Philly

That's true, Mark. I've found that blacking out the side panels seems to improve my sight picture. Mine are all plastic so I don't understand the comment about wear. I own four pairs of them yellow, amber, copper and gray. Large size so they fit comfortably over my glasses. I always considered them senior citizen sun glasses when I was younger. Now that I'm a senior citizen they look good.

I use Cocoons. Some of mine are more than five years old and I haven't had any issues with them other than them not fitting over a new pair of my prescription glasses. I solved that problem by bringing a pair with me when I get new glasses. One suggestion with your next pair of Cocoons, black out the side panels. This totally eliminates any side glare that might come through the clear side panel. That said, when I got new prescription glasses this past summer I added polarization to impact and scratch resistant and anti-glare. They weren't cheap. But there's no way to they cut down the side glare. I'll continue to wear the Cocoons over them when I fish.

Mine sits about nose level with my current chair. It sits on top of something I "borrowed" from work when I retired.

Looks good. White is often an overlooked color for "nymphs". I've always had good success with a small size 16/18 white woolly bugger. Experiment with it. Try tying it on a longer shank hook. See if they might like a different color, olive, brown, tan, black, maybe even chartreuse

Visibility, floatation, width to push more water. As far as the fly landing correctly, it may have the opposite effect. One of the problems, which I finally solved, was that my foam body flies would sometimes land hook point up. Too much foam, wings, legs tied in even with the top of foam, and the wrong hook and the fly lands on its back. What I do is use a heavy hook, usually a straight eye streamer hook, rather than a dry fly or even a hopper hook. The other thing I do is tie the legs in so they sit at the bottom of the foam. I don't normally use wings, but tie them sparse and with the lightest material possible.

That looks so much more comfortable than the bottom up 5 gallon bucket set on top of the sled I used as kid, to sit on when I was ice fishing. Nice fish. They use to stock some of the lakes we fished with rainbow trout, but mostly we caught panfish, chain pickerel and the occasional bass or walleye. and certainly not the quantity of fish you caught.

FWIW. Years ago, before I took up fly fishing, my 12 year old nephew and I were fishing a creek that flowed into a stocked lake. There were trout in the stream but we were fishing for bass with live minnows. At the end of the day, I tossed the remaining minnows into the creek. As they were struggling on the surface, the trout went nuts coming up and grabbing the minnows just behind the head. It stuck in my head, and helped me when I started tying and fishing streamers. That said I agree with Bryon tie some of each.

Like this?

I use a lot of different hooks TMC, Gamakatsu, Daiichi, Partridge, Eagle Claw, VMC, Ahrex, Owner and one Mustad hook. For trout flies, when I tie them these days, I use TMC, Partridge and I still have a couple of packs of Orvis hooks Warm water, Gamakatsu, Eagle Claw Aberdeen hook, Ahrex, the Daiichi 2461 and the Mustad 3777B Salt Water, which I don't tie many these days, TMC and Varivas.

The first time I went to one was in 1997. It was held in Secaucus, NJ. I think that was a year or two before the show moved to Somerset. It looks like the Fly Fishing show in NJ is going to be in Edison rather than Somerset. I've never been to the Lancaster show. Main reason is my salt water club doesn't have a table at that show. It's located in Ocean City, NJ and figures it's easier to recruit new members at the NJ show. As far as distant goes Somerset and Lancaster are about the same driving distance and travel time. Edison adds another 30 or 40 miles to the trip. I liked it better when both shows were held in Somerset.

My salt water club has been acting as "lake guides" for the South Jersey CFR retreat for several years now. We had a good group this year. It's a pleasure to work with the women and share their excitement when they catch a fish. One of the ladies caught a 16 inch bass with one of the flies I tied up for it. A couple of the other women caught smaller bass.. It was a great day.

Then you were talking with me. A belated glad to have met you. I've managed to avoid Covid so far and I don't feel like catching the flu, so I continue to wear a mask in public places. I only knew about four of the folks tying and they were all busy when I walked around the show. I've been going to it since 1998 and used to know a lot of the tyers. If you're looking for more vendor then the Fly Fishing show in January is the one you want to go to. Mostly vendors and outfitters with a few scattered tyers. I think we'll be there in January, probably in the same spot.

I was there all day Saturday. I packed up tying gear about 3:30. My club, South Jersey Coastal Fly Anglers shared tables with the FFI in the hallway in front of the auditorium. You got to remember this is a Fly Tying Symposium, not a fly fishing show. So the number of vendors was limited. That said, I didn't think the show was that crowded compared to some of the pre-Covid symposiums. Did get a chance to talk with some of the folks who stopped to watch us tie. One guy had flown in from Memphis and another had come down from Ontario to attend the show. I did go in to check out the show itself. I didn't buy a whole lot, just a couple of packs of the Ahrex Swim Bait hooks and picked up the sample pack they were giving out. I use that hook for a frog pattern and brought the last pack of size 4 that they had. It was my first venture to a large gathering in the post-Covid world. I'm curious as to what size crowds they'll have at the Fly Fishing show there in January.

