the dual harness type (XTech), the “Pepper Jig” type – whose rattles fit into a rubber harness akin to a set of Mickey Mouse ears (rattles in the box), and the fly tying rattle (Eye Glass Rattle) – which are shaped like a traditional “barbell” eye, and attached in the same way.

All of these are “dogs with fleas” for the adventurous fly tier. Both the dual harness and the Pepper Jig rattles rely on a rubber element that can be lashed onto a hook with ease. Unfortunately, rubber will oxidize and you might lose the rattle after a season or two. The basic cylinder of the “Pepper” shaped rattle is problematic and bulbous, so securing it to the shank without using the harness is an issue, both in secure attachment and in its interference in tying the actual fly itself.

The “barbell” style rattle eyes have little or no sound as the beads are so tiny, so if it’s the noise you’re after, the fly tying version are essentially worthless. As I am unsure which sounds are most desirable to Striped Bass and Largemouth/Smallmouth, and sound is the solution to combat discolored water, I choose to use the larger beads and noisiest rattles ; the double barbell and/or Pepper Jig flavor.

The physics of rattles has to be considered as well. Rattles create sound as one or more “BB’s” hit either end of a air filled chamber. Air is buoyant  so the larger rattles (containing bigger beads and more trapped air) can alter the buoyancy of the completed fly. Using a double rattle will exacerbate the issue, so it’s prudent to drop your flies in a glass of water to determine whether you’ve affected the rake or pitch of the fly in the water.

I chose to use a single rattle from the dual harness. I trim the harness at the center bulb and tie the stem portion onto the hook shank in the tail position. this allows the bucktail or marabou to flow around the rattle body and hide it within the fly.

It’s worthy to note that both the dual harness and “Pepper Jig” variants can be threaded onto the fly by simply forcing the hole in the center harness over the fly head or onto the leader itself. This offers the ability to add and remove rattles to your existing flies but relies on the elasticity of the plastic to remain securely attached. It’s plain the maker would have chosen a plastic that resists oxidation, as jigs are subject to sunlight as well as flies, but the force of casting the fly coupled with stretching the rubber ring over the hook eye will likely cause it to fail sooner than its traditional use.

645rattleBluegill

On the above “Little Bluegill” you can see the single barrel of the rattle tied in at the tail position. I have spread open the marabou to show the rattle, and when fished the rattle is not visible nor does it seem to affect the fly action. Any buoyancy issues will be overpowered by the lead eyes up front.

Mounting the rattle at the tail keeps it from obstructing the gape of the hook. Threading rattles onto the leader or eye means the barrels have the ability to dangle below the fly and may cause some issues with hook setting on smaller hooks. I trimmed the tether short to keep the barrel up tight to the shank of the hook rather than allowing it to sag to one side or the other.

Marabou striper flies fully loaded with water are already heavy things to hurl, so I didn’t notice issues with the increased weight. A fully loaded 2/0 is about as aerodynamic as a small school bus, so wear protective gear regardless.

8lbStriper700

I fished Sherman Island just after two days of blustery wind last week and managed to score a single eight pound striper. The water was noticeably dirty from all the wind activity and while I cannot say it was the rattle that seduced the slimy SOB, I’d like to think I outwitted him on his own turf ..

More testing is required to prove anything however. I am scouring the Internet to see if there is any scientific work on the subject, that can translated from Latin into English, as I am interested on how pitch and tone might attract or repel – and whether I can manufacture something suitable to confirm any theories on this subject.

In the meantime, enjoy fiddling with these options most are available from any shops catering to lure and jig making.

I plan on using the same flies for Largemouth to see if they aid in catching fish on the muddy plumes of water that come off the points in the afternoon. Wind traditionally makes an appearance in early afternoon, and my wandering about on the bank has revealed that schools of Threadfin Shad use these plumes as cover from predators, foraging with relative impunity .. Dragging my fly out of such a plume might trigger something to dine, and I do so love to share my flies with things smaller than me…

Loon ERGO Serrated Scissor Review

The pandemic has accelerated my conversion from trout fisherman to bass fisherman  due to  the unknowns associated with food, lodging and travel. I’ve shelved all the gossamer and petite gear needed for trout fishing in favor of  Styrofoam, hair,  rubber legs, and hooks capable of severing your Carotid artery with an errant cast.

