buggybob

Looks great. I'd clip the legs a bit shorter or else you'll be doing a lot of untangling of legs from the hook. Long legs like that tend to wrap under the hook and get stuck in the hook bend.

Ronn Lucas and a company named Natures Spirit based out of Seattle is the source unless you want to get into dying your own.

Whiting, Keough or other genetic hen neck cape will have the feathers you need. Just look on the head end of the cape. I can always find feathers small enough to tie 20's and even 22's on one.

Depends on where he will be fishing.

There is a lot of access for fishing cutthroat and resident silver salmon in Puget Sound. Flies for that depend on the time of year. Early in the season a euphausid pattern (small shrimp size 14 to 10) works well. As you get towards spring baitfish are hatching off the beaches and small baitfish patterns work well. Small clousers and bucktails size 6 to 12 really work. There is a local pattern called the Miyawaki popper that provides surface action if he likes that. Skip has many flies that work but I have always done better when "matching the hatch" with what is available in the local forage depending on the time of year, besides I'm not trying to sell books, just catch fish.

If he's fishing rivers, many different patterns work from small versions of standard steelhead patterns to some flies developed strictly for cutthroat Sometimes anything colorful will work as long as it's fished in the right structure. I personally like to use a reversed spider with a black body. I've caught cutthroat, steelhead and coho salmon in the rivers with that fly.

ps: Check out the book - Sea run Cutthroat by Les Johnson, the most recent edition if you want to see what the locals are using. Les put the fly section of the book together with input from the really active local fishermen/persons.

Halcyon, good presentation for those who are confused about the difference between the original spey flies and what can best be described as spey style flies. For those who have the opportunity to look at the original 16 spey flies as documented by A.E Knox in Autumn on the Spey, the originals were fairly somber flies representing the colors found in nature and locally obtained materials and natural dyes at the time. Now we have more colors to choose from than the old anglers would even dream about. Would they have used the colors and materials we have now ? Sure would have.

Well, the vise is uded for tying flies, but you knew that. The crank allows tying "true" rotary, applying materials while rotating the hook like a Norvise. Useful for basic flies but no used much for tying traditional Catskill style dry flies.

Great tie, nice and streamlined. A very good color to imitate the October Caddis on the steelhead streams of the northwest.

Slight change of colors and it could be a prettty good perch imitation too. Love the "tail" in that position, it really makes the look of the pattern work.

Looks like a great variant of a Birdsnest to me.