Making a dubbing assortment has always been a favorite task of mine, given the amount of creativity involved and the lack of boundaries. I’m fiddling with dry fly dubbing colors, and whether I can port those into nymph colors to minimize additional work. Dry fly dubbing contrasts markedly with nymph dubbing in that both colors and textures are different; dry fly dubbing is typically pastel colors, fine texture and minimal guard hair, and Nymph dubbing tends to be coarser, with pronounced guard hairs and a darker color palette.
I’m rebuilding my prepackaged dubbing drawer with a better suite of dry fly colors; more olives, greys, tans, and a few wild colors to use with the occasional euro-nymph, and will be revamping my nymph colors as well. I might be able to refresh both at the same time, as Dry fly dubbing is almost entirely a “binder” layer of fine fur which is part of the components needed for nymph blends.
I build dubbing like a cigar, with a filler, a binder, and wrapper layer. Each layer contains different color effects AND textures, to give the finished nymph dubbing spike, loft, and a pronounced color mottle. The “binder” layer is typically the finest fibers which hold the mix together as both filler and wrapper tend to be coarser materials, including guard hair.
Most of my blends start as a yarn purchase, wherein I decompose an existing yarn into fur and add other elements to complete the mix. Yarns don’t have guard hairs which are typically unwanted in dry fly dubbing, and I can pick the colors of the yarn to match the shade I’m trying to build. Getting a range of colors is much easier with yarn as I don’t have to dye, dry, and blend furs, which can be extremely time consuming. Mixing disparate colors of yarn is quite easy and will result in “fur” that I can blend with other yarn colors to make the finished range of shades and mottle.
Mottle is important, as this is the mixture of all the colors in the completed blend which yields flies that resemble naturals, as real bugs are never a uniform color. This attribute is why I don’t use “store bought” dubbing blends, as they are almost always a uniform dye color without the subtle hints and shades that a mix of colors can provide – and the natural insect possesses.
Yarn candidates can be chosen based on what you’re attempting to create, a soft dry fly dubbing or a coarse blend suitable for heavy nymphs. A dry fly yarn might start as a soft fur yarn like an Angora rabbit, a synthetic rayon derived from plants, or a fine wool or cotton blend, whose fibers rival the gossamer nature of our aquatic mammals. I often add Mink, Otter, Muskrat, or Beaver to the decomposed yarn “fur” to enhance the mottle and loft of the material, and mute colors to make them more buglike.
Some yarns cannot be decomposed into fur, so you need to test the weave of your candidate to ensure it’s not too tight to be deconstructed. Typically the fine yarns are the worst possible candidates, as their fineness coupled with the weave of the fibers may not allow a traditional grinder to fluff them back into fiber form. Fine yarns resemble woven strands, with each strand resistant to unravelling, yielding a mixture that remains stranded, despite being cut to smaller lengths.
Test everything before spending a lot of money on colors, as some flavors of yarn may be unsuitable for your use. Cut the candidate yarn into one inch pieces and attempt to deconstruct them in a traditional coffee grinder. If they reduce to “fur” they’re suitable for a dubbing blend, if not, toss and try the next candidate.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Yarn
Yarns are like cars, not every color is made each model year. Spring and summer yarns tend to be bright colors, fall fashion tends to be darker, so you may have to select two different yarns brands to get all the colors you desire.
Yarns have a life span, and that brand may not make it more than a couple of years. If you find something truly spectacular, you’ll need to lay in a supply to ensure it will be available to you year after year. Large makers of yarn may keep the product for several years, small cottage makers or artisans may only stock the yarn for a single season.
There are hundreds of fiber types and artisan blends debuting every season, you’ll need to get eyes on a lot of product to understand what’s available to you online. Focus on fiber types and their respective size (coarseness) and loft (spike and curlyiness), as those are the attributes best suited for making fur.
You will need a physical yarn or fabric store to acquaint yourself with the kind and type of fibers and weaves available. Using only online sources is fine, but you will throw away numerous skeins unsuitable for your use as a single website photo cannot compete with a yarn you can visually inspect. Is Bamboo yarn and a Rayon yarn derived from Bamboo the same thing? This can only be determined by a physical examination of the skeins, you cannot differentiate these properties from an online photograph.