Loon Ergo Hair Scissor640

Tying flies for bass is the “Widow Maker” for most marriages, as the production of a dozen 2/0 poppers involves half a deer hide, acres of marabou and brightly dyed Grizzly hackle, most of which winds up clinging to your lap or blowing about your tying room at the whim of your air conditioning.

I keep reaching for my “trout” scissors to cut bead chain eyes and saw through Stinger hooks and realized they were better served staying in the drawer given their delicacy.  Unable to find my old serrated edge heavy scissors, I picked up a pair of the Loon Outdoor Ergo Hair scissors to replace them. At $15 per pair, these scissors are priced well considering the potential for destroying them while restocking your fly box.

Tying big deer hair poppers can shorten the life of traditional delicate scissors as there are additional pressures that go hand in hand with larger flies.

Volume: Large bass poppers require many times the materials of smaller trout flies. That translates into cutting larger volumes of material with each cut of your scissor. As leverage plays into the physics of scissor cuts – the longer the scissor the more force is applied to the fulcrum area, the small screw holding the scissors together. Stainless steel is a “soft” steel (compared to others), and the screw steel is typically “harder” than Stainless, which ensures this excess force  will eventually deform the screw hole and loosen the scissor over time.

Obscurity: Tying big lumpy hair poppers means you have an enormous wad of hair lashed to your hook prior to trimming the final shape. As the majority of the hook is hidden , it’s very easy to close the scissor on the shank, point, or eye – simply because you couldn’t see it while trimming. Whacking a hook point with your scissors is bad for the tips and for the screw area, as the steel of a hook is “harder” than the steel (often Stainless) used to make the scissor. Hook steel can easily take the points off of a Tungsten scissor, as Tungsten is among the hardest of all steels – but it is also among the most brittle.

Dirt: Carving large amounts of deer hair off of the hide is a dirty business. While animal hides are cleaned and washed prior to being parted up for packaging, there is still a lot of foreign material trapped in the hair. Dirt, debris, dried blood, seeds, and everything else trapped in the under fur will be in the path of your scissors each time you make a cut of hair, and that additional wear adds over time.

Bulk: Cutting through three-quarters of an inch of Elk hair takes considerably more effort than trimming a mallard feather, yet most tiers expect the results to be identical. Cutting large amounts of material with small scissors requires the scissor to be closed slower than when it cuts a small feather – or the screw area will suffer. This is the most common way to deform the screw hole, cutting too much too quickly, and either the handles bend as you close them or the screw hole widens to accommodate the excessive pressure. Scissors loosen as they age, but it’s actually deformity of the screw hole that causes all the extra play – rather than wear.  If you are tying a lot of large flies or the materials are quite tough it’s better to switch to a larger scissor with the backbone to sheer through the material with less strain on the fulcrum area.

Today, Bulk and habit were the root of my problems, as I kept reaching for the fine point trout scissor when I should have used a larger set with serrated blades. Serration is always useful when trimming hair as the fibers cannot slide out of the scissors ahead of the cut, the fibers tend to catch in the serration and ensures everything gets trimmed proper. Note that this is both good and bad, as the serrated scissor will grip and make absolute cuts – and you can remove too much material if you’re unused to them.

The Loon Ergo serrated scissors are a 4.5” (powder-coated stainless steel) scissor with superb tips and a light serration down one of the blades. The large finger holes, hence the “ergonomic” designator, are quite comfortable for extended tying sessions, and there is enough “beef” in the scissor frame to snap them closed without feeling the handles flex – which is a good tell that the scissor is over capacity on the cut.

At $15 the price is really cheap, prompting me to order a second set for use with conventional tackle, trimming braid and heavy monofilament where that serrated edge will prove extra useful..

As my tying room is currently bereft of carpet due to a “slab leak” and having to jack hammer the concrete pad beneath for the repair, I should mention that I managed to drop these scissors on their points and bent both tips in a dramatic fashion. Stainless steel is a soft steel, so I was able to restore the points to their original shape by dragging them across my vise barrel several times. This is not a failure of design or an inherent weakness in the quality of the product – rather this is what happens when good scissors and fine tips meet an immovable object.

Great scissor for a great price – and with the large finger holes even the hammy handed should find these comfortable.

Note: This is an unsolicited quick review of this product. The scissor was purchased at full retail from a shop.

