TheCream

Nice! Is the body just Krystal flash and Black Dubing? I used pearl Flashabou, 1 strand, wrapped for the body. Pretty easy fly, just tricky for me tying it down that small. -pearl Flashabou -white CDC oiler puff upright -black Superfine dubbing

This is the smallest I have ever attempted to go. Can't wait to put these to use when the weather breaks and I can actually trout fish a little. Until then I am stuck tying and fighting off cabin fever! I lashed the #28 fly to a #14 nymph hook in my vice just to add some scale.

How do you prefer to add a bead for weight to a soft hackle pattern, add it to the thorax or the head? I have seen both online and in catalogs. I tied up a few last night using the bead on the thorax, two hare's ears and two red soft hackles with floss bodies (no pics with me). I was curious how others prefer to add beads to soft hackle patterns?

I use this one at work for my coffee needs: WalMart Grinder

Does anyone else collect their own when possible? Me, I am a hard-core hunter when I am not fishing, so I take advantage of most of my kills when I can. I have a couple of large patches of deer body hair I saved, a few bucktails (have probably a few years supply of white), squirrel tails in both gray and fox, saved a tail clump from a pheasant I killed a few years ago, etc... I also will keep a turkey wing weather, the kind you can find randomly throughout the woods in Ohio, when they are in good condition. I don't save as much as I probably should, but I do try to make use of parts of the animals I hunt besides the meat. I'd like to take a few more squirrels before season closes and try to save some of the body fur to use for squirrel dubbing.

I'm planning on giving them a shot this spring/summer. One of our local lakes has some big flats on one end that are covered in carp most of the warmer months.

I caught a bunch of crappies, several Fish Ohio fish (13+ inches for crappies) on the fly last spring-summer. When they were in shallow, I was throwing a #6 hackle wing streamer I tie similar to a Black Ghost pattern. I modify the colors to match proven crappie colors for me. I have them in white, white/red, white/pink, white/blue, white/black, white/chart., and dun (gray). Some of them I have done a floss body and ribbed tinsel over that, some just a tinsel body with rib and the hackle wing above that. When they were deeper, I used Clousers and variations. My best deep crappie fly was a #6 marabou Clouser tied with 1/8" brass eyes. Colors were more or less the same, white/blue, white/olive, white/black were all very good. I also lucked into an 18" largemouth one evening working the marabou Clouser deep. The bucktail Clousers seem to get deeper than the marabou in the same size, so I would essentially work the water column until I figured out how deep the fish were. Hackle wing for shallow, marabou Clouser for moderate depth, bucktail Clouser for deeper fish.

I think I have caught all my channel cats on the fly accidentally on Clousers. I've caught a few in streams and a few more in ponds.

Love the leeches! I love about anything tied with rabbit strips, though.

I voted 10 minutes. Most of what I tie is pretty simple. I like simple, I like effective, simple and effective is the win-win situation I love. That being said, last night I was working on a foam popper that I thought would be pretty simple. What I was thinking was do something similar to a crease fly, only make the body more rounded for more surface commotion. I tied in a bunch of marabou and flash for the tail and to build up a body surface to glue in the foam. Then glued one edge of the foam, let that dry, rolled it over and glued the other edge. After that dried, I glued in a foam "disc" to close off the front of the popper and retrofitted one to the back. Then glued on eyes and did a little artwork with colored Sharpies. The finished product I liked...then realized I had just spent over an hour on one dang popper. :wallbash:

I'm on the 2nd set of jaws in my DanVise...more due to me being an idiot than over-use. I have been tying more in the last year than the first 4-5 years combined, though.

I have used the Mustad R73 standard streamer hooks for most of my Clousers for bass and crappie and have had great success with them. I tie them in both the deep Clouser and "skinny water" Clouser versions, mostly in size 6 for crappies. The color combos that claimed the most crappies for me last year were blue/white and pink/white. Those two colors accounted for about all of my bigger crappies over 12-13" last year.