Category Archives: Fly Tying

Out of Coq de Leon – and you’re wondering why you can’t find Pardo?

Kater Bosworth wearing Coq de Leon , well - we might addI wouldn’t worry too much unless you tie dry flies or fish for steelhead. Your prayers of this being an overnight fad are simply not working …

The drain on fancy hackles and ostrich plumes will be growing in the foreseeable future, rather than winding down. The fashionistas have spoken and both sexes are scrambling to get on board.

The crescendo has been building from 2009, first with fringes and edging and eventually encompassing the entire garment. Hair attachments being an accessory to the larger trend, “Tribal” …

Tribes around the world used bird feather hair extensions for many different reasons such as acts of bravery and or sexual prowess, particularly for men the bigger and longer the hair feather etc.

Expensive is when you’re fashioning a dress made entirely of the oldest strain of genetic chickens known to Man. Coq de Leon can run to $0.30 per feather, but Hollywood has never been overly concerned with cost overruns or animal fashions …

We’re assured the wild birds that they come from aren’t harmed in any way. That the hair feathers are simply gathered cleaned and colored.

Best of all they assume they’re wearing shed feathers. All those Grizzly chickens, Pheasants, and Ostriches shedding feathers like a mangy pooch, so there’s little karmic damage and no blood throwing PETA mercenaries to disturb your exit should you wind up with a drawer full.

Feathered Eyeglasses by Ete

They’ve been in earrings for years, and now that Men are as keen on power fashion as the ladies, dressing for success means you need to know pecking order and men’s ties …

For Guys too ...

Don’t worry too much about the scent of mothballs, as it’ll soon become an aphrodisiac in the workplace. The power tie is raptor, baby – only food groups wear stuff that chirps.

When fly design comes together it’s a complete surprise

It’s the simplest of all games really, each Saturday evening I sit down at the vise to invent the next great dry fly series that will revolutionize the surface game, and make everyone forget them ancient fuddy-duddies like Skues, Halford, or Ronald McDonald …

Rules are simpler yet; it has to be as fast or faster to tie than a traditional dry fly, and it has to use at least one waste byproduct of fly tying – some butt end or common scrap we’ve discarded routinely.

That way I can insist mine’s better than Theodore Gordon’s halting imitations as my fly is “green” as well as guaranteeing an early supper …

Green_Jihad

I’m not sure I was supposed to come up with anything at all, it was the challenge that drew me to the vise week after week.

I reversed the wing from a Quigley Cripple using deer hair trimmings as the discard material. His Cripple uses the trimmed stub over the body, and the long end over the eye of the hook. I added a dab of tacky wax to the wing … just enough to add a bit of clumping (for the mayfly version) and allows me to pull the wing down over the body to turn the fly into a caddis imitation.

Pull the wing up for the mayfly hatch and down for the caddis grab – neither requires you to retie the knot when it’s near dark.

What’s not to like in a fly that can imitate two of the major trout food groups?

The real test of a great fly is not in its design or function but in the hidden meaning of its name, which will naturally be lost over time, yet adds mystery and illusion to a pedestrian effort.

There were two royal coachmen for each carriage, so which inspired the fly?

I call it the “Hovering Predator” which we’ll know as the drone that’s kept Osama behind them high walls and rooted to the compound, and the rest of history will have to guess at – while wadding handfuls of #16’s into their fly boxes.

Better yet, I’ve shown you mine, now I want to see yours …

Free Range dubbing proven to exist in other dimensions

Much of Saturday was spent sending out all the sample packets of dander I’d been promising those that had requested “Free Range” dubbing.

Reed Curry, author of The New Scientific Angling, Trout and Ultraviolet Vision, received his and was nice enough to send their UV footprint back for those interested in such things.

I was assuming that anyone receiving something other than they were expecting, and knowing they hadn’t ordered it, would pounce on the package and begin using it … I hadn’t thought that some households awoke to Christmas without the accompanying screams and rending of paper …

Visible light …

Free Range dubbing in the visual spectrum

… and the above under UV light …

Free Range Under UV Light

Visual.

Free Range visual light

… and he was starting to play fast and loose with the names, but I managed to catch “Dog Doo Brown” and “Focke Wulf Gray” before you lads started complaining you hadn’t seen that … and how I must be withholding the good stuff …

(Dusky Green above is actually Medium Green, my Bad.)