And One to Rule them All

If you tie a lot of bass flies a pandemic is a welcome interlude given how enforced isolation and “work from home” is instrumental in creating the debris field from all those large hooks you stuffed with marabou, rubber legs, lead wire, and spun deer hair.

… and, even better, most of the folks sheltering in place with us have seen us lick our fingers after handling all those dead animal parts, and we’ve got no one pestering us to wash our hands, either.

My last trip afield showed my fly box had more plastic showing than flies, and knew I was overdue for an extended “self quarantine” period with a couple fistfuls of Marabou and a lot of Olive Grizzly hackle.

Fortunately, bass flies are not like trout flies and the typical angler need not carry every phase of insect life, in every color, and in both floating and sinking varieties. Instead bass fishing is limited to Big Things that Float, and Big Things that Sink, and only a handful of colorations are required:  Shad, Crayfish, Frog, and anything that resembles a small child or escaped Chihuahua.

While many thousands of sinking bass flies exist for bass, few can match the  qualities of the Wooly Bugger. The simplicity of construction, low material cost, and seductive fishing action has made it a prominent option at your local fly shop – and likely earned a spot in your fly box already.

WoolyBuggerNew

Over the years I’ve had to slim down the volume of flies carried and shift focus to colors instead of patterns. Bass are usually associated with frog, minnow, and crayfish baits, and typically are pursued in lakes and ponds. where depth is always an issue given how fly tackle sinks so poorly. The long shank hooks typically employed with a Wooly Bugger allow us to pack lead, bead chain, beads, and allow us a platform for adding considerable weight – which is a boon in lake fishing.

The regular pulse of marabou has always been attractive to fish, and the palmered chenille front and marabou rear make a reasonable facsimile of a swimming  crayfish (which swim backwards), as well as resembling a minnow when yanked with a sustained retrieve, and in a pinch can approximate a frog – with its thin legs and bulky body, despite the fly not being on the surface – where frogs are found.

As a terrestrial angler wandering the bank I look for flies that can be used in more than one role – or simulate more than one prey, as space in my vest is always at a premium. Bass flies, especially the top water deer hair poppers, are  bulky and ill suited for traditional fly boxes forcing bass anglers to cut back on the diversity of flies they carry versus trout fishing.  The physics speak for themselves, as a dozen deer hair Dahlberg Divers  requires a couple of square feet of fly box space versus the tiny amount needed for a similar amount of #16 Griffith’s Gnat. The Wooly Bugger being one of the few styles that compress well in a fly box, allows bank anglers to carry a lot of them (or more colors) without having to carry a suitcase to accommodate their bulk.

10dozen

Many of the flies I carry loosely map to roles seen in traditional bait caster tournament lures, as crank baits, jerk-baits, poppers, worms, jigs, and spinner baits, possess actions that are timeless and have been fished successfully for decades. The Wooly Bugger falls into the “jig” category when weighted, due to it’s up-down dance when equipped with a bead head, and is more of a “jerk-bait” when unweighted – as the hackle and marabou provide no resistance to sinking allowing the angler to retrieve it with a variety of fetching motions that resemble numerous food groups.

Lake fishing requires a lot of weight to sink the fly quickly and the fly’s design lends itself to bead chain, cone heads, or large lead – none of which will affect the fly’s action. Streams or shallow ponds typically require less weight, but most of the Wooly Buggers that I fish are heavily weighted – simply due to the big water I’m fishing of late.

Lastly, the attribute that few consider is how the Wooly Bugger is often taught as one of the first flies learned in a beginner fly tying class. Cagey parents might be able to add a request for a few dozen as part of the allocation of weekly chores. Since the pandemic requires both parents and children to stay at home, what better way to ensure their online education complete – then researching the patterns and colors you’ll need for your next family adventure … after they take out the trash …

While it’s certain your stable of newly christened fly tiers will have a lot of defective product and won’t hold together long, it’s still a good bargain. That fly eating tree limb behind you coupled with the two wind knots in your leader will ensure your goodly supply is less so – in short order.

Marabou is cheap and a few minutes away from Tik Tok is downright patriotic …

139 Yards of shattered glass

It was one of those rare opportune moments where a simple resupply of “frog” yarn revealed something really useful at a compelling price … even better …ample tonnage remaining to satisfy any fly tier’s ambition to lay in a goodly supply.

