Grunt

If you want a nice full collar on one of your buggers tie the hackle in at the bend by the tip. When you palmer the hackle towards the eye pace the hackle so you can get a couple of wraps right behind the eye with all that soft stuff at the base of the feather. Tie it in good and give the thread wraps a shot of head cement.

I have no complaints about my Peak. It is the only rotary that I have spent time behind so I cannot compair it to others. It is a cool tool.

Look at Asheville NC. Fishing, food, music, and culture.

I tie my own and fish my own. The reason I do it is because the act of tieing and fishing those flys engages me on several different levels. Those levels are intellectual, physical, and spiritual. The intellectual is the never ending search for the right bug for the right time, the physical is getting out in all weather wading or fishing from my kayak and the spiritual is standing in a stream and having the realization that I am related to all the beauty around me and all things are part of a grand scheme.

I'll be tieing a #12 Wet Light Cahill flat wing.

I'm in with a some sort of flat wing. Soon as I get the pattern down I'll post what I'm going to ty.

One of the things I carry in my vest is a 3ft length of good poly cord. You never know when you will get into a conflict with a worm dunker or a pushy ass and have to restrain them hog tie wise.

If you get a piece from the spine or shoulder the hair will be about three or four inches long. It tys in pretty good and in appearance it is somewhat like mohair. Dub with the short stuff and the long can be used for wings, wrapped nymph bodys etc. It's buggy.

Stockard has got some Dr Slick bobbins with ceramic inserts for about $10. The smaller hooks you dress the more important a good bobbin becomes. They make bobbins especially for tying small. I use my ss bobbins for wire and floss and my ceramics for thread. Don't forget to have a couple of extra bobbin threaders stashed.

I'm using a Peak also. I have the salt and the midge jaws but I have never mounted them. I have tyed 0/4 down to 20's on the stock jaws without problems and have cranked Big Fly Thread down hard. I like the white base with a extra threaded vise shaft hole bored about four inches behind the regular mounting hole. I have a wood dowel in it with a upright spring on the end. The spring on the dowel is a great place to stick off cuts for the next fly to be tied. I have made a living for 40 years with hand tools and I know a good tool. Peak makes a good value for the money vise.

I try to tie for a hour or hour and a half a day. When I'm in the grove with a known pattern it's eight to twelve flys a day. When I am creating a new pattern it is maybe four a day as some are reties.

The particular bug you are tying can be a different shade of color in different areas of the country at different times of the year. But you know all that. Here in the NC mountains in the spring Golden nymphs seem to be a shade of green early in the spring and the color changes to more gold and light brown with darker markings before they emerge later in mid summer. I think contrast is more important than the exact color. I am suspect of anything that is endorsement marketed. It could be the selling of the product got away from the endorser without his knowledge.

Semper Fi, Grunt Alpha Co 1st Plt 2nd Squad !st Bn 9th Marines The Walking Dead Vietnam 1967

Just wanted to find out what folks are using in foul weather. I have been using a Marmot Precip rain jacket for the past four years. The Precip is lightweight,breathable,waterproof and cut to allow plenty of movement. I can wear it under my vest while fishing or over my PFD while kayaking. It also retails for under $100. Good piece of equiptment

The pattern I will be tying is a #10 Pink Prawn.

Im in with a pattern to be picked out soon

I tryed the William Joseph Confluence chest pack and had to go back to my vest. I simply carry to much stuff like thermometer,multi tool, seine, leader wallet, journal, tippet material, etc and at least three boxes. Couldn't fit all my tools to be at hand.

For my little ones I use two strand yarn. Tie it in at the mouth and use a bodkin to unfurl it and presto, two claws.

I spend the first half of my day in my studio turning bowls or working on sculpture. In the afternoon I pull up a chair at my tying bench and get 2 or so hours tying. When i'm working on turning or sculpture I am making large amounts of shavings and working chainsaws and big gouges and swinging a heavy mallet, noise and dust everywhere. It is a joy to go to the tying bench and work in a small field with small tools, I can hear my music too.

On page 94 of Schollmeyer and Leeson's Trout Flys Of The East is a nice little Blackfly Larva pattern. It has a little different element, a tag of 8-10 wraps of fine silver wire starting at the middle of the hook bend and assending into the body. The body then tapers down into a slim thorax and thread head with a little tuft of white cdc right behind the hook eye.

I keep all my hooks in one drawer in my tying bench. The drawer has three divisions wet,dry,and oddball. I keep the hooks in their respective little pouches so I can tell length,weight etc. I clip like hook pouches of different sizes together with metal clothes pins. Sometimes I have several different brands of the same hook in different sizes and the clothes pins work great for keeping the hooks sorted by type.

Anybody hear of a knot called the Midge Magic? Supposed to be fast and easy way to tie 16's and up to your tippet.

The best one for me up here in the NC mountains is The Appalachian Angler. www.appalachianangler.com. The owners are likely to be unshaven, kind of wet, and on the path behind the shop down to the Linville river. There is a tying bench set up with two vises and they don't mind if you show them a new bug. They also fish and ty salt and warmwater. One of the owners just got back from Patagonia with a big smile and kept saying 3x,3x. Contrast that with the Orvis shop up the road a mile. At Orvis they have a lot of high dollar stuff and no place to ty. They are clean and dry and sub out their guiding.\ There is another place worth mentioning and that is Faye's Store in Linville. Faye and her husband Paul have been runing the store for over fifty years. The store is an old hardware with wood floors, a door that sticks, and a rack of bamboo flyrods in the corner. The back of the store is littered with fly tying and rod building benches and tools, vests and waders, and fishing stuff. More often than not there will be a group of old and young gathered around a woodstove in the back talking fishing. Want to find out about local fishing? Just hang around a couple of years till they know you and pull up a stool and listen. Paul had polio as a child and lost the use of his left arm. It has not held him back as you should see how fast and good he is tying flys and building rods and he is a hell of a fly caster. Paul and Faye are in their seventys now and the store closes in the afternoon but is open every AM. I try to spend my tying dollars at Fayes first, and Appalachian second. There you have it for the NW NC Mountains

The Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Avery county.

On my 4 wt I tie about 12 inches of red 12 lb mono to my fly line with a nail knot. I then tie a perfection loop in the tag of the red mono. Join the mono with the leader loop to loop. Turns over just fine.