Free Range UV Lighting

Dusky Green seems possessed of the most striking signature, given its lightness in direct light and darkness under UV. That’s surprising, although it’s got more than a fair share of yellow, which seems to react to UV with ferocity.

Free Range under visual light

.. and UV ..

Free Range UV light

Still looks like Dusky & Pea Green possess a similar UV signature of Black & Claret, which I find surprising given the obvious yellows in the third grouping – I would have expected them to be darker under UV light.

Considering the UV component was completely ignored when constructing the above, it’ll send me to head scratching and scanning the negatives should some unnatural lust for Mystery Meat possess any known gamefish.

While I think it looks a lot like Livermush (Scrapple to them North of the Mason-Dixon), there’s no telling what our finned quarry thinks …

It’s one of the fifty qualities of deer hair you didn’t know was possible

I was in one of many petulant moods, lower lip pooched mightily resolved never to play parachute ever again. Every so often I’d produce a decent one, and then it was back to eleven anguished attempts to wrestle balky deer hair into a right-side up configuration just long enough for me to pin it in place with a couple turns of ginger hackle.

Each snapped thread, each spin of the wing, each busted hackle added to my rage, and while I couldn’t quite pin the issue on something obvious, it began to dawn on me that it wasn’t skill or lack of effort, it was some new wrinkle surfacing to thwart me.

It wasn’t rocket science either, I asked one of the fellows tying nearby to assist in diagnosing my obvious shortcomings, and while the both of us watched the hair resist my authoritative attempts at a post, it dawned on me that fly patterns might mention what animal is used, but it doesn’t mention whether it needs to be stiff, floppy, whether it should flair when tied in – or resist that too…

In my case I had a chunk of belly fur off a deer – whose fibers were long and poorly marked, as well as floppy and unable to support the thread base. Every time I attempted to lay a wrap around it for support it would slough the thread right off.

About then I trebled my estimate of the cost of fly tying, now that I was assured that an armload of deer hide was needed. Along with all them colors, I needed to add “well marked” and “stiff”  and “ass hair” to the growing list of stuff I was missing.

Deer Face, the best deal on deer hair ever

It’s one of those lessons that adds polish to your future work, and bridges the gap between flies you admire and your own work. Especially so when you can size the markings on the hair to the fly your tying.

All animals have different markings and hair length corresponding to the different parts of the body. Belly hair is the longest and poorly marked (usually too light), and the strip that covers the spine is the darkest and best marked. Hair on the extremities is shorter and stiffer, as is the fine fur of the face and genital area.

The photo above shows a typical deer mask, about two square feet costing around $10, and contains every size and marking coloration on the animal. It’s a great deal for the price, and gives much more hair than is needed allowing you to split the cost with pals, or attempting to learn dyeing with the extra …

Long Black Tip area hair

Here’s a blowup of the hair in the area marked “long black tip.” If you add only the black tip to the blond bar you already have a wing length equivalent to a size 14.

Worse, the hair is very long and floppy.

If you make a parachute wing of this type of hair it will be difficult to tie correctly (limp), and the long black tip will be hard to see – making the blond area of the wing look much too short. Ditto when fishing, you won’t be able to see those black tips at distance, and you’ll be straining to see the bump or blonde at twilight.

Deer's_Ear Contrast the above with the hair available in front of its ears, on its forehead and along its snout.

The black tip is a third the length as is the blond bar. A wing tied with this hair will show all three colors as opposed to the too-long limp hair above.

Because the hair is short it’s super stiff, and will support a parachute post without complaint.

#15 Olive Parachute

Right-sizing a parachute wing mindful of the bands of color on deer hair makes the fly look complete and tidy. Grabbing fibers off the too-long side would make the above wing half-black and half-blonde, due to the length of their banding. All you could see on the water would be the little nubbin of blonde nearly flush with the waterline.

Unfortunately, so long as the jobbers hold sway on a fly shop’s materials you’ll never be exposed to all the qualities of hair from different parts of the body, largely because a 1 x 1” square of deer hair doesn’t have enough surface area to see the hair transition from neck to shoulder.

It’s these little hints that make you grip someone else’s flies and wonder how his look so much better than yours, and how you wish yours looked similar. 

