There’s at least 175 ways to get this outcome accidentally, but only one way to do it intentionally…

Grizzly is one of those “must have” chickens that’s used on absolutely everything. Big feathers used on streamers, small feathers used on dry flies, and everything else used to make hackle tip wings or add mottling to nymph parts.

Fly tiers that dye their own feathers are often tempted to toss all the other colors and just dye Grizzly necks Brown, Medium Dun or Ginger. Impressionists like myself love the mixture of colors on the feather – with the light bands somewhat indistinct, and the dark bars offering rigid color that define the fly.

I’d been fiddling with Jacquard Acid Dyes and streamer feathers – using the old “butt ends” of grizzly necks to tinker with yet another dubious idea. Dyeing is the best way to destroy materials and experimenting with new dyes always adds a couple extra foibles guaranteed to disappoint.

I ran out of the chestnut dyed grizzly used for the Calibaetis dry flies I use while lake fishing, and worked up enough nerve to dye a Hoffman Saddle with Jacquard’s version of Olive –  which is actually a nice brown color.

Testing on a chunk of Red Fox confirmed it was a warm chestnut color, and I added a teaspoon of Aztec Gold to warm it further. I vacillate on this fly every season – some years I use natural Grizzly, and when that doesn’t work the next I’m tying the chestnut variant.

A feather with both would be perfect.

I’ve been playing with a “tie-dye” method for feathers that does something similar. I tightly wrap kite twine to a stick then bind the saddle onto the surface with concentric wraps of twine. Tied tight enough the twine prevents the dye from reaching the feather yielding a “bar” of natural color that can be dropped into a second color of dye (or left natural) to make multicolored hackle.

One look at typical baitfish explains why you’d want a multicolor effect – or the dyed-natural flavor, fish start with a light colored belly and a dark back – with many colors between the two.

Us retired commercial fly tiers recognize an Adam’s could be tied with one hackle. Not only would it be cheaper but it would be much faster too. While profit is no longer much of a motivation, like most fly tiers, I still hate using two hackles to tie one dry fly.

Large streamer hackles (some shown above) give a nice color transition from natural to brown. Olive would make another nice color to transition with yellow or similar light color. Toss this into a lighter colored dye bath, like yellow, and the brown would be untouched while the natural sections slurped up that yellow dye.

With this batch I tried a couple other cords all smaller than the kite twine, and all failed to hold the color at bay. I don’t think anything smaller than 30lb mono is capable of mashing the fibers tight enough.

Tags: tie dye, fly tying materials, grizzly hackle, Hoffman saddle hackle, chestnut, Jacquard’s Acid Dyes, Red Fox fur, dyeing fly tying materials

You might say my day started poorly. I’m up extra early attempting to cram in a fast run to Sporting Creek even though it’s supposed to be chore day.

My first mistake was making the coffee using the dubbing grinder – the Obergruppenführer of Romance insisted I be doubly good in her absence and had outlined a long string of chores to accomplish. The commandment was “…and don’t mess or dirty anything!’” – and I’m spewing Angora French Roast out of my nose while hacking up a claret hairball.

I figured “dry grinding” some of the my double-extra complex dubbing could be done while fixing leaky faucets and doing the laundry. A once-over with a wet sponge and the countertop is “guy clean”.

… and if she spots a dust mote shrug shoulder and act innocent.

Now I’ve got French Roast dripping from the kitchen cabinets and using her pasta fork to scrape squirrel off my tongue. At 3AM you simply strain the coffee through a washcloth and keep packing the truck. Tastebuds don’t wake up till 4:00 AM – so the washcloth doesn’t even have to be clean …

Fishing was frustrating and fun – but meeting my first female brownliner was a first. I was already in deep yogurt with the Missus, so I didn’t compound the sin by chatting longer than pleasantries.

I manfully tied on an apron when I returned and did my best not to sulk.

“Dry dyeing” uses the colors of the components to make new colors. I started with 5 colors of an angora-mohair blend, 4 natural furs, and the Soft Crimp Angelina. While diligently mopping the kitchen, mowing, changing light bulbs, and doing all the rest of the honey-do’s, I’d periodically return to the scene of the crime and mash the grind button.

That’s a grapefruit sized ball of dubbing in each color, enough to tie many thousands of questionables. A little judicious use of the Artist’s Color Wheel allowed me to get a full spectrum of buggy colors with only the five yarn blends as coloring agent.

Most were constructed of equal parts of an adjacent color, some have three, others require four. Can you pick out the color that is all five mixed together? (*answer below)

Just harken back to elementary school watercolors – and what happened when they all ran together.

