Category Archives: Fly Tying

The Sharp stuff is in the mail

The last of them mean old ladies in the Post Office line have finally sheathed their brooms, irate that I keep hogging all the pretty girls in the Priority mail section. I keep telling them it’s for a good cause, but at that age anything standing between them and a nap is the enemy.

If you sent me a note for scissors, they’re in the mail.

It seems like I may have curried favor with most of the TU chapters between here and the Asian Carp, with a sprinkling of US army servicemen (which I immediately hit up for exotic Afghan flightless birds downed by drones ), and other fishing clubs. I was pleased to send nearly 300 pair to about 24 different organizations.

Figure 10% actually live through the experience without slitting wrist and that’s 30 newly hatched hoarders for next season’s reality show …

I’ll continue to hoard all that defective metal and perhaps we can do this again ..

Free Scissors to club fly tying classes, Inquire Within

Sixthfinger Part of selling all those Sixth Finger scissors is the quality control each set recieves prior to shipment. I’ve got a fairly consistent failure rate of nearly 10% on every shipment of scissors I receive.

Which makes for a lot of functional scissors that are destined for my closet.

After checking with the tax man it appears I can give them away to casting clubs for their fly tying classes without incurring harm or obligation to either party. If you know that your club could use some freebie scissors, drop me a note.

It will be our understanding that you’ll not market them as the real product, rather what they are, “free defective samples so you can learn to tie flies for less cash.”

The defects that make these unworthy of sale include; uneven tips, too blunt of tip, uneven blades (width), rough closure, visible defect, or won’t cut at all. Only the last issue renders the scissors unusable, so I’ll remove those from the mix.

The scissors may be a mixture of sizes and metals (some tungsten and some stainless) and all will be usable.

I’ll need your request for quantity on club stationary or what passes for same, and a link to your club website for verification.

My email address is in the “about” page at the top of the screen, just drop me a note to reserve your space in the queue.

Cutips or backhoes, we’ll mine the goodie

It must’ve been the Alaska Gold marathon running all weekend in my living room, companion noise while I hacked, chopped, and ground up most of the fur bearing animals resident to North America.

By Monday evening all the bearings in my grinder sounded oval, but she still gnawed away noisily at anything I wadded into the blade area. I could see the big seam on the inside had filled up nicely with tiny fragments of everything fed it in the last couple of weeks, and while my heroes were emptying sluice boxes and nugget traps, I was busy scraping the mechanism collecting the rarest of all fly tying colors, “Ear Wax Yellow.”

ear_wax_yellow

… like white being the sum of all colors, it’s a relatively indescribable yellow, possibly even a light olive, but once you’ve given it a name you see it in a different light – it being the sum of a thousand buggy colors, and how it takes on any shade your whim imagines useful.

EWY_Nymphs

Add a little brown thread rib and it becomes a darker hue – like a true chameleon using the colors of the environment to make itself less stark or obvious.

The tail may wag this dog

Now that my likeness on your post office wall has been eclipsed by Edward Rist and his takedown of rare and exotic birds, and while my accidental brush with depravity rings hollow – compliments of a couple of gifted song birds and an imaginary affront to Audubon, the only way to reestablish myself as some form of natural history anti-Christ would be find something twice as rare and make flies with it.

Us fly tying degenerates being a vain crowd, proud of our hardscrabble hoarding nature, and determined to accumulate enormous collections of shoeboxes that hide the grisly remnants of odd fauna frozen in death. Unfortunately the competition is becoming fierce, with Jeffrey Daumer and Edward Rist making it tough to one up the competition…

We feel we may have rose to the occasion. It’s much tougher when there’s only one available, but it makes a sturdy and handsome tail …

Beard of the Prophet

… given this week’s callousness, it’s Hell I’m headed for surely, but which remains unknown. Hopefully Salman Rushdie has brushed up on his classics, as we’ve got a couple millennia of small talk coming .

The fly tying equivalent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

He looked both ways before passing me the baggy, and being as it’s California I didn’t leave it out in the open for prying eyes, quickly tucking the goods into a breast pocket, before returning to the truck whistling innocently.

I might have been less eager if I’d known more about songbirds and whether you’re even allowed to keep one, let alone how many in possession and which warbler gives the electric chair without the luxury of trial.

Once the evidence was tucked into the freezer I did a little unrefined search to determine that I was now in violation of most fish & game legislation, both federal and state, and in addition to tempting fate with my “salvage” of three dead birds, the next knock on the door is liable to be the National Wildlife Service in full body armor.

Your cats can keep killing birds with no threat of legal reprisal. I don’t think that you can be held responsible, unless you have the feathers in possession. A few feathers in your backyard probably won’t get you into trouble. You, however, can’t legally even pick up a feather that incidentally falls off of a protected songbird. If it isn’t a game species, you probably can’t legally keep it. This is what we have to do. First, we need a federal “special purpose salvage” permit from US Fish and Wildlife. This give us the right to pick up dead migratory birds, as the feds have jurisdiction over migratory birds. Second, we need a state salvage permit as all songbirds are protected. In addition, I must keep detailed records as to what is done with every bird that comes into my possession. That is, is it turned into a study skin, disposed of or released. Finally I have to have a federal permit for any federally listed threatened species and another permit for any bald eagles. That means a separate permit for each specimen. Then there is a state permit for all state listed threatened species. What does this mean if you come into possession of contraband material without the above permits? Basically that you should leave it there, or dispose of it.