You’ll be quick to understand once exposed to a big expanse of goody.

Note: Most taxidermists cut away the female genitalia, tossing the scrap into the waste basket. Should you be adventurous enough, deer “pooty” can be some of the stiffest and well marked hair on the entire animal.

It’s been washed and treated, just don’t flash it at some tying demo while you’re under the hot lights of the tying theater. Instead wait for your buddy to bare-hand his only sandwich, then you can tell him what he’s fishing.

Easily Distracted, how to tie flies the way a trout eats them

The problem with fly tying is that it’s so blasted untidy that it’s impossible to sit down with something in mind without being lured by something bright or shiny, and the result is a handful of something entirely different.

Most new tiers never see it coming, as the “Shoe-Box” phase, when everything they own can fit into a shoebox ends, and they’re so badly hooked they’ll drop all pretense at ethics or morals, and cover the kitchen table in a blink of an eye.

… nor are they mindful whose credit card is doing the covering.

It goes double for us hoarders. We’re slow hanging up all the Olive turkey wing we dyed last night, and the six or seven pounds we left dripping in the garage, none of which we dare move, have us leaving the vehicles to the streets tender mercies. Add the peroxide of beaver left on our ersatz clothesline rigged in the only shower – and colors, materials, and ideas, enter your subconscious unbidden.

You sit down with an idea of banging out a couple dozen flies for a pal and creativity takes the bit in its teeth and by the time someone starts yelling, you’ve got a couple dozen truly remarkable flies, only they aren’t what you were supposed to make.

I was content working on a new dry fly series I had dreamed up, and instead of groundbreaking and earth-shattering, I wound up with stuff that works – which is far more useful, only won’t boost the myth and legend of any memoirs I might later publish.

Fluttering_Caddis_Dry

Too many pieces of lightened beaver lined the garage drying, each possessed of seductive tan guard hairs suitable for the Fluttering Caddis dries of Leonard Wright’s, “Fishing the Dry Fly as a living Insect” fame.

I’m off on a tangent with original intent forgotten while I find the least-damp Olive turkey wing for biots, replacing the authors original pheasant tail fibers. I think the original Fly Fisherman magazine article suggested Mink guard hair, but beaver is free, closer, and willing …

One you can lick your fingers, the other you can’t

You hear the term often in fly tying, you just don’t see anyone actually doing the deed – outside of the occasional Peacock eye made hairless by swishing it around in caustic bleach, which is about all I’ve ever seen anyone do …

Which makes a lot of sense, as everytime I’ve touched the bottle it meant I had more than enough and didn’t mind destroying a couple square feet.

I’ve always accused dyeing as the Destroyer of Materials, but that’s just to scare them with weak constitutions. When the material dries you may not have a good color, but at least you’ve got something …

… watching something bleach will cure you of the temptation to do it again. Soaking a piece of fur in straight bleach is not what you’d expect; the bath starts to heat to the point where it may melt the plastic bowl, likely a reaction to chemicals the hide was steeped in during the tanning or hide preparation process, then hair and flesh start vanishing and the rest turns into a flesh colored slag that covers what’s left of the fur with a gooey bubblegum residue.

Eventually you kind of back away until the temperature lowers to the point you can toe what’s left into the trash.

Bleached hair patches and lightened colors on furs and feathers have typically been treated with Hydrogen Peroxide or similar lightening agent.

Hydrogen Peroxide is available in any supermarket or local drugstore, it’s an antiseptic and is sold as a 3% solution in the aisle with medical supplies and liniments. This concentration can lighten hair (human and animal) with numerous applications or one long soak.

"Bleached" Beaver - and some I've dyed yellow

The center color above was “bleached” in a single bath of 3% peroxide. It took 92 hours to achieve this color from its natural gray. Four additional pieces I’ve dyed yellow ring the bleached color. As it is now, tossing a chunk into a drawer ensures a lifetime of Light Cahill’s.

Natural Beaver contrasted with dyed Yellow

Natural beaver is much too dark to be able to dye into light colors, at best it’ll turn muddy-dark. The above pieces were dyed in the identical pot for the same amount of time. Only the bleached hide can achieve the light olive I was attempting.

