Dallasblues 0 Report post Posted October 20 Hey all! I’ve posted a few times recently about my journey into tying winged wet flies. After a few years of dries, nymphs and streamers I thought I’d work on these for a while. From a purely aesthetic point of view winged wets are the prettiest patterns in my opinion. So far I’ve been focusing on two specific flies… a Leadwing Coachman and a Royal Coachman. Tying the bodies is easy enough. Hackle is fairly straightforward unless it’s a throat. That gives me fits. But my main question is about the wings. I have several duck and turkey quills I’m using. Sometimes I get them cut and lined up fairly evenly. Sometimes they’re a little bit off. But what’s really frustrating me is tying them in correctly. I’ve watched dozens of videos where it’s done and think I’m following it fairly well. Once I have them in my fingers at the length I want I use a loose pinch wrap and then pull upwards on the thread binding the feathers to the shank. It does just that. However both feathers almost always end up on one side of the shank or the other… never directly on top. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing differently from the videos I watch. Theirs always look great and uniform and tidy. Mine look okay if you’re looking at it from one side but looks weird from the other. Oh! And some guys online appear to have one feather on each side of the shank when tying them in? For the life of my I can’t figure out how they do that. Anyway… I had to step away for a bit. Almost threw my vice in the dumpster. Ha! I kid. How did you guys learn to do this properly? I must’ve tied 30 Coachmans these past couple of days and maybe only two are acceptable. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
flytire 0 Report post Posted October 20 in the 1990's i took a tying class with don bastian on tying winged wet flies. well worth the money its a practice practice practice type of thing i do the pinch method but i usually make a soft loop and on the second wrap of thread i tighten downward and hope for the best keep watching the dressed iron videos leadwing coachman https://youtu.be/2EvmUVhqEqs?feature=shared Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dallasblues 0 Report post Posted October 20 2 hours ago, flytire said: in the 1990's i took a tying class with don bastian on tying winged wet flies. well worth the money its a practice practice practice type of thing i do the pinch method but i usually make a soft loop and on the second wrap of thread i tighten downward and hope for the best keep watching the dressed iron videos leadwing coachman https://youtu.be/2EvmUVhqEqs?feature=shared I’d absolutely be willing to pay for such a class. In person instruction would be invaluable I would think. I’ll keep an eye out for it in my area for sure. Until then I’ll just keep practicing over and over. My box of junk flies keeps on growing but the experience is likely worth it. Thanks! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gadabout 0 Report post Posted October 21 Also listen to Fred Klein’s description on the Wet Fly Swing podcast. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