Assuming I was gifted the alleged animals, and my sense of utilitarian overcame my traditional adherence to the law, besides the five to life without parole, there’s a right way and wrong way of receiving some dripping lifeform your buddy, or circumstances, presents at your door.

First and foremost the legality of the affair, whether game animal or otherwise is always in question. Second, is the amount of time that transpired before that car bumper intersected the flock of dove, and whether you’re on the fresh or odious side of the bell curve.

If the corpse bounces to a stop at your feet, consider toeing it into a bush, given that there is still plenty of livestock on the creature, none of which will be leaving until the body begins to chill. Tomorrow would be much better to collect your booty, given you can bring gloves and a sterile baggy, versus carrying the bleeding SOB in your shirt pocket …

As did my mysterious benefactor, a couple of days in the freezer ensures that everything living on the host isn’t – and pretty much leaves a scentless little ice cube of sparrow, warbler, or linnet, or finch.

One or two is plenty, and given the wonderful soft hackles they possess, you’ll be gripped by this selfsame dilemma at some point. One or two only because most of the bird resembles every other songbird on the planet; a dull drab brownish gray top and a few gaily colored feathers on the breast or near the tail.

In ice cube form a couple of delicate pinches will remove most of the useable – too big a pinch brings the skin with it, which is undesirable as it’ll add moisture and a hint of decay into whatever drawer is utilized. Small pinches will remove only feather – and due to size there’s only about five pinches of feather worth having …

It_Was_A_Gift

I’d guess these are some form of finch or sparrow, as they have little in the way of color to identify them. As I often wander the owner’s field picking up turkey tails and flight feathers in the fall, my appetite for feathers is well known.

Small birds have small feathers, which is exactly what our traditional materials like Partridge and Grouse lack. Other than using a distribution wrap or something similar to reduce the flue length, soft hackles are often wildly disproportionate to hook size … which isn’t necessarily always a bad thing …

The issue is that small feathers can’t be wound or gripped by hackle pliers, as our hammy fingers lack the finesse to avoid breaking them.

Tiny hackle inserted into dubbing loop

I use them by throwing a quick dubbing loop, inserting the hackle into the loop with my fingers, then spinning the loop to reinforce the stem with thread. As long as the hackle is not tied onto anything, either by its tip or its butt, it will not break.

We've created a tougher stem

As the feather spins with the thread it will shorten, which is why neither end can be attached to anything. The feather will spiral about the thread and consume some of its length in those wraps. Two lengths of thread give it a real “stem” and we can attach hackle pliers and wind the hackle (while brushing it backward).

Olive Yellow Flymph

Note how the hackles are in proportion to the hook size. These are not stiff like Partridge fibers, they’re actually so soft and mobile that I’d characterize them as marabou with a hint of spine. Breathing on the fly will make all the hackle move to the far side, making them incredibly lively in the water – more so than the traditional soft hackles.

I’d recommend not using any head cement. Like marabou the fibers will soak any slop instantly, making them much less effective – and ruining the fly.

Where we pay a little homage to the cockroach of the Skies

At times I think even PETA hates starlings, universally reviled – it seems even little old ladies consider them cockroaches of the sky …

When I lived in the woods the local rice farmers would pay for your ammo, sending great groups of killers onto the paddies to blow hell out of yellow-hooded and redwing blackbirds. I tried desperately to come up with fly patterns that would allow for an orderly disposal of so many carcasses and failed miserably…

… something about black makes it an absolute must-have – but like licorice, you “must-have” in small doses …

Having re-upped the half dozen skins I keep around, and flush with small, soft black hackle – I’m reminded of all the other uses it was put to back in the day…

Starling_Skins

Strangely enough outside of using it for black hackle on all forms of sinking flies, mostly I used it as Poor Man’s Jungle Cock …

Starling_Feather

Most of the hackle feathers on the back and shoulders have a nicely defined yellow tip. Grab a pair of them and slide one down about a quarter inch …

starling_cocque A bit of wax or vinyl head cement (flexible) is all that’s needed to transform a tawdry little bird into something a rich kid that likes flutes is willing to steal for …

… knowing where he’s headed we’ll observe a brief moment of solemn knowing his fly tying is bound to suffer in the face of the sudden demand for his flautist skills …

The Faces of Genius: Reduced Bomber

This was a reduction of a Upper Sacramento classic, Ted Fay’s Black Bomber. Plenty can be said of Ted Fay flies, most would say “really heavy.” They weren’t graceful or slender, and I dreaded a big order as it was the only fly I had to tie holding my nose. Not that the flies were bad, they just required so much lead they were unstable.

You could spin the brown or black chenille body around the hook with ease.

