Posts tagged ‘fly tying’
By now almost everyone pretty much knows the deal with parachute-style dry flies. They float with their bodies flush in the surface film with the hackle fibers splayed in a circle around the body (hence “parachute”), imitating very closely
The Finished Fly
the attitude of natural mayflies as they drift downstream. The wing post around which the hackle is wound can be made of some highly visible color, making them easier for us middle-aged types to spot on the water. They are far more likely than their collar-hackled cousins to land in the correct upright position on the water when they are cast. Finally, because the hackle doesn’t actually float the fly, they don’t have to be tied with the most expensive genetic dry fly hackle to work properly. Effective, user-friendly, and cost-efficient—a no-brainer, right?
Well, yes…once they’re tied. Getting to that point can present a problem for some fly tiers. The tail and body of the fly don’t present that much difficulty, as they are identical in their proportions and construction to those found on a traditional collar-hackled dry fly. It’s the creation of the wing post that serves as the base for the parachute hackle that seems to intimidate a lot of tiers. There is a way to do this, however that is not only quite easy, but that substantially improves the performance of the fly, and it all has to do with materials.
My strong encouragement to you, especially if you’re just learning to tie parachutes, is to stay away from natural materials like calf tail and turkey t-base feathers and the like. They look great, but they’re hard to handle without a lot of practice. What I suggest instead is a synthetic material. There are many to choose from, marketed under various names—Float-Vis™ is a favorite of mine—but they’re all basically the same stuff. I like the synthetics for several reasons: it comes in literally every color you can think of, it’s far easier to handle than natural materials, it’s more
The Finished Post
waterproof and therefore adds floatation to the fly, and, because its fibers allow air to pass through them easily, it is less likely to resist the wind, causing the fly to spin and twist the leader during false casting. It can also be mounted in a way that adds virtually no bulk to the body of the fly, allowing for a trimmer, more natural-looking finished product.
- Cut off a hank of winging material about 1 ½ -2 inches long and tie it in at its middle point on top of the hook shank.
- Once it’s secured, let the thread hang and grab the two ends of the hank of yarn, and tug them out to the sides of the hook shank, as if you were trying to fashion the spent wings of a mayfly spinner.
- Take up the thread again and make a few “figure-8” or “X” wraps over the tie in point, securing the yarn in this position. Now drop the thread again and this time tug the two ends straight up over the top of the hook shank. Hold them there with one hand while you take 4-6 turns of thread around the yarn only—not the hook shank! This will bind the two ends of the hank of yarn into a solid wing post, and it will provide a solid base around which to wind the parachute hackle later.
- Trim the post to the desired length.
With the wing thus in place, you can create the rest of the fly as desired. The parachute hackle mounts just behind the wing post and is wound around it rather than the hook shank. The hackle can be tied off either just in front of the wing post on the shank or on the wing post itself.
By the way, informal research has shown me that the fish don’t much mind what color the wing post is—it’s more the silhouette they’re interested in. I have tied posts in blaze orange, hot pink, and screaming chartreuse and caught good fish on all of them. A black post is a great help on gloomy, overcast days, as well.
Once you’ve mastered parachute wings with synthetics, you can transfer your skills to the world of natural winging materials. Until then, this technique will get you on the water with these highly versatile and extremely effective patterns.
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Tie quill bodies on your hooks to make much more realistic mayflies!
Winter, especially in Michigan, can be a dread prospect for the ardent fly fisher. There are those few intrepid souls who continue to go out and court hypothermia on the frigid rivers for winter Steelhead or the occasional dazed and listless trout, but for most of us winter is by necessity a season of forgetting—about actual fishing anyway. Some move on to skiing, snowmobiling, or other winter sports. Others take advantage of the good cuddling weather to seek out and renew relations with their long-lost fishing widows with a view toward creating future fishing companions, but for those of us who simply must do something fishing-related regardless of the weather, winter is better-known as the fly-tying season.
For many fly tiers, winter is an excellent time to experiment with patterns and techniques that are new or unfamiliar to them. Often these are things that they’ve wanted to master for a long time but have avoided due to either real or perceived difficulty. With that in mind, this article will be the first of several focusing on some tying techniques that are tricky to varying degrees, but which pay off by resulting in flies that are more realistic (or just neater-looking) and are therefore more effective on-stream.
This series will focus on dry fly tying techniques, for the simple reason that dry flies are the patterns that most depend on correct construction and proportioning in order to function correctly. Future series will look at wet fly, nymph, and streamer-tying techniques.
Perhaps the most often-avoided dry fly tying technique is the construction of the quill body. This is unfortunate, as, when applied properly, a wrapped quill creates a smooth, segmented body that much more closely imitates the abdomen of a natural mayfly than does a dubbed body.
Prep the Quill
The first step in this process is to select and prepare the quill for mounting. The best quills for wrapping bodies do not, happily, come from your expensive dry fly hackle feathers. Instead, select a 6-8” strung Chinese neck or saddle hackle. Select a single feather from the strung bundle, and, starting as near the tip as you can, grasp the hackle fibers on one side and strip them from the quill. Repeat this process on the opposite side of the quill.
The most commonly-cited difficulty with this technique is the tendency of the quill to crack and/or split when it is being wound onto the hook shank, and this indubitably can happen, but it is also fairly easily avoided by simply soaking the quill in water for fifteen minutes or so prior to tying.