Light_olive_Beaver

So long as the fur is completely submerged the peroxide bath will ensure consistency of color. Note in the above photo how the Olive color is uniform from downy underfur to the tips. This is done by first pumping the back of the hide to force all the air bubbles out of the material, then dumping the result straight into the solution without wringing.

Beaver guard hairs will resist the dye mightily, and might only take on a tint of the desired color, this is true of most tough hair, especially those of the aquatic mammals.

Peroxide Orange Beaver

Hair stylists use a powdered lightener along with Hydrogen Peroxide to avoid “orangey” colored hair like the above. Internet forums mention that straight peroxide often yields an orange effect on human hair. Once the fibers are any shade close they should be pulled and dried anyways, as they’ll lighten into a tan-orange which is perfect for our later applications of dye.

Peroxide is available in food grade as well; solutions ranging between 8% and 35% and a cost commensurate. These will cut the time down significantly, 12% took the same beaver from gray to tan in just over 18 hours, but the solution costs around a dollar an ounce at that concentration. Most of the higher concentrations have to be mail ordered and signed for by someone over 18 as well.

Every animal is a bit different both in qualities and texture of their hair, and degree of lightening needed to reduce their natural color to something light enough for dye. It’s best to experiment with small chunks to determine how long the base 3% will take to render an appropriate shade for your use.

Just tuck a large bowl of the cheap stuff ($2.00) into the garage, carve the hides into 5×5 pieces and check the mix come the weekend, there’s little risk of it getting too light.

Free Range Dubbing: Unless you’re looking at it in direct sunlight, you’re not seeing what I made for you

Free Range Label I figure my sudden foray into dubbing was like McDonald’s adding salads to an otherwise lard-based menu. How the lights abruptly dimmed and the sudden demand for lettuce left most of the country rediscovering Broccoli for their evening meal.

Like the gals and their hair extensions, I was unfazed that I emptied most warehouses of everything furry. I started with the wholesale furriers, worked my way through the local stuff and fur coats on eBay, and when I’d exhausted the obvious sources, I’d make the call to my contact at the SPCA to see what was chilling rapidly …

A couple of months worth of effort turned into the better part of a year’s worth of research, failed automation, test groups and test colors, research on color mixing, dyes … and worse, suddenly needing to find vast amounts of odd animals to include once refined to their final formula.

Failed automation meant having to do it all by hand in the kitchen. Meaning it’s been a lonely year – bread, water, and solitary confinement does that to a person …

All of this started off simply enough, a general indifference to the dubbing products available in today’s fly shop, most of which featured some sparkly synthetic as its only real quality. Absent from the shelves are the natural dubbings of the past; crafted to make it easy to apply on thread, or coarse so its stubbled profile resembles something comely, or all natural featuring aquatic mammals to make gossamer thin dry fly bodies.

Instead were pushed towards some glittering turd that is about as easy to dub as a Brillo pad, and sparkles like a perfumed tart.

So I brought the manicured styles back; finding in the process that few tiers are left with the skills to refine dubbing to specific tasks, fewer relay the ritual to print to teach others, and most new tiers are content with products the way they are as they’ve not been exposed to others. It’s as if the qualities of fur and the skills to turn them to our advantage are disappearing.

As mentioned in previous posts on dubbing, there are three distinct layers in a crafted dubbing, allowing you to insert distinct qualities as part of each layer’s construction. I’ve likened dubbing construction to a cigar, where the finished product contains binder, filler, and wrapper.

The Wrapper is the coarsest material, often made of animals with well marked guard hair, suitable for adding spike and shag to the finished blend.

The filler is often the coloring agent, made up of semi-coarse or semi-fine materials that comprise the bulk of the dubbing…

… and the binder is the softest component, which is often added in proportion to the filler and wrapper to hold all three layers together in a cohesive bundle.

Somewhere in all of this can be a fourth layer, not always present, that I call “special effects.” Shiny or sparkle, pearlescent or opalescent, some quality that natural materials lack which can be added to liven it with color or a metallic effect.

Free_Range_Dubbing2

The Free Range Difference

What I’ve constructed is a dubbing designed to assist both beginner and expert tiers by including specific desirable qualities that should belong in any quality nymph dubbing:

Ease of Use: The material isn’t unruly nor possessed of qualities of some Brillo-style gaudy synthetic. The soft binder layer entraps the spiky wrapper and makes dubbing the fur onto the thread easy.