Gary Warren was a longtime resident of Burney, California, and knew both Joe Kimsey and Ted Fay. In between guiding Hat Creek and Fall River, he’d fish the Upper Sacramento and adapted the fly to Hat Creek and the Pit River by removing the grizzly wings and the second and third layer of lead wire.

Thankfully, you could now throw the fly without fear of concussion or outright amputation.

He kept the “Bomber” moniker, but I altered the name to distinguish the original and its adaptation.

Gary Warren's Reduced Bomber

Grizzly hackle tail, tied short. Brown or Black chenille for the body, and three turns of undersized grizzly saddle at the head. Gary preferred ring eyed hooks – as shown above.

In looking at all these flies there’s little question that simplicity rules. They sit in your fly box all alone until you’ve tried all the sexy stuff, and when you finally succumb and lash it to your leader, you remember all the superlatives your buddy used when he handed them to you.

The Faces of Genius: Chartreuse Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

chartreuse_unknown

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

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

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

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

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

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

We got brown bugs, they got brown bugs … which is why old flies persist

Fiddling with classics Every fly fisherman has their moment. A big fish lounging in the shallows and a favorable breeze leaves the fly just where you want, floating idly down to the ravenous white maw below. Some are unfortunate enough to get a head-bob, or flare of fins upwards, some even see greatness coming up through the water column on an intercept, only to be thwarted by some imaginary hair out of place, or the unseen pull of drag.

Fly tiers have their moment too. Despite beginner vise and too-thick thread, poorly lighted kitchen table and recalcitrant grizzly hackle, somehow perfection comes of adversity. Proportions correct, body graceful and tapered, no glue obscuring the eye – and if wasn’t for the yellow saddle hackle tail, which substituted for brown, it might be the best fly you’ve ever tied.

Naturally you rushed to show Sensei, the relative or friend that got you into this cash-hemorrhaging hobby, whose wise council is sought on all major purchases and fly related topics, and rather than being appreciative, he becomes irate and indignant.

“That’s not an Adam’s, an ADAM’s does not have a yellow tail, an Adam’s has on occasion an all-brown tail, sometimes a mixed grizzly and brown tail, but never … and I mean NEVER … does a fly as noble and historic as an ADAM’s sport a goddamn yellow tail.”

( … fly then tossed onto table top like the Unclean thing.)

For the burgeoning fly tier it’s a crushing experience, no one noticed it was technically perfect, a fact ignored in the great upwelling of indignity resulting from experimenting with a time honored classic. No pause in the backlash oratory to claim innocence, the yellow used only because you lacked brown hackle long enough …

The sting of that experience destined to stifle creativity for years …

As odd as it sounds, it may be one of the common questions asked by a fledgling tier, “… when is it OK to invent your own flies?”

It would be safe to say that most fly fishermen learn to cast and fish before learning to tie flies. Those two disciplines will give the angler experience in the forces destined to tear flies apart, and give an appreciation for some of the attributes flies require, like an eye clear of  hair, glue, or foreign substance.

Knowing why each component of the fly exists and the qualities it lends to making the pattern successful would be beneficial, as would the ability to secure the component correctly, ensuring some knowledge of stressors and points of fragility may be necessary as well.

As learning to tie flies is a study in substitution, considering the thousands of colors and materials we’ll accumulate, the last element would be some expertise in the materials themselves, so you can substitute freely, or tinker with patterns and evolve them into your style of fishing more effectively.

Which hair floats, which synthetics are tough and resist tearing, which feathers are stiff and resilient and can be used for tails. Expertise at this level comes from a lifetime of fishing and tying, and as knowledge grows so will the degree of tinkering.

… with only the sting of our first accidental foray to haunt us.

After many years of blind adherence to pattern books and featured flies in magazines, what actually makes a great fly is still unknown. There’s no visible qualities that distinguish an experimental from a time-honored classic, nothing to denote why an Elk Hair Caddis is found in every fly shop when something similar isn’t.

What’s surprising is that nationwide adoption has no real criteria other than good marketing and commercial availability. Which is why eastern dry flies continue to dominate every shop’s dry fly selection, even if the original insects don’t exist on the West coast, or the western variety is of different color.

How fast those classic fly bins empty is a function of perceived beauty, or perceived buggy-ness, and has little to do with local bugs and its real world efficacy.

We got brown bugs, they got brown bugs … which is why old flies persist.

Thankfully fish are stupid, which is why cigarette butts are struck as often as Female Cahill’s tied with the yellow egg sacs, and fish eat flies twice the size of those hatching, which keeps us aging starlets in the game.

In short, a new tier should start experimenting once he’s learned how to mechanically build a fly, and should feel free to start fresh or alter classic flies regardless of their history and legacy.

… and the opinions of their buddies, who’ll feel entitled to free flies for life anyways.

Fly tying is already hard enough with plenty willing to heap scorn on your best efforts. Too many tiers remain constrained and dormant assuming that a classic pattern will catch more fish than a wild idea spawned by a curl of colorful floss and a dash of whimsy.

Your flies didn’t participate in all that holiday food, but they can stand a bit of reducing just the same

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

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

Starling & Green

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

prepped_starling_feather

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

 

winding_starling

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

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

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

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

Starling & Green

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