The Underbody
While the quill is soaking, mount the hook in the vise and tie in the tail of the fly using the material of your choice. Be sure to create a smooth, level underbody of thread from the tail tie-in point to the point where your dry-fly hackle will eventually be tied in. Do not taper the underbody as you would when creating a dubbed-body dry fly. The increasing diameter of the quill body will provide the tapered body profile of the finished fly.
Now it is time to mount the quill. Tie in the quill by its tip roughly 1/3 of the length of the hook shank behind the eye—this should be the point at which you will eventually tie in your dry-fly hackle. Position the quill next to the side of the hook shank nearest you and begin wrapping thread over it rearward toward the bend. The pressure of the thread should roll the quill away from you as you wrap and secure it to the top of the hook shank. Continue wrapping to the beginning of the tail.
Segmentation!
The quill is now mounted and ready to wrap. Advance the thread to the quill tie-in point. Take up the quill in your hackle pliers (the rubber-tipped variety are best for this job) and wrap it forward in even, adjacent turns until you reach the hanging thread. Holding the quill directly above the hook shank, take up the bobbin and take several firm turns of thread over the quill, locking it into place on the far side of the shank. Trim the excess quill and continue with the rest of the fly as desired.
Quill-bodied flies were among some of the first dry fly patterns ever tied for use on American trout streams, and they’ve stuck around this long for good reasons: they fool wary trout with their realistic sheen and segmentation, they are fun to tie, and besides that they just plain look classy in your fly box. What could be better?
A Heavily-Hackled Adams Dry Fly
This is the time of the year in Michigan when many of us start getting serious again about making time for tying flies. If you’re like me, though, even being away from the bench for a few months leaves me feeling like a total novice when I get back at the work in the fall. It takes a few dozens of a couple of old standby patterns to get back in the grove.
The last few years I’ve started back on standard streamer patterns first, then switched over to tying a few batches of standard nymph patterns before getting back to dry flies. And I hate to admit it, but getting my manual dexterity back is really only half the problem — the other half is that as I get older my vision isn’t what it once was when it comes to doing detail work on flies down the the #18s I eventually need to tie to fill up a season’s set of boxes.
In any event, I have found one thing to be especially valuable these last couple of years at the start of the season, and that is watching tying videos on a regular basis. I usually learn something new, but I also find that watching a few tying videos helps me to remember lots of the little tricks that I’ve picked-up here and there over the years.
I do buy a tying video every now and then (I just re-watched Feenstra and Darkes’ Guide Patterns for Steelhead Streamers, for example — a video I picked-up on eBay a few years back).But another great spot for quality tying videos is actually the Internet.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, point your browser over to my favorite tying spot on the web — The Weekly Fly. What I find particularly nice about this site is the production quality of the videos. The lighting, closeup work, and the audio quality are are excellent, and in fact I think in many cases are better than the video and audio quality in many of the commercial tying instruction videos that I’ve watched. Another nice thing is that The Weekly Fly folks are featuring really excellent “big name” tiers alongside promising new names in the sport as well. The content of the site is really amazing, and you get a chance to see some really interesting new flies being tied with some of the newest materials in the fly shops. Cool stuff.
As a related aside, I’m meeting with Colleen Masterson-Bzdok (Education Director) in early November at the Boardman River Nature Center in Traverse City to discuss the formation of a winter tying circle for folks who live in the greater Grand Traverse region and want to get together one night a week at the Center to tie flies and swap patterns. If you’re interested in participating in something like that, drop me a line. We’ll get you on the list.
Dennis Potter is just as passionate about the art of teaching fly tying as he is when it comes to fly tying itself. This Michigan angler has crafted a life around the art of fly tying and his life-long efforts to master traditional and innovative fly tying are really paying-off. In addition to his work as a fly tying teacher to students of the Michigan Fly Fishing Club, he holds the honor of having his work selected for inclusion in the Rainy’s fly company wholesale catalog in 2009. MLive picked up an interview with him as well.
Potter’s design work is only part of the story. He also has two DVDs out in the New Hooked On Fly Tying series: Fly Crafter Patterns and Techniques I and II. Both are available through Amazon.com and eBay. He is an outstanding fly tyer and, having seen one of his videos, I can say that his ability to really teach the art of fly tying is exceptional. His work is particularly valuable to the Michigan angler because his innovative ties were developed to fool our native fish.
“The first thing that struck me when I saw Dennis’ DVD is this guy is meticulous. He pays acute attention to details … He has come up with techniques that are so different and he is a good instructor, a very good teacher.” – Rainy Riding, Rainy’s Fly Company
When he is not tying at his home in Grand Rapids, he can be found at his property on the AuSable playing with the fish and dreaming up his next fly design.
Flies on the Manistee
Trout fishing on the Manistee River in the early season … one of the best ways the spend an early spring afternoon (or, just as often, a cloudy, late afternoon!).
In this useful article, Chuck Hawkins of Hawkins Outfitters discusses the import role of Hendrickson’s and black caddis in early season trout fishing on the Manistee River, and he illustrates the lifecycle of the Hendrickson mayfly as a series of pictures of the corresponding artificial. What goes for the Manistee, goes for the rest of Northern Michigan — Hendricksons and black caddis are staples on all our waters. Read up and then fill those boxes!