Similar issues exist with the different types of wool from specialty sheep. These are all the rage among artisan yarn makers … Some wools are quite fine, other are coarse, a physical examination of the skein will likely answer most questions, where an online photograph will not.
Many artisanal yarns can have incomplete dye results, and many fiber types resist dye and can offer special uses based on this incomplete coloration. Multi-hued yarns also provide a greater range of color for the price, and can make your purchasing easier on the pocket.
Yarn makers aren’t necessarily good at dyeing, especially small vendors intent on raising specialty sheep. You can have a wide range of results from a vendor unskilled at dyeing, especially in the area of consistency of color across several dye lots. Dyeing something Pink is easy, dyeing something the exact same shade of Pink, a second time, is very difficult. Beware small vendors and inconsistency of color.
Small batch artisanal yarns can be very expensive, especially some of the specialty wools, with a single skein in excess of twenty dollars or more. Try to stay with mass produced yarns unless the artisanal yarn offers some tangible capability the others do not. Small batch typically means inconsistent colors and both inconsistent or limited availability.
Remember Combinations and Permutations when selecting colors
Most of us would rather forget the formula for calculating the total number of combinations, but this is important stuff when determining how many yarn colors from which to build your array of blended colors..
Assume you decide to buy six colors of yarn to start your dry fly palette. Two greys, two olives, and two tans. The total number of colors is 6, and if you mix any 2 colors together it will make a new color. The total number of colors you can make by only blending two is 6!/ 2!(6-2)! = 15 colors. If you blend 3 colors you get 20 colors, and it’s easy to see how quickly you can build a large collection of colors for your use. Because the dry fly palette is much reduced, compared to nymph colors, you can make a workable assortment of colors for your area at minimal expense.
I am building a dry fly palette and converting some into a nymph blend, but not all the dry fly colors will be useful to me (nor will all the colors you build for dry flies be useful either) as dry fly colors, nor will be members of the darker nymph palette, so I’ll focus my purchase choices on the colors similar to the insects in my area. If the bulk of the bugs you fish are Olive, perhaps purchasing one less tan, and one less gray, and two additional Olives will yield most of your colors as Olive-ish, which is your Sweet Spot.
For the areas I fish frequently, Olive and Grey are the two predominant colors, so I’ll build numerous Olive and Grey blends to capitalize on this. Recognize that a specific fly isn’t the source of a fish’s sudden weakness, it’s a combination of color, size and silouette that made the fish leave that darkened recess and commit an act of wanton gluttony on your offering …
Why not make flies similar in color to your favorites, as they can be used in a pinch when you run out of your favorite fly. More importantly, when your friends pillage your fly box and take all your extras, you can reach for the Secret Double Probationary Brown Olives … and hand the regular Adam’s to them Meathead pals of yourn …
Things to Consider when building your Blend
Are you building a dry fly assortment or nymph dubbing? The differences between the two are significant, so make sure you have all of your darker colors, browns, blacks, dark olives, if you’re making nymph dubbing. You’ll want lighter colors for dry flies.
How much of each color will you make? Remember that some yarns will disappear in a year, some take longer, if you build these wonderful colors unique to your watershed, how many year’s worth will you save of each color? This is important, as the killer color could run out, the yarn is unavailable, and you are left sobbing in frustration as your pals still have a few they “borrowed” from you last year …
Are you smart enough to write down the recipes for the colors you make? How are you going to build more if you forget what you put in it? You added a pinch of yellow beaver, and a handful of Red Fox squirrel, are you going to remember those a year later when it’s time to make more? DO NOT create colors without writing the recipes down, DO NOT make this mistake (like I did!).
(… and by the way, exactly how much is a handful?)
Construction of your dubbing assortment starts with you reducing the base yarn colors from stranded form to fur, via coffee grinder. Grinders are perfect for small jobs, just don’t confuse the one used for fly tying with that used for grinding your morning coffee.
Cut the stranded yarn into piles of one inch long pieces.
When building custom colors, use your hand as the measurement for stranded yarn.
