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samsonboi

Backwards tying

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I was lying in bed the night before last and an idea popped into my head- I've read Fishing the Dry Fly as a Living Insect, and in that and in other books the flotation of the hook bend is very important since there's more metal. So I was thinking about this and the next day I tied up some dry flies that are hackled at the bend (both parachute and collar-hackle.) The parachute I tied used a scrap of doubled yellow foam as the post for extra flotation.

 

Basically, the hackle is tied in first, then tails are tied in over the eye, then the body is wound to the tail (any ribbing is tied in near the hackle.)

 

This gives an added benefit- the body is easier to taper if you start at the front, because dubbing is naturally inclined to be thicker at the top, and you can tie in quills at the base, so they don't break as easily.

 

Any input? I figured maybe the tippet at the eye would blend in with the tails, but also one concern is that with Catskill-style flies the pull on the back might drown the fly. Could this be fixed with a slack-line cast? I'll have to try it, maybe it'll prevent the tail from going under...

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I was lying in bed the night before last and an idea popped into my head- I've read Fishing the Dry Fly as a Living Insect, and in that and in other books the flotation of the hook bend is very important since there's more metal. So I was thinking about this and the next day I tied up some dry flies that are hackled at the bend (both parachute and collar-hackle.) The parachute I tied used a scrap of doubled yellow foam as the post for extra flotation.

 

Basically, the hackle is tied in first, then tails are tied in over the eye, then the body is wound to the tail (any ribbing is tied in near the hackle.)

 

This gives an added benefit- the body is easier to taper if you start at the front, because dubbing is naturally inclined to be thicker at the top, and you can tie in quills at the base, so they don't break as easily.

 

Any input? I figured maybe the tippet at the eye would blend in with the tails, but also one concern is that with Catskill-style flies the pull on the back might drown the fly. Could this be fixed with a slack-line cast? I'll have to try it, maybe it'll prevent the tail from going under...

 

 

Already been invented by several fly tiers. With these flies the hook bend is ABOVE the water so the bare hook is not directly visible.

 

The Waterwisp flies are upside down.

 

https://www.waterwisp.com/

 

https://www.waterwisp.com/patterns.htm

 

 

Roy Christie's Easy Peasie and Avon Special are also upside down.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aDWjnVJUQk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE-9sHEwsdg

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Among the other rationales I've read for tying flies with the head over the bend is that orientation in the stream matters. In that theory, IIRC, flies orient themselves so the they are facing upstream. Therefore it's more natural when fishing a dry upstream to use the backwards tie. Peter Hayes goes into the idea at some length in Fly Fishing Outside the Box: Emerging Heresies.

 

While I personally believe the idea is harebrained, if true you'd be defeating the effect by fishing those flies downstream.

 

I'm going to stick with tying flies in the conventional orientation.

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Among the other rationales I've read for tying flies with the head over the bend is that orientation in the stream matters. In that theory, IIRC, flies orient themselves so the they are facing upstream. Therefore it's more natural when fishing a dry upstream to use the backwards tie. Peter Hayes goes into the idea at some length in Fly Fishing Outside the Box: Emerging Heresies.

 

While I personally believe the idea is harebrained, if true you'd be defeating the effect by fishing those flies downstream.

 

I'm going to stick with tying flies in the conventional orientation.

 

As the nymphs "emerge," the river is flowing downstream. The nymphs would not swim against the current flow and so I assumed the nymphs swam to the surface in the direction of the river/stream flow which is downstream. Then when they reached the surface, most of the emergers would be also be facing downstream. If the emergers are facing downstream, then the emerged duns should be facing downstream on emergence.

 

Therefore, I always thought the duns tended to face downstream. Since the river flows downstream, the air is "flowing" upstream past the emerged duns. I always thought mayflies prefered to remain facing forward into the airflow, just as they would when they were flying.

 

I must admit, I don't know this for sure...... but if true, it would mean that the reverse tied flies would be facing in the wrong direction when fishing a dry upstream.

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I actually can't remember which direction Hayes claimed that mayflies face; I really haven't noticed a preference myself. It is imperative, however, that mayflies fly upstream to make up for the distance they've drifted over their lifetime (and in the course of emerging) else they'd be gone from a stream in a generation or two. It's possible that they're already orienting themselves as their wings dry.