Sized for 8 – 16 hooks: All the fibers present in each color have been sized to best fit your most common sizes of nymphs. That means you won’t be yanking too many overly long fibers out of your dubbing, or off the finished flies, as even the multiple guard hairs used have been chosen for length as well as coloration.

Minimal Shrinkage When Wet: The fibers of the filler layer, which comprise the largest part of the dubbing as well as most of the color, are chosen for their curl, so they will maintain their shape wet or dry, and what proportions leaves your vise will be retained when the fly is soaking wet.

Blended Color versus Monochrome: Each of the colors is the result of between 5 and 11 different materials, each with different shades and tints that add themselves to make the overall coloration. Like Mother Nature, whose insects are never a uniform color, each pinch yields a bit of unique in every fly tied.

Spectral Coloration: The special effects of each are often synthetic spectral color components, containing a range of colors that are sympathetic with the overall blend color.

Only Buggy Colors: We chose to concentrate our colors into traditional insect hues leaving the lightly used colors out of the collection. Most fly tiers have a drawer filled with colors that are rarely used, we’d prefer to focus on the “money” colors like olive and brown.

Rather than a single color of Olive, we’ll offer a half dozen olives – as they’re far more useful than coral pink or watermelon. We’ve done the same for brown and gray, and even added effects to make more than a single black.

Food-based Names: Everyone knows that colors named with food references are twice as tasty to fish. We got’em, they don’t – ’nuff said.

Twice as much: Earlier in the research phase of the project I discovered the average dubbing vendor now only gives you 0.91 of a gram with 2 grams of brightly painted cardboard. I’ll give you a couple grams of goodie, and a biodegradable slip of paper instead …

Free Range Dusky Olive

What it isn’t …

It’s not going to leap onto your thread unassisted, nor will it make your fingers less tacky and curb your propensity to grab too much. It’s not some painted harlot made gaudy by too much color. Special effects are nearly invisible to the eye, representing about 2% of the fiber, and until the fur is moved into direct sunlight, only then can you see the refractive elements that make the mix glow and sparkle.

Naturally once someone says, “ … and the trout see …” Everything past that is a leap of faith. Millions of nice fellows have roused from their cups to pound  table and insist trout love something or other. This entire collection is my sermon on colors and textures, imbued with everything I hold sacred.

Until I can get some automation in place this is more a labor of love than  profit. I managed to incur some fierce loyalties to the end result from many of the folks testing, and with a new season about to debut and them tying to make up for lost time, they’re looking for me to live up to my end of the bargain.

I have 20 colors completed and am planning about 10 additional colors to fill gaps. Most of the Olives and Browns and Grays are completed already, I just need to see what I reach for that isn’t there.

Yes, we’re a bit ahead of our supply lines still, but the season starts next weekend, and I can’t have you feeling naked and resentful. I figure after a couple trips into the season I’ll know exactly what’s missing.

If you would like a sample of the dubbing, drop me a note. I’ll put something in there you’ll like and you can send me a stamped envelope to cover my expenses …

We’ve got Black Ants that size, but they float

Fly tying is a mixture of the two Invariably someone asks me, “what’s the hardest thing in fly tying?”

Most expect me to mention the multiple hours it takes to complete a fully dressed salmon fly, or a knotted leg attempt at realism – involving lots of glue and much effort, but those are simply mechanical tasks and may be time consuming, but are easy once you’ve done them a couple thousand times …

What’s the hardest thing in fly tying?  … giving up your reliance on other people’s patterns, showing a little confidence in yourself and your own critical eye.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you think about it critically, but fly tiers and baseball players are the last bastion of weakness and superstition – the only difference between the two, is that one carries a rabbit’s foot for good luck, and the other dismembers rabbits and carries all four should the good luck run out …

Fly tiers will invariable take some form of instruction to get them started and then rely on books and magazines, or the Internet, to continue the learning process. Over time they learn never to trust a photograph and always refer to the text recipe – knowing that lighting and focus can change the hue and color of the fly, making the components less recognizable.

Lacking all the printed materials in the pattern means the finished fly is damaged goods. It’s Awesome*, worthy of mention with Barry Bond’s steroid enhanced home run record.