Bernat Boa is a synthetic polyester ribbon yarn that’s strong enough to use as hackle, has enough structural integrity to use as streamer wings, can be wound closely to make 3D shaped minnows, and can be knotted and teased into any number of fish killing uses.

I use it consistently in Shad flies, bass flies, and anything requiring saddle hackles, because the edge binding the polyester fibers is thin enough to wind, and can be tied off securely without inducing weakness due to bulk.

As each skein has three or four colors, it becomes really cost effective due to the additional colors that can be harvested from its “camouflage” coloration.

Yarns that are in consistent demand typically introduce new colors (and retire older non performers), and as I refilled my dwindling supply of Shad “pink”, I noticed new colors that made the material doubly compelling.

Bernat_Holidays_Label

Apparently for Christmas 2014, Bernat introduced a series called, “Bernat Boa Holidays”, that added three additional festive solid colors;  Santa Suit (red), Holly Green, and Blizzard (white).

The white caught my eye immediately as I was tying some minnow patterns that needed a light colored body, and something about the original photograph suggested these filaments might be a form of Antron.

After I took delivery I was pleasantly surprised. This is a much softer and finer tri-lobal filament that has the “shattered glass” brilliance of Antron, but can be dubbed onto a dry fly.

Bernat_Holidays1

Where this material truly shines is when it is clipped from the yarn base and mixed into a natural fur blend to offer a sparkle akin to  baby seal. This “shattered glass” effect is great for a medium (trout) sized fur blend, and given polyester dyes readily, additional colors can be made from the white to suit more “earthy” sparkle effects.

Bernat_HolidayGrass

Holiday yarns tend to be limited release but I’ve not seen any mention of these being pulled post holiday season.

Do not buy these colors on eBay as they tend to range in the $6-$8 range per skein. Instead get them from YarnSupply.com or Knitting Warehouse – which has Blizzard on sale for $3.69 per skein.

These are often found in KMART stores as well, but holiday colors are typically swapped quickly to seasonal favorites shortly after the festivities are over.

139 yards per skein makes an awful lot of streamers or dubbing blends, I think you’ll find a multitude of uses quickly.

My struggle with diaphanous

While much of the struggle involves spelling the damn word correctly, the remainder of my frustration is having to refine the fly tying equivalent of , “less is more.”

diaphanous

Fly tying being the art of “taming cowlicks”, wherein us tiers deploy spittle, cement, and thread to lash as much as possible onto the hook, and anything we can’t dominate with finger pressure or more thread gets trimmed away…

… yet, I’m on the converse of that road, attempting to invent transparent by adding materials versus subtracting them, and it’s an unmistakable sign the idea was sound but the execution is likely flawed.

Much of what the local bass are eating are minnows. Observation of what few I could see near shore suggest there is a mixture of opaque and diaphanous qualities to the fish. As most of my traditional minnow styles are not working, despite my best attempts at matching colors and sizes, suggests something else might be the issue.

I’ve been fiddling with colors and visibility, but to date that has been fruitless. A few fish follow the imitations, but none have taken the fly. Contrasting the gaudy strumpet I am towing through the water with the natural suggests I need tone down both glitter and bulk.

Bulk is not easy to remove, given how water tends to flatten and streamline dry materials, and lightening bulk typically results in diminishing the profile of the fly – making it more like a pencil In the water than the traditional “pumpkinseed” minnow shape.

While struggling with a lot of other issues I did manage to come up with an elegant solution allowing me to remove bulk without sacrificing the fly shape.

Using a #4 kirbed (point offset) streamer hook, I built a small bulwark of chenille halfway down the shank, after first sliding on a small brass cone.

diaph_cone600

After whip finishing and adding a drop of cement behind the cone, I retied the thread onto the front of the shank to add a bit of ribbon yarn. I picked a light pink to correspond to gill coloration, and took a couple wraps of the material in front of the cone.  The brass cone flared the material further adding a more pronounced 3-D cone shape to the fly.

Diaph_gill600

This “spread” effect of the underbody will cause any material added onto the fly to spread further, giving the proper silhouette without relying on bulky materials for form.