The above Birdsnest is constructed of brown partridge and a complex dubbing. It’s actually brown but photographed under a florescent (white light) lamp which lightens it up considerably. Note how the claret color stands out from the rest of the components.

Which is precisely what I expect on the Missus’s return. One white gloved swipe of the kitchen counter and she’ll mention, “ … note how the exhaled French Roast stands out from the faux walnut of my cabinets.”

How they do that is a mystery…

*Bottom left – the same color as used on the Birdsnest, note the difference of natural daylight versus florescent light in it’s appearance.

Tags: Angora, Mohair, blended dubbing, brownliner, partridge, artist’s color wheel, french roast, fly fishing, fly tying materials, deep yogurt, guy clean

I suppose some might consider it  “the fun’s back in fly tying” – but while I’m here sucking a forefinger, I don’t see it that way…

The Skalka and Knapek competition barbless hooks arrived yesterday, and with less than 24 hours before my march northward, I had to bang out as many flies as possible to have something to test.

I tested my coagulation rate thoroughly, that and my blood type…

Knapek dry fly and streamer hooks are a “squarish” bend with a wicked kirbed, barbless needle for a point that seeks human flesh with neither guilt nor remorse. Lacking a barb to slow its progress through your palm or forefinger – it’s added a new dimension to fly tying…

… and that’s what I’d expect of a hook that costs nearly $0.30 each – whose attributes might separate you from kissing “Miss Colorado Flyfish” and a five digit payday.

For the first time I found myself commiserating with the prey – as I alternately nursed one fingertip after another. Materials that obscure the hook point yet need to be coaxed backwards on the shank – like hackle or chenille, invariably put those precious highly-trained, coaxing fingers into Harm’s Way. 

The pain starts to register after it’s a quarter inch in – giving you a hint you should stop applying pressure – but the follow-through is still enroute, so the second quarter inch is just a bonus. Once the point encounters the back of your fingernail it slows down some …

I’m thinking that a standard hook set would drive a #14 Humpy clean through the trout’s skull – and with a bend designed to keep the corpse attached – telling the warden, “I didn’t do it” will be a bit of a dance – what with the lifeless parr-marked corpse bobbing nearby.

Tying on these requires the vise to grip the bend of the shank and none of the point, or just the point and none of the bend. With a 10 degree offset, grabbing both point and bend will bend the wire, removing the kirbed portion and possibly weakening the wire.

The points are fiendish, much longer and sharper than what I’m used to – and beaked, turned up to hold onto the flesh its just violated.

They adhere to traditional Redditch sizing – which I like much better than the Tiemco / Mustad standards. Both the Tiemco 100 series and the Mustad 94840 / 3906B are about 1X longer than they should be – and the Knapek are sized true like the older and shorter Partridge, “Captain Hamilton” style.

In short, I’m in love – not the sappy “chick flick” kind, more of the sinister sado-masochistic thing – and with piercing all the rage, I can wait till “Mr BB-Lip” finishes wowing the girls with his fourteen piercings, then I can recount the last thousand I endured …

I’m not so sure the Masai might not induct me as a full blood brother…

It’s one of those odd-duck materials that fills a need – only the need is ill defined. It’s a warning klaxon to us life long accumulators – we’ve learned the hard way, define the need before reaching for the 6.5 lb bulk spool…

I’ve been struggling with a lucid description for days; it’s akin to the rubberized “snot” that attachs your credit card to it’s stiff paper backing when delivered in the mail. Wrenching the plastic off the paper you’re left with a long swipe of transparent rubbery slime on the back of the card which peels off as a single piece.

If that isn’t awe inspiring I’m not sure what is…

The most recognizable name is Stretch-Magic, available as a bead cord for elastic bracelets and necklaces. It’s the only reason I dared take a chance on a rubbery material – as I’m still smarting over the Latex Craze of the mid-80’s.

If you remember everyone was tying latex flies; peeling the skin off of golf balls and pestering their dentist for Latex Dental Dam – thin sheets of rubbery goodness that made spectacular caddis worms…

… spectacular that season, the next year you opened your fly box to find oxidized fragments and bare hooks. Like everyone else I’d succumbed and had a drawer that looked like the bottom of the potato chip bag after someone sat on it.

I learned a hint of caution around rubbery…

I dropped $2.50 to test a spool, then went to eBay to see what I should’ve paid – found a generic knockoff in Korea for $2.00 for 10 spools, in hot pink.  I banged out a dozen Shad flies which were quickly ate – and buoyed by success I scored 8 more colors from China for a total of 99¢.