 

I'll have to dig up my copy of the book to see what his claim was. It's an otherwise good book, but I didn't buy this particular theory.

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Thinking back I have seen many bugs pop through pointed more or less across the flow, some then sailing along quite ways looking like little yachts and some flying off in what ever direction almost instantly.

 

But regardless of bug orientation, if the cast falls in the serpentine curves that supposedly give drag free drift; how does the the fly end up facing? It seems like the final landing could point the hook in any direction? If the cast is across and up or has an aerial mend that would also change the direction of the landing, eh?

Is this fly/flow orientation so critical that we could pass a fly through the window multiple times and get no strike because our fly is pointed east instead of west?

Doesn't "the air is "flowing" upstream past the emerged duns." presume absolutely still air? I recall many time when the air appeared to me to be flowing at odds with this, but I don't recall if the bugs were hatching on those days. Do mayflies require still air to hatch?

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I actually can't remember which direction Hayes claimed that mayflies face; I really haven't noticed a preference myself. It is imperative, however, that mayflies fly upstream to make up for the distance they've drifted over their lifetime (and in the course of emerging) else they'd be gone from a stream in a generation or two. It's possible that they're already orienting themselves as their wings dry.

 

I'll have to dig up my copy of the book to see what his claim was. It's an otherwise good book, but I didn't buy this particular theory.

 

Correct. They all fly upstream to mate and deposit eggs. There also is nocturnal drift to redistribute some nymphs downstream.

 

 

Thinking back I have seen many bugs pop through pointed more or less across the flow, some then sailing along quite ways looking like little yachts and some flying off in what ever direction almost instantly.

 

But regardless of bug orientation, if the cast falls in the serpentine curves that supposedly give drag free drift; how does the the fly end up facing? It seems like the final landing could point the hook in any direction? If the cast is across and up or has an aerial mend that would also change the direction of the landing, eh?

Is this fly/flow orientation so critical that we could pass a fly through the window multiple times and get no strike because our fly is pointed east instead of west?

Doesn't "the air is "flowing" upstream past the emerged duns." presume absolutely still air? I recall many time when the air appeared to me to be flowing at odds with this, but I don't recall if the bugs were hatching on those days. Do mayflies require still air to hatch?

 

You make excellent points about the fly position if we are casting at an angle to the current.

 

Air flow is a separate issue. If you assume direction of river flow (east, west, north, south) is random and air flow is random, on average the flow of the river would control the flow of air past the insects much of the time. Mayflies hatch can hatch in all weather conditions.

 

I think that if a fish was selective to a mayfly positioned in a certain direction before the fish would eat, the hatch would have to be very heavy for the fish to get enough calories to eat.

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Just like SilverCreek mentioned, I've noticed that the duns tend to be oriented according whatever way the breeze is blowing. A drifting boat will do the same. I kind of doubt it makes too much of a difference since the fish see naturals facing in just about every direction at one point or another. I've seen duns spin like a top because of the currents. Besides sometimes it's better for fly to stick out amoungst the naturals anyway. That's not to say orientaion couldn't be a problem on extremely pressured and/or selective fish. Those kinds of fish are a different animal altogether as it were.

 

Swamp

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I think that any match of the hatch that doesn't look like the one that the local fly shop sells to everybody else might just be the ticket on a fishery that that gets a lot of pressure.

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I think that any match of the hatch that doesn't look like the one that the local fly shop sells to everybody else might just be the ticket on a fishery that that gets a lot of pressure.

 

Good point Mark. I've fished a public spring creek, Poindexter Slough, back in the days (early 1980s) before it was revised and it was a heck of a fishery with very selective fish. For those who are interested, Poindexter is just outside of Dillon, MT. I went to the three fly shops in town and they all said it was "hopper season" and they all sold the same hopper patterns. Now there are a ton of hopper patterns, but back then, it was before the foam patterns become popular.

 

All three shops had the Whitlock hopper, Jacks hopper, and the Schroeder parachute hopper. I had all 3 patterns and none of them worked on a brown trout I had targeted. I even caught real hoppers, cripple them and threw them in and the fish came over and refused all three real hoppers! But it took the Henry's Fork Hopper on the first cast! Sometimes you have to get lucky.

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