Taking about 35-40 strands of white marabou – I spread them out along a “dubbed loop” – with about 3/4” of the butts on one side of the loop, and the remaining tapered tips on the other. When spun, the butts (with their thicker stem) add bulk to the area containing the pink ribbon yarn, and the less numerous tips add a bit of color behind the fly, without adding opaqueness.

diaph_marabou-hackle600

Add three strands of original holographic green flashabou to the top of the “marabou hackle”, and then add about 20 strands of gray marabou in a clump onto the top of the fly.  The gray marabou should be about 1/2” longer than the white, and the flashabou should be the longest of all, just peeking out from the other mats to make an enticing flash behind the fly.

diaph_grey600

Add five strands of a Montana Fly barred Ostrich plume (sexy looking but nosebleed expensive @ $9.00), to the top of the fly to add a bit of coloration.

daiph_dry600

The result is an amorphous lump of materials that will lose opacity when dampened. The bulky area around the bead will retain its mass and color akin to the real baitfish – but the nether underbelly will vanish as the grey marabou, tinsel, and ostrich is longer than the white, making it appear diaphanous and transparent.

diaphdamp600

The final effect when wet is light and airy with the bulk up front. Note that instead of slimming down to nothing the fly retains the all-important  minnow shape.

The local fish inhaled it with great gusto this weekend, but the unsavory brutes that haunt the local creek would have been just as eager to inhale the twist-off cap from a Budweiser … so additional research is needed.

Science provides inspiration and wisdom does the debunking

I’ve always assumed Renoir and Degas had similar issues with us fly tiers; a couple of decades spent on rigorous painting tedium, and saddled with the costs of painting supplies, groceries, and a roof overhead, true masterpieces were sacrificed for the more mundane portraiture … because painting Madame … paid the bills.

Fly fishing, especially during those cold months between Winter fisheries and Spring, endures a similar tedium, where inspiration comes occasionally, and inclement weather and work combine into  books read, magazines thumbed through, and daydreams of future successes.

I used to find inspiration from periodicals, where fresh ideas and the exploration of new fisheries caused me a fit of tying creativity or made me lust after new terminal gear. Unfortunately, fresh ideas are in limited supply, and periodicals eventually yield to the stale yet profitable, and every Bahamian bone fishing article looks like ISIS reconnoitering Mosul, the difference between the two the color of their sun buff …

With the Internet and its ready access to all of the great colleges, organizations, and  sources of fisheries research, the Scientific community is an underutilized source of freshness in angling ideas. Theories abound on fish, bugs, stream dynamics, global warming, and invasive species, and even a casual knowledge of fish and bug behavior allows the reader to follow along from proposal to conclusion.

The volume of research is staggering, and while much is in its infancy (and is best served as simple topics to mull), a great deal more is mature – and for anglers  seeking new insight into their quarry or craft, become a source of ideas and topics that will never be mainstream enough to grace our angling press, or may feature conclusions that counter current ecological practices and are ignored by our conservation organizations.

In short, if you don’t turn over the stone yourself, no one will turn it for you.

This Spring has seen me start down a thread I found interesting, and resulted in many hours of fervor at the vise. What started simply – as a dissertation on Guppies has led through a chain of other papers, physics, and conventional wisdom, and while both conclusions and flies will always be questionable – the enjoyment of discovery and new inspirations have made the journey completely worthwhile.

The April issue of the Royal Society Proceedings B, has an article discussing the notion that patterns, motion, and coloration of prey (flora and fauna) are inheritable in Guppies, a freshwater fish.

After a great deal of rigorous experimentation the authors concluded Guppies prefer red or orange, and don’t particularly care much for blue. What fascinated me was the discussion that like bees, guppies were capable of honing in on patterns exhibited by their prey (both motion and coloration) akin to bees and birds and the specialized pollination coding on flowers.

For those as are unfamiliar, flowers are colored (both primary color and patterns of color on their petals) to attract the unique insects and birds that can best pollinate them. So long necked flowers that bees cannot climb into are coded for Hummingbirds, and anything with a long, thin proboscis that it can wad into the barrel of the flower.

This notion that freshwater fish may have similar tendencies I found fascinating, given that if anglers accept this notion it would likely spawn a bazillion new patterns that resembled (in coloration and pattern) everything from Green Drakes to discarded French fries.

As Mother Nature colors her insects to resemble the stream bottom, the notion of red or blue is a bit far fetched, but it does buttress our notion that color of the natural is worth imitating, in either dry or wet variants. Inheritance would also ensure that planted fish, should they survive, would also trend toward the same food choices of wild fish – as both groups must dine off the same menu.

