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Fly Tying

RedRoverMike

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About RedRoverMike

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    Bait Fisherman

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  • Favorite Species
    Brown Trout
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  1. You know, if your like me and you like to hackle your flies very heavy for fast water or droppers, I use a half hitch tool. I just slide the half hitch tool over the eye of the hook to push all the hackle fibers back on the dry fly and make a 2-3 wraps. This makes pulling the fibers back very easy when it comes time to whip finish your fly. When I whip finish, I usually make 4 wraps, then apply a thin clear head cement. Don't use a thick head cement, because you want the adhesive to really soak into the thread wraps at the head.
  2. There is not need to split the thread..... It takes way to long and the only reason you usually use a dubbing loop is for strength and direction of dubbing. What I usually do is just tie in the tip of your CDC at the head the fly or wherever your going to dub. Then, place a half hitch at the base of your CDC's tie in point. Hold your cdc and thread together, using your rotary vise to twist them. Then wrap around the hook. It's easy and accomplishes the same goal as a dubbing loop.
  3. I like silk because it has a certain luster that Antron just can't seem to give. I also believe that fish react better to the cleaner looking body but you have to be careful because silk gets much darker when it gets wet. You really need to use a rib with silk too. A toothy brown trout can make a whole body fall off.
  4. They do make a brassie with legs and a tail. It's called a copper john.
  5. I would make it so that the first page in every fly tying book said "Go Now And Google Davie McPhail!!!!"
  6. I prefer to use Whitting Bronze Capes. Capes have a much larger variety of feather gauges then saddles hackle, which usually only has three to four close gauges (#10-12-14 for example). This is also why you should never buy a rooster saddle on ebay unless the gauge or hook sizes are mentioned. Sometimes palmered hackle will twist a tippet if you Palmer your hackle too far apart. Palmering hackle on a fly like an elk hair caddis or stimulator can act like an airplane propeller when casting. You could use a stiffer tippet but then you restrict the flies ability to float naturally as it should on the water. A stiff tippet overpowers the fly in a way. You can avoid this by twisting your rib or thread with your hackle and then palmering around the body of the fly. This causes fibers to stick out in random directions without looking like a mess on the hook. Standard dry flies will never twist a tippet. If they are twisting your tippet then it has more to do with the loop in your casting then it does your fly. This is because the fly is at the end of your line which is shaped and formed like a bullwhip (line taper). The fly is at the end of a elastic fulcrum, which basically means it is at the skinny end of the taper. For a fly to twist your leader just by flying through the air, it would need the same amount of strength to twist the thickest part of your line that your casting. This is because the energy your line is transferring from the thickest part to the thin tippet at the end is equal. Even though the tippet is lightly weighted, it makes up for its weight in speed. This is why casting to hard to fast can "whip" your fly off the line. To much energy is put into the cast and it causes the tippet to accelerate beyond the sound barrier causing a micro sonic boom just like a bullwhip.
  7. Lead is a naturally occurring substance that takes decades to break down in the water. Now even though the flow of water can erode lead easily just as it does rocks, lead is much much heavier at the molecular level, therefore it would only collect and bounce along the bottom untill it is stuck in a spot or gets dumped into a delta. Lead gets into big fish through bottom feeding baitfish that feed in areas where lead particles have collected. Preditory fish that eat a mass amount of baitfish and have a long life span tend to be affected the most. Take giant tuna for example, these fish eat multiple times their weight in baitfish that feed on mercury saturated algae at the bottom of the ocean. It takes a lot of baitfish for a tuna to gain just one pound, and because these fish live for decades, they collect large amounts of trapped mercury in their muscle tissue. Trout, bass, and some other gamefish grow too fast and have a wide variety of feeding options. This is why lead, mercury, and other chemicals are not a big deal to these fish. The problem is made to seem way worse then it actually is. The only thing that we as fly fishermen should be worried about is the mass amount of PCB's in the water and in fish. These are petroleum based chemical solvents that hinder fish growth, shortens life, and causes cancers in both humans and fish when exposed in large amounts. While the effects of PCB's on humans is something of speculation among people in the FDA, it is proven that PCB's in the water can kill fish and even cause mass fish kills.
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