Sagittarius62

Harry Murray's Strymph rarely fails me. Had some of my best days fishing this fly.

I like it. I just ordered my first load of tube fly material, and have been looking at a number of recipes. I am interested in smallmouth flies, and this one will be on my short list. :headbang:

While the masters of the soft hackle, were and are, often targeting a specific insect with their imitations, I find that they are very effective when nothing in particular is happening. a small variety of colors, and sizes are usually sufficient to raise a good number of fish.An Altoids tin with a variety of silk and fur bodied flies is most often all I carry, and all I need. We are talking here about nutrient poor, freestone streams for the most part here. Other types of trout water are quite different I'm sure.

I tied up a few of the STP frogs a couple years ago. I think Norman pointed me to the template. Thanks Norm. I found I didn't like fishing them. They always wanted to land bottom up. Any remedy for this? The frogs didn't go to waste though. My wife and daughters thought they were "cute", and promptly stole all of them from my fly box. I think there is still one stuck in my oldest's cork board in her room.

Here's Dave Whitlock's tutorial for those that might be interested. http://flyfisherman.com/skills/dwnoknot/index1.html Works like a charm. I stopped using it when I started tying my own leaders.I am often changing my leader and it's quicker to tie a nail-less nail knot.

Well what do you know.

It's back.

I hope so too. The fact that he can't seem to get a response out of the hosting company doesn't bode well, I fear.

Wingless wets. Spiders, flymphs, soft hackle nymphs. If I am trout fishing the likelihood I have one of these, or a team of them tied on, is somewhere around 95%. I don't use winged wets much, and I do very little dry fly fishing anymore. If I do fish on or near the surface, and it ain't a CDC&Elk, it is one of the above dressed to fish on or near the top.

The fishing guides in the Adirondacks used to catch a live dragonfly, and trap it on their hat with a couple of loops of thread. Swore it kept the blackflies and such off them.

Me too, and I haven't been able to either. I checked his main site, and there is no notice of anything amiss.

Thanks Ray. Cool modification. Hey, have you noticed that the Wingless Wets board seems to have gone off the grid?

Thanks guys. I have looked at some of the homegrown techniques mentioned, Letumgo's in particular. I am aware of the basic tube fly rigs like this this one.

I guess my question is whether the Danvise with the extension arm gives enough clearance behind the jaws for the mandrel.

I haven't been able to find a setup specific to the Danvise. Are any of the ones out there better than others? I do have the extension arm already. Or would you advise buying a low cost vise and tube rig to match? Thanks in Advance.

The best Royal Wulff tutorial I have ever seen. By Loren Williams.

http://flyguysoutfitting.com/royalwulff.html

I make a similar fly from leftover marabou pieces. i have a baggie that I just stuff with cut butt ends, and feathers that aren't good enough for whatever I am tying. When I get a bunch, I slip them into a dubbing loop, like how Peter Frailey ties the front half of his conehead combo. I mix colors sometimes randomly, or on purpose. Wrap the marabou "chenille" up the shank, build a head and there you go. mixing rust, olive, brown, and red make a good looking leech.

Jim Slattery www.jimsflyco.com has furnace hen in stock according to his website. Denny doesn't appear to have furnace available in either his JV Hens, (best for soft hackles) or his Mature Hens. But a call might be a good idea to see what he has.

Yikes!

 

I just noticed this thread and find myself in the (very) minority. For soft-hackle flies I almost always tye my feathers in by the root and then wrap rearwards to my awaiting thread, which I then wrap through the hackle collar. Thus my hackle is locked down by several wraps of thread. An additional advantage is that should the hackle break (which is a common occurence when using the tiny marginal coverts of starling, snipe, etc) it will break at the hackle pliers and won't need to be retyed to the hook.

Dave Hughes in Wet Flies advocates this technique, and it makes sense to me. Also, the feather butt is locked down under the body of the fly, If the fly has a fur body or thorax, that feather butt disappears anyway. That being said, I am pretty new to the whole soft hackle thing, and I tie them butt first, tip first, distributed wrap, compensated wrap or palmered. Like Mark said, it is whatever is best for a certain fly.

My dad left last week, glad he got out before the shooting started.

Looks like a baby bullhead. Very nice. I have wondered about young bullhead as a forage for smallies. My hometown river like many, goes back and forth from smallie water to bullhead water. I have wondered about using a bottom hugging small bullhead imitation in some of the transition zones. Sorry for the hijack.

Interestingly, I just got back from JoAnn's fabric with a bag of embroidery floss to give this a try.

Braided Body Stonelfy

Thank you. I putting a few of those in the box for sure. I don't have any antron, maybe a snowshoe foot wing would suffice?

The only thing I dont like about the craft store stuff is it isn't hollow. It doesn't seem to lay down as nice as the hollow stuff from fly shops. For instance when tying something like day5's Go Caddis on a scud type hook, it wants to roll down the shank on the first wrap, where the hollow stuff will compress, and behave.

I have been using it to tie Fuzzel Buggers like these.

Fuzzel Flies

Doesn't get much easier than this.

Green Weenie