Color and shape are the most copied trait of the modern fly tier, a reflection of the prevailing  “match the hatch” logic that has dominated fly fishing for the last several decades. Patterns in coloration and motion are the “less traveled” path, given how fly tying materials have dictated how the resultant imitation moves.

Natural materials being a bit more lively than synthetics, but only by accident, as many natural materials can be stiffened by the simple act of attachment to the hook.

Having to use a “J-shaped” bit of steel to contain all the parts of the natural is also a delimiting factor. Any discussion of imitation has to also recognize the limitations of physics on our potential options.

After a couple of weeks ferreting out full motion videos of mayfly nymphs in their natural settings, and viewing them for signatures akin to how a bee might view flowers, it is quickly apparent that there is a couple of patterns of color on a typical mayfly when swimming. The first was due to its carapace and color density imbued by thickness, and the second was due to gill motion, and the lightening effect that lateral gills (and the light-colored cilia attached) and their constant motion have on the surrounding colors of the insect.

Mayfly_Pattern600

Should this wild notion of torso “pattern-key” being the missing ingredient in the complete subjugation of Salmonids, I could expect some lofty company. The thought of my Portly & Brazen suddenly synonymous with Gordon, Skues, or Sawyer was pretty heady, but a couple of decades of wisdom tempered my flirtation with ego.

Tying flies with this type of pattern in their torso had some very obvious shortcomings …Physics being the most sinister, as all of my full motion vignettes quickly displayed.

BellyBackIn moving water most fish face upstream. Insects dislodged due to mishap or swimming to the surface come downstream (roughly) head first. Fish on the prowl for targets likely don’t see anything of the abdomen patterning save the wink of dark top or light belly, and only if the insect is swimming in its customary violent tail-centric, up-down, fashion.

In still water the fish can encounter an underwater insect along any axis, and the predative view may not even involve any signature other than motion, the frantic attempt to evade being eaten triggering the pursuit.

Fish_eye_nymphbutt

Not to mention the notion of the fish’s eye not being the same as our stereo flavor, and the exaggerations of coloration that exist when converting a stereo image to an approximation of what we think fish see …

… and therein lies the beauty of Science and the unending appeal it has for me and my dull Winter months. A constant stream of facts and theorems that promise future success – all of which must be tempered with angling wisdom and experience, in order to determine which theory will fill next season’s fly box.

What’s not important is whether any chain of facts will result in more fish caught, as the angler cannot determine what he would have done had he fished other flies. What is worthy is to continually question the status quo, given the shaky ground all of our current angling truisms are built upon.

The Unnecessary Drought in Fly tying

Ever watch someone attempt to match a bug in the wild? Minimalism usually overrides complexity as tying while traveling restricts the fly tier to a small subset of the materials than are available at home. Little packets of dubbing compress nicely, and a half dozen necks covers just about everything fished dry.

As your pals cluster over your “canvas” insisting, “ …it was a bit more brown” – and how, “…the ones near me were about a size 12,” invariably the resultant bug when duplicated enough to quench demand, is always dry.

Not the “dry” of dry fly, rather the dry of the desert … bone dry, the opposite of damp.

As the only “fish” able to survive out of water are Snakeheads and our prehistoric ambulatory ancestors, the inconvenient truth is fish live in water and to catch them your fly must get wet. As simplistic as this sounds, this notion eludes most fly fishermen, as attempts at imitation are done using dry materials, under bright lights, rather than wet materials under the dim light of dusk, or under refracted conditions.

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The Bad News being that under morning or evening conditions, damp flies change color drastically, and while our painstakingly crafted imitation was anatomically correct and the proper color, its damp, darkened variant may only catch smaller fish forced into the unpopular lies, and the desperate fish that rushed to the bait regardless of its color.

The magic of realistic imitation is a mixture of known and unknown, which makes the topic complex and the outcome so varied. On the one hand,  our quarry cannot be queried as to what it just ate, and if it doesn’t, we assume it “smart” – able to count the extra six legs our hackle contained. On the one hand fish are  stupid, and any object carried by the current and resembling something living, is eaten without hesitation.

Due to the cost of our tackle and collective ego, fly fishermen insist their quarry is an agile, canny, predator – that can only be seduced by a similarly gifted angler. The reality of “pea-sized” brain and the “instinctive eat” is dismissed as belonging only to drinking buddies or the angler’s offspring.

