SilverCreek

Different laws BUT even if the flies are legal in Canada, they are not legal in the USA. So if you travel to the USA to fish, leave the flies tied with polar bear home. How do I know? I know because when I went fishing in Canada about many years ago and came back to the USA, the agents looked at my fly boxes for flies tied with polar bear.

I would advise you not to try to take flies with polar bear into the USA. https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-64?language=en_US "You cannot import skins or You cannot import skins or items made from, or trimmed with, the fur of these animals. Furs from seals, polar bears, and sea otters are also prohibited."

I would say that the flies are rather large for dry flies on a small lake. Have you seen trout eating off the surface. How large are the naturals that they are taking? Have you seen trout taking grasshoppers or other food that large off the surface?

You asked: "What should I add or change to make these dry flys even more effective" Before one can answer your question, you need to tell us what species of fish are you targeting and what kind of water are you going to fish?

I use the shuttle weave. In the shuttle weave, the threads interlock as they cross, and there is no need to tie a knot for every thread crossing. So it is much faster. It is also easier especially as the flies get smaller. The shuttle weave using bobbins can be seen in the video by Aaron Jasper. One key is to keep tension on the floss, and to pull away from you toward the woven areas so the next weave is tight against the previous. I use regular 6 strand embroidery floss I buy at Joannes or Michaels craft store. At about 3/$1 it is cheaper than fly tying floss. Unravel the floss into 2 or 3 strands depending on fly size and wind onto plastic sewing machine spools. Buy spools with [i[rounded[/i] side edges sos they dons bite into your fingers as you apply tension,You will thank me later. Wind the floss onto the spools by using a portable drill. Place the eraser end of a sharpened pencil into the drill chuck. Force fit the plastic bobbin into the tapered end of the pencil end and wind away. I use Matarelli mini bobbins made for sewing machine spools. Here's Aaron Jasper performing the shuttle weave. Since there are no knots in the shuttle weave, you can easily tell if a woven fly is tied using the overhand weave or the shuttle weave. The shuttle weave has a smoother body.

I have The Master Fly Weaver (copy 1413 of 1950) and Montana Trout Flies (copy 461 of 1950), both by George F. Grant. Both books are excellent for woven flies.

Landon Meyer's Chubby Damsel looks like Gary Borger's Damsel fly in that it uses a braided monofilament body. Landon's pattern from Fly Fisherman Magazine is below. https://www.flyfisherman.com/editorial/damselflies-strategies/468223 "Chubby Damsel Fly Recipe SEE PHOTO GALLERY Mayer's Chubby Damsel. HOOK: #14-16 Umpqua XT050 BN5X Stubby T 10. THREAD: Black/blue 8/0 UNI-Thread. BODY: Kingfisher Blue/ Olive, Ice Dub under FOAM: Blue/Olive 2mm Fly Foam. TAIL FLASH: One strand of black/Olive krystal flash folded over three times TAIL: Blue/olive Hareline Adult Damsel Body, barred with black Copic marker, tipped with clear resin. SIGHTER: White poly yarn. WINGS: Clear UV Pearl Hareline Grizzly Flutter Legs and Chicone’s Barred Regular Crusher Legs. BACK LEGS: Black Span Flex. Gary Borger's Pattern is below: https://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/fishing/2010/03/tietalk-braided-butt-damsel Most fly tiers like Landon have used foam to modify the pattern to guarantee a floating fly I mentioned this to Gary and he asked me whether the tiers had thought he had not considered foam. According to Gary, the trout can concentrate on the drowned damsels and the foam pattern cannot imitate drowned damsels because they always float. So tie the standard pattern first and add a few foam ones if you want. Compare the Borger damsel with other damsel patterns and you will note how realistic the braided butt pattern looks compared to foam, dyed deer hair, or dubbed abdomen patterns. None of these can match the thin abdomen of the natural insect. The Borger damsel is the most effective damsel patterns I have fished. And use a strong tippet. The vicious take can often break you off. Another point is that the stage before the mature blue damsel is the brown teneral phase. You can use a brown color marker to match the mono to tie up a few teneral patterns. The brown teneral patterns will also match brown dragon flies. Cortland braided mono comes in 30 and 50 lb strengths. Get the 50 if you can. You can use the braided mono for making braided loops and the 50 lb is stronger. The video below shows how damsels are vulnerable when they are under the water and how they get trapped in the film. A foam damsel pattern can't get that trapped in the film appearance.

I've seen trout take hovering damsels on Hebgen Lake just like in the video below. You can take them using floss blow line fishing. https://vimeo.com/85147880 "Blow line fishing" is a technique described by both Gary LaFontaine and Gary Borger. Gary Borger wrote about it in his book, Presentation pg 286. In Gary Borger's technique you use untwisted polypropylene yarn that is flatten and ironed to straighten the fibers. Then you form a "kite" out of it by whipping finishing a loop into it and attaching it to the end of your fly line and then attaching 2 feet of 2x or 3x mono to the "kite". The heavy tippet material is to prevent break offs. The strikes are vicious. When there is enough wind blowing from off shore, you raise your fly rod and the use the wind to make the fly hover and dap the water surface just like a hovering damsel fly. You can read Gary LaFontaine's article below: http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/lakes/part81.php I use a pattern that will sink. Damsel crawl under water to lay their eggs and they drown. Drowned damsels are rarely fished and the trout are not shy about taking them. Here's what Jason Borger has to say about damsel patterns: "One question that I/we often get about this fly (inspired by a pattern that my father saw in New Zealand back in the 1980s) is, “Why don’t you use foam for the post, it floats better?” The answer is based on years of observing damselfly hatches and is fairly simple: because sometimes we want the fly to sink. If that sounds odd, keep in mind that “dry flies” (or perhaps more accurately “dry insects”) sometimes aren’t so dry…." I wrote about this previously in this post about how it is used for hovering damsel flies: http://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/entomology/346050-damsel-distress.html#post788631

Instead of navigating by clicking on the "Browse" tab and then on the various "forum tabs" in the forum window below: I click on the "Activity Tab" to take me to the latests posts. If I want to see the earlier posts, I click on "Load More Activity" at the bottom of the screen.

There are copies available on the Auction Site E***

Here is a link to a thread that shows how I tie off Parachute Hackle on the bottom of the parachute post. I hope it helps you. https://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/index.php?threads/parachute-dry-fly-question.361100/#post727858

Dyeing material is not only about color. You also need consistency from batch to batch. That means you need a way to control both color and color saturation.

The "buckskin nymph" in the video usually imitates a caddis larva. However, there is a different version of the "buckskin" that imitates an aquatic worm or even an earthworm. I had a fly fisher next to me that tied a length of chamois onto a ook with an overhand knot and began catching trout. The knot imitates the clitellum of the worm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitellum On the San Juan, there are aquatic annelids that look exactly like earthworms. https://www.ecospark.ca/aquatic-earthworm https://www.jungledragon.com/image/84005/aquatic_worm_-_oligochaeta.html

I have 32 gigs of memory and a 1 TB SSD.