Flies worthy of publication have magical properties, each having killed thousands of fish – and therefore chosen by editors for their killing qualities – not to be tinkered with by mortals, or anyone else having just finished an Intermediate class.

It gets in our head early, and lies there like a leaden weight.

As the seasons whiz by we’ll occasionally venture out and develop a bug for some favorite venue we’ve fished for years. When someone spies them they’ll be a lot of pursed lips and raised eyebrows, once their origin is known, and we’ll get a half hearted shrug before they move onto the brightly colored monstrosity in the next compartment, whose pedigree includes magazine covers, the latest synthetics, and an offshore source requiring a new rod, new leader, and the reflexes of a Cobra to fish it …

Yet the lackluster was our fly, it was us, the sum of our deduction and science merits only a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

… and as our flies begin to look like the magazine flies, and we start to surpass them in quality we’re emboldened. We select a handful of prophets, whose flies and articles resonate with us and we mimic their work and science.

At some point even that’s cast aside and we’re no longer following the rest of the crowd. Magazine flies are revealed to be nothing more than some fellow’s anthropomorphic idea of what a Damsel fly looks like – and it’s tied poorly to boot.

Now a fishing trip becomes a snack food; you’re swept up in all the dark nymphs that worked so well on the last trip, and how we’ll invent new dark nymphs just for the occasion – and we’ll marvel that they outfish anything tied from a magazine and anything commercially available in the store.

…and with that discovery, you’ll realize that fly tying is many years of learning different fly styles and their construction, whose colors are not set in stone like the picture – but are waiting for you to enhance and define.

Now that you’ve mastered the AP style, the standard dry, the cripple, the big stonefly nymph, the leech, and parachute, only now does science, art, and fishing come together, and your muse is a tuft of dander, or a clump of sparkle.

Those anglers that don’t tie flies wish they did. All of them, without exception.

They’ll learn the same truths as tiers only it’ll take them longer. They have much less to chose from then the rest of us, and little to unbalance their loyalties to the commercial giants; Adam’s, Humpies, Zug Bug’s and Elk Hair Caddis. To them a black nymph can be the AP Black, or the Black Martinez, and nothing else is possible in black and size sixteen.

Probably why the average age of the beginning fly tier is nearer forty-five, and the stray kid is taking it because his dad is trying a second time. A decade or so of fishing ensures those same truths, newly self evident, means without an indentured servant for supply, art and science will compel him to submit to moths and head cement, and the hardest thing in fly tying will be the easier.

Grams worth hundreds, so why does all that fly fishing science end at the tippet?

I’ve oft wondered at all the toil and expense for the rod maker to remove a sixteenth of an ounce and whether all that engineering and measurement made enough difference to matter. Likewise for that disc drag and aircraft grade titanium that the reel maker boasts is so much more sturdy and durable, and whether he too wasn’t simply enamored with differences versus any tangible effect.

The line maker insists that slick or pebbled is the one true finish, and countless scientists struggle to define slick, in hopes of making it more so.

Heavy butted, limp, monofilament or fluorocarbon to transfer the line’s energy to the fly, but there the refinement and science dies, as fly choice is a mixture of semi-educated premise, intuition, and guesswork.

Figure the average outfit has been tuned by forty or fifty scientists, each with their own ideas on action, stiffness, and weight. Many thousands spent on rare earths and minerals to coat and build the ensemble, and when it finally gets to you, you can’t decide whether to use one or two split shot to drag sharp stuff through deep stuff?

I find it just a bit humorous, and why I can’t stifle a giggle when some rod engineer uses terms like “pure” and “essence”.”

As a fly tier I find fault with overtly heavy rigs or flies. Early Spring fishing is largely dominated by weighted, beaded, thick and heavy, all of which yanks at me when I yank at it, and makes fishing a series of flop casts that carry the weight due to energy imparted by my arm, versus imparted by a fly line – or something that bent the blank.

Like all those engineers are likely to tell you, there’s more than a single way to do anything – including sinking a fly.

Profile can act like more weight if it’s catered to in the fly’s design. Wide and fat increases resistance to motion in any direction, especially fast sinking and lifting the rig back to the surface. Extra shot can drive anything to the bottom quickly, but is never much fun to lob for any length of time -considering the wear and tear on knots and especially  lighter tippets.

