redietz

Reminds me that I haven't fished the Little Lehigh in a few of years. I need to go.

I think most Christmas tree nowadays is mylar. I particularly like the red stuff. I've used it for years.

Ultimately, they all swim to the surface. The White Fly (Ephoron leukon) is strictly a burrower until that time. I'm not sure about Eastern Green Drake, but I don't see many nymph imitations.

And burrowers.

I agree. I tie most of my soft hackles on either standard wire or light wire hooks. I usually want them either in the film, or no more than a few inches deep. On those rare occasions (usually in winter) when I want them any deeper, I'll either switch to a poly leader, add shot or put a weighted fly on point.

I disagree about the thorax. The pheasant tail is best at imitating skinny nymphs. To each his own, though.

That I haven't heard anything about. I did see on another forum, though, that they hadn't ordered any new line from the maker, and were up in the air about whether to continue to sell it. It would be a shame if they stopped.

You're already showing improvement from the first to the second! (And both will catch fish.) In addition to Silver's comments, one thing that stands out to me is the wire rib. A few comments about it: 1) The rib will better protect the pheasant tail if you counter-rib it -- i.e. wrap it in the opposite direction from everything else on the fly. Actually, looking again at the pictures, it looks like you may have counter-wrapped the body, which works just as well. 2) If you have finer wire, use it. 3) Try to keep the rib wraps evenly spaced and parallel to each other. One help with spacing is to plan on doing an odd number of wraps, and make the the middle wrap in the middle of the fly. In other words, if you plan on making five wraps, make sure the third is in the middle of the body. (Five is the traditional number of rib wraps on wet flies, and it's for that very reason.) If the middle wrap ends up anywhere other than the middle of the body, unwind and start over. And don't be afraid to make the wraps tight. You might want to work your way into tying this pattern a bit at time. Maybe tie a few pheasant tail soft hackles -- leave out the bead, thorax and and wing case. When you're happy with those, tie a couple more with a thorax, but still no bead or wing case. Then do a few more with the wing case. All those can be on a standard length hook. When you add in the bead, use a longer shank hook (like 2x long.) Alternatively, you can work your way from larger hook sizes to smaller: start with a size 12 and work down. I notice you list your favorite species as smallmouth. I've actually caught some sizeable smallies on size 16 pheasant tails while I was trout fishing.

Better hurry. My understanding is that they're thinking about stopping selling lines.

If you read the links I posted above you'll find: 1) Nayat is Icelandic sheep. (The are dozens of similar links where you can find the same info.) 2) Icelandic sheep have two distinct types of fiber, called tog and gel. The former is coarser and longer than the latter. Nayat is tog and I assume that Hareline's product is gel.

It's Icelandic sheep. Nayat Icelandic Sheep

Nope. It just means "Danish." Latin to English

Nice. It never occurred to me before that the Latin name for the Mayfly (E. Danica, as opposed to "mayfly", meaning any insect of the order ) meant "Danish." It should have been obvious.

The Ken Lockwood is favorite of mine, possibly because I spent so many days fishing Ken Lockwood Gorge in my younger years. It's my go to bucktail for dark water. Nice, sparse ties.

Just picked my set up from the post office. Not only good tying, but some wonderful ideas there as well. Thank you atxdiscgolfer for hosting.