Montanacur

Bimini, I'm curious what you think about the hackle you got from Charlie. I recently ordered a few capes, including a Rusty Dun. This was my 3rd time in 4 years ordering from him. Once again, I was incredibly satisfied. It's good stuff.

It sure does make me happy to live in a state where we have some open water to fish, even in the winter. I fished the Missouri here in Montana last Saturday afternoon and it was close to 55 degrees F. Beautiful day. This morning it was -20 degrees F. That will put a halt to things for a little bit. Most rivers close on Nov. 15th. But there are some great fisheries that stay open. Good luck to all of you who can stay on the water!

I would look up Park's Fly Shop in Gardiner, MT. I'm a Montana resident and use their patterns with great success. The website has a pile of great flies to browse thru, most of which were created for the Yellowstone basin. I fish in central MT, including on the Missouri where its a blue ribbon stream with great success using many of those patterns. On YouTube their head guide Walter Wiese has a channel with many videos that show how to tie their flies. One I would suggest is the yellow haze cripple. Its the same as the purple haze cripple, but uses yellow wonder wrap for body material. I have been using olive thread as an underbody which shows through the wonder wrap enough to make it a closer match to most natural PMD's. I'm going to tie some up using yellow thread and cream wonder wrap to see if that will match the creamier yellow looking PMD's I have seen. Good luck and happy tying. Oh, and go size 16 and 18 on those pmd patterns.

I love my state. So much weird stuff goes on here.

Randy, you might want to go and watch tightline's productions VIMEO video for the Guide's Choice Hare's Ear. He ties it in from the tip. I used his method and it works really well. These are by far my favorite videos on the web. They are done from the tyer's perspective and are very informative. Here is the link. http://vimeo.com/61026294

Thanks Flytire! And you're probably right about the storage. No sense in having to deal with twisted feathers of my own making.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, I was out of town. Yes the shipping was very fast. As soon as he received my check, the capes went into the mail the same day. I am thinking about ordering a couple in #2 in the near future.

Hey all, I haven't done a lot of posting here, mostly because there has been so much information to soak up I haven't had time. But I appreciate everything discussed on this site, and can't tell you how much it has impacted my tying in a great way. I just started really tying this last spring in April or May, and so I'm slowing building up my repertoire and supplies. Ok, probably not as slowly as my wife would like, but hey, she likes that I have a great hobby. Anyways, the main point of this post is to do a little bragging on Collins Hackle. After reading so much about it here and on other sites, I decided I needed to call the man and talk to him. So I did, and we had a great conversation, and I sent in an order for 4 #3 capes. A grizzly, a dark barred ginger, a barred dun, and a brown. The grizzly is incredibly awesome to say the least. Hackle length is good, quality is outstanding. I've tied with a few bronze and high & dry capes from Whitings, as well as a #2 Metz, so I have those to compare it to. The brown cape was unusual in that the smaller sizes (14-18) are quite small in overall feather length. You grab one that looks like it should be a 14, and when you check the hackle length it is much longer, sometimes even a 10. But again, great quality, color, and wrap-ability. The barred dun and the barred ginger were pretty much the same in quality and feather amounts. They had the least amount of smaller feathers, but those feathers were very good, and true to form. The saddles all ranged from 10-14 mostly in size, but a lot of variability in some of the feathers themselves, meaning it could go from a 14 to a 10 in the same feather. But like most people already know, he doesn't care about the saddles. Still usable for sure though! Definitely could see that his grizzly capes are the highest quality of what he produces. One thing that I want to know is the lack of twist when using a hackle. I was really impressed with how well they went on the hook. Better I think than any of the other breeder's capes that I mentioned before. Here are a few pictures of the hackle, and some flies I tied with it. In the picture with the big group of flies, I used my whiting's capes for the parachute Adams and Purple Haze, as I had tied those before I got the capes from Collins. However, I used the barred dun from Collins for the gray haze cripple. I highly recommend these capes to others.

It almost looks like they used a grizzly variant Schlappen.

Mine was a decent rainbow on a royal Wulff. Go big or go home for your first fly i say! It was was caught on the beautiful Gallatin river in Bozeman, MT. Oh how I miss college.

I haven't had a lot of experience yet, but thankfully it's been really good here in Montana. I fished the Bitteroot river a few weeks ago, and every drift boat that passed the people were very friendly. They all moved to the other side of the river, and most of them offered up flies and sizes without my even asking. Of course perhaps I looked like such a newb they felt bad for me.

Thank you, I think this exactly what I was looking for.

Hey all, wanted to first introduce myself and then ask a question or two. I've been visiting this forum for a while now just reading all the info I can get. I don't have a lot of experience with tying or fly-fishing, but I'm learning as I go, and especially with the help of this forum. I live in Montana, with some of the best fishing country around. I started learning on the Gallatin river in Bozeman, but life got in the way and I quit for a number of years. Getting back into it now on some smaller streams in central MT. My question revolves around the brown hackle on a royal wulff. Every one that I see in the stores, and/or buy, has very thick hackle (not the amount of barbs, but actual barb thickness). I have a bronze quality, brown half cape from Whiting, and the barbs just seem really thin. I've tried more wraps, using two hackle pieces at once, etc, but I've come to the above conclusion that my hackle is just very thin. Can anyone comment on this, and explain where I need to go from here to get a better finished fly? Thanks a million!!

Wish I had seen this sooner. I grew up in Kalispell and hunted down in that area along the boundary to the Bob by Condon and Seeley. Hope your trip went well!