In actuality, flies are darker when wet than when dry. Fish are likely to eat them, but may not eat them with the gusto reserved for the predominant hatch, and refusals can be more common than a properly colored imitation.

This darkening effect is enhanced by many factors, most important being the underbody and the thread color used to construct the fly. Attempts at exacting imitation of form or color must include an understanding of how thread colors influence the fly when fished.

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To illustrate the phenomenon, both of the above pictures were taken of the same flies under marginal light conditions. The “dry” picture flies look reasonably identical other than the bits of thread color showing at whip finish or the post of the parachute wing.

After immersion in tap water, the bugs tied with darker thread reveal their true colors – which no longer resemble the coloration of the original pattern,  and in this case, only the yellow and tan versions remain unchanged.

Dry flies are much more vulnerable to the bleeding through of thread colors due to their light coloration and sparse dressing. Fur absorbs water, and most tiers attempt to reduce this absorption by minimizing the amount of fur used in the body.

Nymphs have less exposure to this issue – but are not immune by any measure. Most nymphs tend to tied with darker colors, and thread to match making their color less susceptible to the skew induced with dampness.

Tying flies with neutral colors may not be as fashionable, but they will preserve the intent of the dressing better versus adding unforeseen consequence.  For flies dressed in the warm spectrum of yellows through brown, tan thread will neither add color nor darken noticeably, it is the preferred neutral “warm.” For light dun through the olive spectrum, a light gray thread is the preferred “cool” neutral.

Underbodies and the controlled visibility of their thread color is a powerful tool to assist a tier if the effects are planned and understood. Buffering a bright underbody with external fur can yield a “gelatinous” coloration that due to visual effects adds dimension as well as color just like the real bug.

As beginning fly fishermen we are destined for numerous stages to our fishing careers. Choosing to tie flies being one, awareness of our prey and its favorite food groups being a second. Discovery that angling theory is a mix of myth and word of mouth – inevitably leads to entomology and the scientific process … and the desire to imitate versus attract. In our maturation as an angler, it’s inevitable that precise color and exacting imitation will become a dominate chapter, one of many phases we’ll endure in our journey to “Opinionated Old Sumbitch”, the Jedi Master of fly fishing.

We who are about to die, salute you …

The only reason I have any fishing gear remaining in the house is She hasn’t seen the carnage yet …

It was to be a tale of Good and Bad News. The Good News being she would be occupied elsewhere all weekend, and I could go fishing…

The Bad News being any thoughts along those lines dispelled by the same warning tingle that alerts Peter Parker to the menace of Doc Octopus; a whirl of tan wings trundling through the living room about the size and shape of a scout for the dreaded Great White Hackle-Slurping-Fur-Crapping moth swarm.

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Alert to the danger you rush to your tying bench knowing it to be at risk, and you’re met by the peaceful bliss of Smallville – all defenses in place, everything bagged and put away, and nary a movement from any drawer however dark and remote.

… and while in the bathroom you see another “tan Fokker” climbing for elevation and mash it gleefully against a wall.

Which leads to a check of extended storage; bags and boxes containing your overabundances that aren’t used as often, the full skins too large to fit in the drawer, the pheasant tail bags, and the sack of salt water colored buck tail, all which come up clean.

… then the third sighting and subsequent kill, and as you scrub fragments of chitin and hairy wing onto your pants leg – you know that sickening feeling that somewhere, somehow, you’re the unwitting host to a really bad infestation …

Hudson: [Knowing that the Aliens are close, Hicks and Vasquez are welding the door shut] Movement. Signal’s clean. Range, 20 meters.
Ripley: They’ve found a way in, something we’ve missed.
Hicks: We didn’t miss anything.
Hudson: 17 meters.
Ripley: [Checking the tracker] Something under the floor, not in the plans, I don’t know.
Hudson: 15 meters.
Newt: Ripley.
Hicks: Definitely inside the barricades.
Newt: Let’s go.
Hudson: 12 meters.
Ripley: That’s right outside the door. Hicks, Vasquez get back. Hudson: Man, this is a big fuckin’ signal.
Hicks: How are we doing Vasquez, talk to me?
Vasquez: Almost there.
[They welded the door shut, and stepped back away from the door]
Vasquez: There right on us.
Hicks: [Waiting for the Aliens] Remember, short controlled bursts.
Hudson: 9 meters. 7. 6.
Ripley: That can’t be; that’s inside the room.
Hudson: It’s reading right man, look!