It’s available in 1mm, 0.8mm, 0.7mm, 0.6mm, and 0.5mm, and is a really tough gelatinous ribbing material. The fiber is round in shape and takes marking pen well, allowing smaller sizes to be used as rubberlegs on nymphs as well as traditional body material. (the flies shown above #8’s using 0.6mm and 0.5mm)

On most patterns I’ll stick a dubbing needle between coils and yank out the underbody. Slick and glassy looks great in a magazine – but I like scruffy and dirty, and have never had much luck on flies that seemed stiff and glossy.

No solid entomology to back my assertion just personal preference.

Whatever is underneath the material will influence the final result, factor the color of the underbody with the color of overlay chosen. On Shad flies I used silver tinsel to turn the body into a glowing pink, the above flies used gray dubbing as the underbody.

I’m working on solving a Damselfly dilemma for next week’s adventure, having a rubbery lifelike material appears to fit that paradigm as well – one of a number of damsel possibilities I’ve got to test.

Me fiddling with the material and it’s success on Shad does not a season make – so be cautious if you purchase some; start with small amounts of black or clear and try it on a few patterns. If it’s intact and remains supple after a year in storage, you may consider buying a few more colors.

In a typical shad season I’ll plow through 10 feet of bead chain easy. Handing out handfuls of whatever works combined with those buried into the bottom consumes plenty. It’s the weighting standard for most shad flies because it flips the hook over giving a shot at the upper jaw, traditional hook-ups tear through the sides – which is why so many fish are lost.

Years ago I had the foresight to score about 10 lbs of the silver and gold 3.2mm style, I was tying commercially and winter would bring steelhead orders, summer it’d be shad – and I was burning through a fair amount each year.

This season I’d seen little packs of anodized aluminum beadchain in two or three colors – and the lamp section of Home Depot had a couple pull chains in a nice glossy black – so I figured somebody was making this in quantity.

They are – the assortment is broader than what we’ve seen in fly shops. Many styles are available; brass, stainless steel, bronze, and aluminum – and those can be broken down into additional finishes like black nickel, polished brass, and all the colors of the rainbow.

Fly shops sell the basic chain for $0.10 per inch, and most of the online chain vendors are half that, metal is heavy and large quantities will drive up the postage, but the resulting selection is worth it.

Tungsten and brass beads are expensive – and I’ve often wished I could find the cheaper bead chain in colors suitable for trout flies – as the physics of a weighted nymph suggest if the hook rode up – we’d be losing less of them. With bead chain so much cheaper than tungsten or brass there might be some small economic reward as well.

Enough of a motive to get me to dig through the Internet looking for them…

Regular Silver and Gold are available at Home Depot and Lowe’s – what I needed was the “freak” stuff – the beads we don’t know exist, and would kill for should they ever surface …

I’m just starting to work through the respective vendor offerings – but I saw the above spool and about spewed lunch through my nose. Infinite combinations and colors and all of them yelling “Eat me.”

I’m interested in both brass and aluminum; brass for obvious reasons it’s heavy as can be and cheaper than beads, aluminum because it’s not – and I can envision many uses for both. Shad and steelhead will remain brass, but I can envision stonefly nymphs and lake flies, damsels and dragonflies, where I don’t need the massive sink rate yet could still use weight and the “eye” affect.

Here’s the Olive Mutt that worked so well on the Upper Sacramento last weekend, adapted to the Black beadchain. The fly will ride as shown so it’s tied “upside down” in the vise….

… fish don’t really care which side the wingcase is on – but we sure as hell do – hence the attention to detail.

Tied on a #8 3X long shank, it’ll make a wonderful dragon fly nymph at the same time – in fact, if asked what you’re catching all them fish on I’d call it a dragonfly nymph, it’d scare hell out of all them fellows playing Mayfly-Stonefly-Caddis, and you’re guaranteed they won’t have anything close as they left those in their “lake” box.

… besides, when they see the color and tinsel they’ll think you’re an idjit – everyone knows stoneflies is either brown, black, or golden …

…except us.

These are 25 foot spools of 3.2mm (#6) Brass beadchain – sold by the folks at BallChain.com – available in 19 colors if you include the silver and gold. You may be interested in Mystic Red and Antique finishes they have as well.

Called “Cool Spools” – they show the connector colors but only have violet, rainbow (shown above), black, and dark blue to purchase online. It’s a rather poor web presence – but I called and they mentioned the other colors were available – but not all were in stock.

I’m itching to try the Rainbow for shad – I’m sure the orange would work really well also. I’ll keep looking for a better deal – and the aluminum is already enroute from a different source, we’ll feature that when it arrives. Note the hollow tubes available in similar colors – just right for tube flies; either insert a nylon sleeve or make sure you deburr both ends.