Issue: Green is composed of half yellow and half blue, but you need to be reasonably precise with your measurements, and lack a scale to weigh a tiny fragment of yarn … So how to ensure the amount of yellow is equal to the amount of blue?
Answer: Your hand is a constant size. Wrap the yellow yarn around your hand five times, then wrap the blue yarn around your hand five times. Even better, grip both yarns and wrap them around your hand together, the same number of times.
Now, when you want to mix two colors, simply wrap the yarn around your hand several times, cut the resultant length into one inch pieces, and grind it into fur. This ensures your color is made from 50% of the first color mixed with 50% of the second.
The last step yields the unknown, as in the samples at left. I don’t think the color will be useful, but not knowing the result of Pink and Emerald added together is likely going to be … an adventure finding out.
In this case, the Emerald completely overpowered the Pink, and the result was a cold pastel of greenish hue … not useful at all, but great colors to show how the process works for the uninitiated.
I have taken great pains to HIDE the brand of the yarn I’m using, as this is not a proven winner, it’s a candidate yarn that may prove useful or may not. I do a lot of tinkering with different yarns as they are often priced cheaply, sometimes as cheap as a single packet of storebought fur, and tossing them into the trash will not break the bank.
Because of the regular obsolescence of yarns, I have to rebuild color selections every three or four years, as the old yarn used is no longer made. The process is fun and useful as I usually find a few colors I didn’t have in the previous yarn – that are now available in the new brand.
Because I write down the color recipes, I can reblend the old yarn colors with the new to remake colors that the new brand doesn’t offer, ensuring I can restock most of the useful colors time and time again.
The above Creme-Orange was an actual color in the old yarn brand I was using, and is a dead ringer for the Hareline Creme Orange used in the original Chuck Stranahan Creme Orange Paradun. In the new yarn I blended Coral, Old Gold, and Sun Glow to make the exact color provided by Hareline.
Yes, I could have simply bought the Hareline, but then I wouldn’t learn a damn thing about color mixing, decomposing plant and animal fibers into fur, color and blend componetry – that the old timer’s knew and the new generation of fly tyer has absolutely no clue about …
This is a couple hours work during a rainy afternoon. The base yarn colors are at the top, and the below two rows are new colors I am making out of the blended top row colors. Think Tans, Greys, and Light Olives, as the desirable colors.
I start with 14 base yarn colors, which will yield 91 new colors if mixed with one other color, and 364 new colors if mixed with two additional colors. As the Emerald tends to overpower every other color I add to it, most of the emerald blends will not be useful. The Purple color also has limited uses, for similar reasons. I added the Emerald and Purple with the red, yellow, orange, and blue to give me the primary and secondary colors of the color wheel. This will allow me to build a spectral blend of this fiber as another option.
The only Olive that this yarn had was an Olive Drab, and a weak one at that, so I will be looking for a Black, Dark Brown, and two additional Olives from another brand to complete all the colors I plan on making.
Each of the bags has the recipe written on it and the proportions of the colors in that recipe. The top row only has one name written on the bag, that of the base yarn color, all other bags contain their recipe. In this manner, I can more easily remember the contents given they are written down both on the bag and in my notes.
Porting Dry Fly dubbing into a Nymph Blend
While not typically part of my process, in this instance I will take a few of the dry fly colors and make them into Nymph blends. I’m not going to make a general purpose Nymph blend suitable for big Stoneflies, rather I’ll leverage the fine filaments of the original dubbing and convert the Dry Fly version into a blend for smaller mayfly nymphs, targetting the 12-14-16 size range.
The “Wrapper” layer is the component containing the big guard hairs I would add to make a spikier dubbing, and I’ll omit that in preference to simply adding a “filler” layer of fine Red Fox Squirrel dubbing, and a possible “enhancement” layer – that may offer some sparkle in the finished blend.
The process is nearly identical to the construction of the dry fly assortment, with one exception, when considering how much of each color will I make, I need to factor in the different “enhancement” layers I might add.