Definitely, you can tie a lot of flies. Next time you stop by the fly shop. Pick up some more marabou. White, Yellow and chartreuse. I tie a lot of foam bugs. I buy all of my 2 mm foam at craft stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby. Cheaper, usually a larger sheet, 8 1/2 by 11, a lot of different colors. You can also find, 6 mm and sometimes 3 mm foam there. White is a basic color to have. You can use permanent markers to color them. Sili Legs are nothing more than the material used to make spinner bait skirts. You can find them on-line or in catalogs as spinner bait skirt layers, generally cheaper and in way more colors. Think about getting a grizzly dry fly neck at some point, I think it's more versatile than a badger. Hooks, I'm not a big fan of Mustad hooks, mainly because they were the only hook readily available when I started tying flies and were seldom sharp coming out of the box. If you are planning on tying mostly warm water flies, look for a hook that has a round bend, a wide gape and a straight eye. A good example would be the Eagle Claw Aberdeen Crappie hook. You should be able to find them in any store that sells fishing equipment. Time to start tying. Post some pictures of what you tie.

I've been using hair from a deer's mask for over 20 years now. I was involved in a fly swap that required me to tie 100 flies. I decided to tie the CDC & Elk, which is actually tied with deer hair. I stopped at a local fly shop and told the owner what I was planning to do. He told me if I was planning to tie a lot of caddis, I'd be better off buying a deer's mask rather than the several individual pieces. He sold me for a deer's mask, if I remember correctly for $12. That one lasted a few years before I needed a new one. I found one in the English Angling Trappings catalog for $15. The mask was huge I had to cut it in half in order to store it one of my plastic storage container. I still have a half left. Nice thing about them you can find various colored hair on the mask and it's a bit finer than the body patches you can pick up in fly shops or on-line. Here are a couple of CDC and Elks and Stimulators I tied earlier this year using deer mask hair.

They look very similar to some parrot feathers my niece sent to me. I was able to tie some size 12 and size 14 nymphs with them

Nice, pretty much what I do. The only difference is I use Fluorescent Green, Fluorescent Yellow and Fluorescent Orange for the body colors. I've always preferred a longer shank hook for the reasons you cited. I use the Daiichi 2461, the Eagle Claw Aberdeen hook, various straight shank worm hooks, and there's a couple of the Ahrex streamer hooks I like. And in the last year I've started using the Flex resin for all my foam bugs.

I'm not sure this would be considered a "keel hook" The Mustad 3777. Still can't post pictures, so you'll have to google it. I use it for bass and panfish flies. Having started tying when Mustad was often the only hook available and not very sharp out of the box, this is the only Mustad hook I use for fly tying. Nice and sharp.

Another source for fine colored wire are old ear buds. I've gotten copper, silver, red and green from old iPod buds. Old cable connectors are another source for copper and silver wire. As far as using sharpies I haven't tried them. I have some Copic markers that can also be used for air-brushing. They might be able to color silver wire and not fade.

Still can't post pictures. I can insert it in the text, but when I try to upload the text and pictures. I get this message. Forbidden You don't have permission to access this resource. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Still can't navigate to the next page once I'm in a thread. Have to go out and then click on the next page.

We have quite a few black squirrels around here. There are some neighborhoods in the burbs where all the squirrels are black. I've seen a few in my neighborhood. I've yet to see one when I'm out squirrel hunting. No fox squirrels in eastern PA. The only time I've hunted them was I was in Columbus, OH for my DLA intern training back in the early 80's. Definitely have more meat on them than the local gray squirrels. I saved a couple of the tails to hang on my rear view mirror, but I wasn't in to fly fishing back then. I don't usually save the hides, but I did find a neat trick for the tails. I was cleaning a couple of grays and found if I made a couple of cuts at the base of the tail I could peel the tail off of tail bone. Turned them right side out, filled them with Borax and hung them to cure.

That explains why when I brought some nice air-brushed size 10 poppers from a guy I know at the Edison, NJ fly fishing show a few years ago, they were tied on size 4 hooks. He's mainly a salt water tyer. Those nice looking flies, Capt Bob. The would work well for bass in fresh water. I use the Perfect Popper soft foam popper bodies. Mainly because I'm too lazy to shape them out of foam, cork or balsa. I split mine between plain, in the same three colors as yours, and the rest get colored with permanent markers. You can do a lot with the markers on the soft foam bodies that you can't do with cork or balsa with a white base coat.

Generally, I use 2xl or 3xl long straight shank hook for my poppers. I prefer a round bend. I haven't used the B10S for poppers. I've used the Daiichi 2461, Eagle Claw Aberdeen hook, Mustad 3777(this one has to be straightened), Ahrex Trout Predator Long. Most of the Ahrex hooks can be used in fresh or salt water. Mostly I use sliders and spiders for panfish, but they're tied on size 6 long shank hooks. These are some of the poppers I'm taking to Canada this week. Smallmouth are the main targets.

Placing the eyes on the bottom of the shank allows the hook to ride "normally", hook point down. The way most of the flies we tie do. As Captain Bob mentioned where you place the eyes impacts the action of the fly. The Clouser Minnow is a good example. Clouser is very specific in his tying instructions that eyes should be tied in 1/3 the length of the hook shank behind the eyes. Tie them in right behind the eye and you have a bucktail jig rather than a Clouser minnow. This year I changed the placement of the dumbbell eyes on my crayfish pattern. I had been tying them right behind the hook eye. This year I tied them in Clouser style looking to get a different action and change how they would sit on the bottom.

Rich, here's one that we tied in my salt water club's weekly Zoom tying session. It called a Pickerel fly. In the video there was an underwater shot of it being retrieved. It has an up-down motion, basically a wave motion. The hook I used was either 2xl or 3xl, straight eye. Another way to get some additional action in a baitfish/streamer pattern.. Plan to fish it when I'm up in Ontario next week.