Recognizing this from past seasons and planning to switch to a lighter line size this year, allows me to preplan some of the flies needed, given that I have the luxury of tying flies that will be lighter, yet sink as quickly as needed due to their slim profile.

Just as important, a slim profile allows me to get them out of the water with alacrity, something quite desirable in a hook set, and may allow the rod to roll cast the rig to the surface to position for the next cast.

Spring being host to all those big dark artificials, stoneflies mostly; many of us will be cracking out big pillow shaped chenille monstrosities, replete with rubber legs and tungsten beads. That’s less of a bother with #5’s and #6’s, but using a #3 or #4 line they’ll be effective only in lobbing flies given both their weight and water resistance.

I decided to “channel” some of the old Polly Rosborough Golden stone designs to different colors as his design is a lighter weight than traditional fare, and allows me some additional flexibility while I prepare for a high water Spring – and a light line mainstay.

PRSBRust_Mustard

The shank is covered in lead from tail to whip finish, with only a bit of combed fur to impede sinking. It’ll fish where the fish should be without extra beads and split shot, and ensures an enjoyable heave compared to the weighted hamburger the other fellow is throwing.

Polly Rosborough design, colors by me

Thin silhouette is matched by other functional attributes consistent with a heavy nymph. Reinforcing wire on all the feather delicates, three coats of cement on the head, and a blood red tuft of fur making the underwing, adding a hint of attractor to the finished pattern.

Heavy wire is consistent with banging about the rocks, as is the thick spear point – on a fly destined to hook many things, some of which may be desirable.

Few anglers optimize their flies knowing what’ll be throwing it. Favorite patterns also restrict us a bit, given our reluctance to try anything new. On a big meal like a stonefly I’d suggest fish won’t be as selective, allowing us to add that additional dimension, something tailored for the characteristics of the rod.

That’s a lot of scientists insisting a few grams are worth many hundreds of dollars. No reason not to pay attention to the ease of your rig when fished, and the shape and style of its terminal tackle.

Don’t act so surprised, you knew they were going to do it

Them girls bought them all, honest! It’s like turning on the living room light to find your dog frozen into immobility as he rearranges that warm dent on your sofa cushion. It’s that same shocked expression that’ll bring a smile to your face as you kick his butt off the soft and fluffy …

There’ll be shock and amazement aplenty when all those fly tiers realize the folks pimping Whiting saddle hackle to women for hair extensions is their local fly shop.

Naturally, Whiting promised their first priority will always be fly tiers and fly shops – and the faddish teenyboppers that wanna-look-like-Miley-Cyrus can all go without (meaning they can lightfinger Poppa’s stash) .

So the fly shops pump their fist along with their customers, as it’s a boy’s life and “no gurls allowed …” – even though them counter-men adore all that taught flesh giggling their way through the upstairs dander.

Now that their supply is assured by Whiting, they’re onto eBay by the bucketload, selling dyed Grizzly hair extensions by the fistful. The Whiting shipment received and hustled into the back room where it’s dismembered into little 5 feather packets and sold for $10 – $15 each on ebay…

… giggle …

…while you mean old men have to do without.

grizzhairebay What’s not so smart is most of them are selling under the shop account, and was I the Whiting Hackle Company I might want to be bring a couple of those vendors up short, as I have enough troubles keeping the fly tying market in feathers without some sharp SOB hoarding all the good saddles in the back room – claiming them damn girls bought it all ..

Just click the Nomad Anglers picture above to see what they’re telling their customers …

The only reason I’m not completely incensed is because the selfsame idea crossed both our temporal lobe about five minutes ago, and you’re suddenly wishing you’d paid more attention to my articles on dyeing.

… and for those shops poised to unload onto the marketplace, don’t use words like “Cree” or “Furnace” to describe your hackle, hair dressers don’t use words like that, dummy.

Traverse City Orvis

Nor is it surprising that I’d find Orvis selling hair extensions to the gals. The seller above appears to be the Traverse City, Michigan Orvis store, called “Streamside Orvis.”

With Opening Day just over a month away, I’d accuse these shops of really poor timing at the minimum. Nothing like a shortage of hackle just when the customer base seeks it most.