Example: If I decide to make nymph blends of the above Creme Orange dry fly dubbing, and I wish two packs of the finished nymph dubbing, AND I will add Angelina fibers (Ice Dub) as an enhancement, AND some Antron, without the Ice Dub, then I need to make enough of the base color (Creme Orange) to make four packs of the nymph dubbing. Two packs with Ice Dub as the enhancement, and two packs with NO Ice Dub but Antron as the enhancement layer.
If I know what I will build in advance of creating the dry fly dubbing, then I will need possibly 8 packs of the Creme Orange. Two packs for the base dry fly dubbing, four packs to turn into nymph dubbing with two enhancement layers, and two additional packs to mix with other colors to make new colors … This is why planning what you will be building in advance, and writing it down, will make your job much easier.
The Color changes are far from Over
Just like mixing the different yarn base colors together to yield new colors, the same thing will happen when you convert your yarn blend to contain natural fur. As most animal furs are greyish, they tend to dampen or mute the original colors made from deconstructed yarn, no matter how much or how little is added.
The above picture illustrates this notion. While most of you likely assumed the Creme Orange flavor of dry fly dubbing had limited use, note its transformation into a nymph dubbing, and how the Creme Orange virtually disappears into a tan or tan-brown with the addition of natural Red Fox Squirrel body fur. Red Fox Squirrel is essentially a giant Hare’s Mask, so I shave the skins into a bag, then add pinches of the fur to whatever else I’m making.
To mute the original color and transform it into a nymph version I added about 30% Red Fox Squirrel to the original Creme Orange, yielding a blend containing fine fibers, and a nicely mottled guard hair that will show up when these small nymphs are tied.
Adding a layer of “enhancement” or sparkle is typically never more than 10% percent of the dubbing. This applies to any of the common enhancements, like Ice Dub (Angelina fiber), Antron, or Baby Seal, or anything else that adds sparkle to the fur. Adding more than 10% will overpower the original dubbing and change it too much.
In summary, by adding natural colors to deconstructed yarn I have turned the raw yarn colors into a buggier version that most tiers would love to own. These changes add to our combinations and permutations, and if you can make 91 new colors from 14 colors of yarn, you can make 3 colors from each of those; original, color muted or buggy, and with enhancement, giving your total options nearly 270 different colors with the use of only a single enhancement layer.
270 colors are way too many to be practical, so when starting this journey start with less colors. One Tan, One Medium Gray, an Olive and a Brown, and a few other colors to mix with them. Don’t be afraid of the wilder colors like orange or purple, as they can be muted with natural fur into a color and form much more friendly to the drab Bug Kingdom. If they fail to impress you, don’t use them …. the fun of the project is in making all the wild colors, what’s useful will be a smaller subset of that.
Focus on the inexpensive yarns so you can accumulate a few skeins, and then cut a few Hare’s Masks up to add to the final mix. This is more than enough to get you started on making your own fur, and will get you incredible colors on the first try, as uniformed dye colors suck by comparison.
Simply contrast the uniform original Creme Orange yarn color (above) with the mottled Red Fox/Antron version to see how complex colors always are better than monotone variants. Note that the Original Creme Orange was actually a three color mix, so it wasn’t monotone, but now it has Red Fox Squirrel and Spectral fibers added to it, making the complex color doubly so. The Spectral Blend contains six colors, making the final product contain 10 colors total.
The Creme Orange Paraduns, above, show the tightness of the dubbed body, so the yarn candidate has the smallness of flue necessary to make a good dry fly body. The nymph closeup follows, to show the additional “shagginess” induced by adding a bit of Red Fox fur and a pinch of the Spectral blend.
The Red Fox Squirrel addition added a lot of additional “scruffiness” to the fly. It’s a successful transition from tight dry fly dubbing to the kind of unkempt, well used, look that us meathead anglers prefer. This is an AP (Andre Puyans / All Purpose) style of nymph pattern that can be deployed with any color fur. I see a few strands of reddish Spectral blend, not enough to overpower the dubbing color … just enough to catch the light and make a fish think he sees something that isn’t there ..
… kinda like looking at a Denny’s Restaurant menu, lucious red tomatos, icy green lettuce, and when your plate arrives it’s a greasy, drab turd.
Enjoy fiddling, it’s one more thing to while away those blustery Wintery evening enroute to Spring.