I’d checked everything I used for storage except the Room That Has No Name, containing the unused normal household extras – a few boxes of unused books, some extra dishes, a stack of my hard fishing gear – rods and tubes …

… and opening the door was witnessing the sack of Rome, complete with scurrying hordes of insects pouring out of the crevasses and crawling onto the walls to avoid the thin light intruding on their debauchery.

… and with them went all plans for fishing, as the infestation I found in the storage room was so bad, so numerous, and so blatant, that I simply closed the door, and wadded a towel against the jamb to keep the balance of the house clear.

Gross.

The real crime is that I’m about to be banned from my own domicile unless I return to lures and bait. Past outbreaks having sensitized She Who Cares Not for Dead Things to the roulette played out on my tying bench each evening.

… and the source of the infestation not some unmarked boxes of dead animal pelts – rather a down comforter opened by a mouse to feather his own nest, then exploited by the Winged Borg to explode their population exponentially under my watchful care.

Protesting my innocence being completely futile as past sins have me so far in the doghouse as to welcome fleas, as they’ll be the only thing talking to me for the foreseeable future.

All that’s left is the porous “I love you” defense, where the Condemned foreswears a weekend of fishing for the, “I could’ve gone fishing but instead I cleaned the store room knowing how much it meant to you” defense.

While it always sounds good on paper, keeping a straight face is critical, and while you’re making the Ultimate Man-bleat-noise she’ll see some laggard squadron of the “Dawn Patrol” break out of the closet to start their death spiral in front of her … my grin will out, and my arse cooked.

And The Lord said, “Modify my killing patterns not with thy name or risk Everlasting Censure”

Reduced_DressingMy last blurb mentioned how everything was likely to arrive early, be shorter, and fraught with unrealized complications, and would require anglers to brave Nature’s adversity.

I forgot how modification of a standard pattern was a Sacred Cow and could land a naïve fellow in hot water.

Reducing a pattern to fit on a smaller hook requires considerable changes to the basic pattern, and a canny tier needs to understand the waters they just parked their toe in …

The materials and accoutrements of large hooks rarely extend to their smallish cousin without interpretation, as the physics of the smaller hook cannot be denied.

Yet the biggest issue facing an angler intent on modifying an existing pattern is not the dressing, rather it’s the inherent Magic in the dressing. Tinkering with a known killer that may be a couple decades older than you are is the equivalent of tinkering with “luck” – crucial to fishing yet largely indefinable, akin to Jungle magic.

If you change a favorite classic to reduce its shape, colors, silhouette, or weight, did you ruin it?

… and if so is goat sacrifice enough to appease an Angry God?

Most anglers would never consider something so base and tasteless, and the notion of changing the tail on an Adams’ is sacrilege. An Adam’s is perfection, a fly that dominated every environment into which it has been hurled …

While we commend your fervor, one of your biggest and earliest hurdles  in fly fishing is the understanding there is nothing special about an Adam’s or Royal Wulff, they simply enjoy the same happenstance that allowed VHS to beat out Betamax, which was a better public relations firm.

… and us fly fishing snobs can be swept up into two piles; those that insist everything you throw at a fish should remind it of what it ate a minute ago, or, the group that insists you should scare, piss off, or antagonize the fish into lashing out uncontrollably.

That first bunch will laud you if scientific rationale is part of your color and material reduction, the second will adore you if you spread a little opalescence or add an invasive tinsel.

In most cases neither group will acknowledge the other, and while they may occasionally buy each other a drink or surrender the riffle to the other contingent hoping they fail they do have much more in common than most would think.

The agree on the silhouette of bugs, their many stages, the split finger fastball, and the small of a woman’s back, but deviate on the colors, tinsels, and beads with which each must be dressed.

In short, you can tear a grand old pattern into pieces, reassemble the silhouette and colors, and you’re likely to have as killing a pattern as when you started. Add in a bit of sparkle or give the old gal a hint of color as a “tramp stamp” and you’ve not sullied the past an iota, merely given homage where it’s due.

… but if you put your first name in front of it, or use the word “invented” in the same sentence … you’re reviled by both groups, you’re an Untouchable, a Poser – or worse, a Belieber … to be cast from us like a indicator foam in trophy water.