LeakyWaders

Great looking fly! Nice SBS

Nicely tied! Any major differences between the methods for the regular divers and the mice?

Welcome to the board, from another Minnesotan!

Great looking flies!

Nice ties Bruce. I know Peak makes a magnum stacker as well. I believe it's right around the same price as the linked one.

I do that. It's after I have "pinched" and finished my stacks that I seem to make the hair move. Perhaps it's just a matter of needing a better thread base for my stacks. It's just something that I will have to figure out as I continue tying these. It will all come together eventually. But it's definitely a process. Do you use any kind of superglue to hold your stacks, and half hitches in place once you've packed the hair?

Whoa, that's impressive! I'd love to get to that level... some day. And Phish, you're right. The hair makes a huge difference, and right now I'm trying to use up some of the 'bad' hair that I have. A lot of the colors that I have are almost too thick, and stubby. I definitely prefer the long, thinner hairs for stacking like this. But for now, these are all just flies where I'm trying to learn techniques. My biggest problem at the moment is that I can't seem to get my hair stacks to line up properly. The "dots" of hair that I put in the fly always seem to be off center as I move through the fly. And I tend to have a problem with hair spinning a little bit on the shank as I progress down the fly. I know it will all come together in time, but what I feel should be rather simple accomplishments are rather hard when you're dealing with tightly packed bass bugs.

I'm still working on them, and plan to continue straight through the winter. The more I tie these things, the more I realize just how gifted guys like Pat Cohen truly are.

Yep. I just bit the bullet on some Universal Predator X hooks. Still less than a $1 a hook, so that's not too bad. I got my hands on a few flies tied with them, and was pretty impressed with the hooks.

Let me know if you here anything from him, will you? I'll do the same.

Has anyone heard from McFluffChucker? I ordered hooks 3 weeks ago, and haven't heard anything as far as followup goes. No tracking number, or any kind of confirmation that he has shipped. I understand shipping takes a bit longer, but the complete lack of communication makes me a bit nervous.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I'm using the fugly packer. It's one good tool. No more pierced fingers! And no, I don't steam my flies. I probably will eventually, but right now I'm just trying to learn some different tricks and technique. The flies don't have to be perfect yet, since they're not worthy of a spot on the wall.

My newest project involves creating a big mess. Stacking deer hair. It's not something I'm very good at, but with a lot of patience and practice, it's slowly getting better. Let me know what you think.

I used to be all flouro, but have changed over to wire. I've got two main reasons for this. I work to hard hooking some of these fish that bite-offs give me night terrors, and wire allows me to change a fly quickly. Not getting bit off is my number one reason for going to wire though.