Hot Tuna

Hi Kevin...Trout Streams and Hatches of Pennsylvania, Charles Meck Check his site as well there might be a pocket hatch guide that he did with Paul Weamer.. LTNS, John

Sturgeon_Catcher would have been 63 today....gone but not forgotten Fred "What are they doing in heaven today..pain and sorrow have all gone away. Peace it flows like a river they say. What are they doing there now." Jorma Kaukonen doing Charles Albert Tindley

That vise just might be a Thompson model C vise which had a flat head like that. Here's an Ebay listing with a picture of one along with a Thompson Model B http://www.ebay.com/itm/Two-Thompson-vintage-fly-vises-/160715849120?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item256b693da0

I like the Harrop Hairwing dun or in smaller sizes CDC no hackle dun....as far as the choices listed parachutes are good too. Come to think of it all the choices in the poll have their time and place.

One of the great fly tying how-to authors...I still remember him reaching over my shoulders to demonstrate the then new Matarelli whip finisher....bingo! My condolences to his family...he was one of fly tying's greatest instructors. Fare thee well Dick.

The tip forum was my favorite section of the site...I wonder why it was shut down to further posting???

Just finished watching LaFointaine Originals Vol.2(BTs Fly Fishing Products) which I recently obtained on Ebay. What a great tape! Good job Al and Gretchen. Also includes the tying talents of Paul and Char Stimpson who I hadn't seen tie before...great tiers. I particularly liked the Enchanted Prince Nymph pattern and the "double magic" technique. Brilliant!!! A lot of out of the box thinking on this one which Gary was so good at. Gone but never forgotten.

What's even sadder is the price a single tube of Overton's Wonder wax goes for on Ebay....glad I have some already. I believe there's a recipe for the wax Harry Darbee used in the book he wrote with Mac Francis,Catskill Fly Tier.

I like to make sandwiches of the thin craft store foam....two sheets of black with one sheet of green(my favorite) or orange glued(I use Super 77) between the two black sheets. Then you take your single edge razor blade and cut strips of the thickness that works for your hook size. The resulting strip has a stripe that is obscured by the body of the beetle but very visible to you. Blue Ribbon Flies calls something similar tiger beetle strips and sells them if you don't want to make your own.

Great deal on the Leiser book....the other excellent book for things such as this is From Field to Fly:The FlyTier's Guide to Skinning and Preserving Wild Game by Scott J. Seymour. Available from Amato publications...

Hi Dilettante...just spotted your question. I take precautions with all new materials coming in, including things from my friends. As far as salar.413, he's been a commercial tyer for 40 something years and you don't make money by having your material stash getting infected. At a minimum I subject all natural materials to a deep freeze for a day or two. I keep new capes and saddles in a secondary quarantine for a little while in a clear shoe box since having my hackle getting infected would be financially disastrous...I'll spare the gorey details of exactly how much I've got. An excellent, albeit dated book about all of this is my old friend Eric Leiser's book, Fly Tying Materials:Their Procurement ,Use and Protection. You can get a copy for a good price on EBay from time to time.

Tom...I think a long shank hook in the smaller sizes is not an optimal choice if you're looking to hook the fish. You want to go for better hook gap on the smaller flies and actually a shorter shank hook will allow you tie the smaller sizes and still have a decent hook gap. The best midge hooks in my experience are the Vince Marinaro midge and Capt Hamilton by Partridge. They're expensive and this is an example of you get what you pay for. When I tied midges commercially many moons ago I used the Mustad 94942 and plenty of people caught fish on those flies. Just my thoughts....

New skeeter fuzz caddis colors are grrrrreat....clearly the same stuff as Andra spectrum.

I agree with Norm's recommendations and also check out seller salar.413 on Ebay....a former fly shop owner from our area that sells materials on Ebay now...he regularly puts up nice lots of large bags of CDC. I have a fair amount of it and it's good stuff.

Fly tying is a school from which we never graduate and you're always going to need new "books". You will have enough when you're dead. HT

I would go with the DVD called Fly Tying Basics with Dick Talleur which can easily be found for under $20.00 and my book recommendation is Essential Trout Flies by Dave Hughes....also around $20.00. Those two items would keep you busy for a long time.

What you inadvertently tied is the Sid Neff caddis....which has no hackle. It is killing sometimes when certain caddis are on the water that float along for a while before skittering off. The Housatonic in CT has a size 16 green bodies caddis that works great when tied in this style. Flytire's critique of the wings is correct....get a hair stacker and the other thing you can try is using coastal deer hair for the wing instead of elk. That fly will catch fish even with the stubby wing...never forget the late great Gary LaFontaine's principles of "roughness and ugliness" in tying flies to catch fish not fishermen. Keep at it...good first try.

Scott try this one.. a nonvideo step by step by Dick Talleur....I've taken classes with him a couple of times; he's a good teacher. This includes the glue off method of finishing the parachute which I sometimes favor: http://www.dicktalleur.com/proj1.pdf

Check out this great bit from Charlie Craven..... http://www.hatches.tv/play.php?vid=359

As an afterthought I have noticed some dun badgers finding their way through in recent days....Eric's book was copyright 1973. There are also golden badgers as well....the nice thing about this color is it gives a nice dark look to the the thorax portion of the fly....the silver badger hackle is a must for the killing White Wulff.

Straight from Eric leiser's classic Fly Tying Materials,p 97: "BADGER Any neck in shades of white to dark cream having a black center stripe throughout all the hackles on the cape."

Nice tie Greg.

http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?sho...l=foxee+bastard

Look no further than Mike Schmidt's(Redwings) Foxee Bastard. OK look further but Mike's pattern is great!

Brilliant Beattys....the power of the pen!