I figured I was uniquely qualified – knowing the stiff and austere demeanor of the Trout Underground, if either of us was capable of “hanging ten” it would be us native Californian’s, bro…

I routinely hang about 36, but that’s over my belt …

Like the Picante sauce, I’m not so sure dry fly purist’s aren’t always from out-of-state, fleeing to the coast to out themselves from whatever depraved closet their skeletons are hid.

I sure don’t fit the tawny, golden stereotype; don’t go near the surf without a sand spike and a couple pounds of anchovies, Speedo’s would cut off all blood to my entire body (and drain the blood of onlookers), so that’s out of the question – but if you wanted a treatise on surfboard wax, I’m learning more than I care to – and more product is enroute.

I’m still adjusting to their technical lingo, but as far as I can tell they’re the only fellows doing to wax what we’re doing to carbon fiber, and with the advent of numerous synthetic waxes – free of paraffin – this is where we’ll find the next really clever replacement to the toilet ring.

… and there’s much less tendency for strangers to recoil from a pasty brownish lump if reassured it belongs on a surfboard, versus a lavatory.

Tropical, Cold, and Lukewarm, describe the melt point of the material so it doesn’t slough off once applied. It also describes whether it’ll be stiff or soft at room temperature and how it’ll wear with you running threads and other materials over its surface.

I’m trying all three temperatures just to see what the differences are to the touch – and despite the claims of “super tacky” or “stickiest” there’s considerable differences in each compound.

Wax has fallen from grace over the last 20 years, and those that learned during those years don’t use it – despite the continued use of materials we tamed with wax many decades ago. I’d attribute that to the fly tying thread industry – whose unyielding-decidedly-unsticky version used on pre-waxed thread turned off an entire generation of tiers to its benefits.

Now that I can get a synthetic wax – yet still choose between coconut, mango, bubblegum, or anchovy scents, I’ll be the bane of sausage dogs the north woods.

I use wax on many materials unrelated to thread, it’s water repelling characteristics are especially useful for those thin, tight dry fly bodies, and can counteract the absorbent fur nemesis to some degree.

Considering 70 grams of wax is a decade, 99¢ worth is a prudent investment, half the price of a toilet gasket and in line with the New Frugality, and as the advert mentions, it’s globally right on, Bra ..

… and yes, TC – you can test the Sex Wax …

There’s nothing quite like an epic outage of materials on the eve of a trip – where your own shortcomings cause you to lack whatever was required to catch fish…

I’ve been fishing rather than shopping – temporarily abandoning the quest for more materials in lieu of using some in anger.

Running out of Pink Cactus chenille was epic, so were the oaths sworn in the semi-darkness, wherein only trace amounts of the “perfect fly” would be available on the morn.

Steve Parton has addressed the entire Cactus Chenille issue for me. Steve has a store in the UK that sells “Fritz” by the pound and I’m no longer dependant on the microdot of material Hareline sees fit to hide behind its label.

The bulk skeins are available through the ebay version of Spartonfly, available in UV treated, untreated, straggle style, and regular cactus chenille in 6mm (Hareline) and 16mm sizes. 100grams ($16) is about a 1/4 pound and should serve the average tyer for a decade or so – saving considerable money in the process.

There’s more than one kind of “Cactus chenille”; the coarse filament material the Roughfisher uses, and the soft fiber material sold by Hareline in the traditional 3 yard pack. Three yards is about 3 dozen flies; no sooner do you discover the Shad’s innate weakness than you’re back at the store looking at the empty hook where pink used to be…

This type of chenille is (usually) 50% opalescent and 50% nylon, and while nylon takes acid dye quite well, the opalescent component – usually polyester, won’t. That gives the finished material a lighter sheen, as polyester requires a very hot dye bath with caustic chemicals to assist the color absorption.

Not seeing the colors I needed, Steve was nice enough to custom dye five colors of the 6mm and 16mm at my request, so if you don’t see what’s needed, drop the fellow a note.

Custom dyeing requires a reference color, so always supply a picture on the Internet that your vendor can see to give him which of the thousand shades of Olive you’re after… As different monitors and different resolutions can change colors a couple shades, send him the color by mail if you’re after an exact match.

The 16mm actually wraps as a hackle, its filaments being of long enough length to lose the chenille look. It makes a hell of a comet collar for steelhead and will cause shad to turn pirouettes on demand.

Roughfisher has been busy tinkering as well, and appears to have triggered a sudden lust for white on his home water.