SilverCreek

How well does the humongous bugger fish in rivers? Do you get short strikes that miss the hook because of the longer tail that is twice the length of the body?

FYI - Cancer risk after stopping smoking takes 20 years to drop to the rate of someone who has not smoked. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/patient-care/care-settings/cancer/index.htm#:~:text=10 years after quitting%3A risk,someone who does not smoke.

Dismantled and sold for scrap.

Good for you VC

Here are instructions for a home made Magic Tool: You will need thick foam blocks (from a thick pair of foam sandals), an old credit card, and a set of bulldog paper clamps. Cut a straight slit in the foam blocks from end to end. The slit has to reach to both ends of the foam blocks to be able to release the fibers later. Put the CDC fiber stems over the slit in the foam block and pull the fibers into the slit by their ends. If the plumes do not extend over the end of the block and cannot be pulled in, use the old credit card to push the CDC fiber stems into the slit. Use the paper clamp in the place of the transparent Petitjean clamp to hold the end of the CDC plumes. Open the slit in the foam block to release the fibers and you are in business. The CDC fibers are lined up, cut off the stem(s) and place the fibers into the dubbing loop. With this simple set of homemade and cheap bought tools you can do what the Magic Tool does. See the method below: https://www.pechetruite.com/Mouches/cdc-dubbing1.htm

The Super Bowl weekend is not just the game. It is an all weekend party and that is why people attend. It is where the wealthy and celebrities gather to see/meet each other and to be seen. https://people.com/super-bowl-2024-las-vegas-parties-events-everything-to-know-8421764

Spring in Wisconsin!

I use a 22 caliber rifle cleaning brush. You can buy a three pack for cheap and have one in a tying kit another in your fly fishing vest for roughing up nymphs on the stream. https://www.cabelas.com/shop/en/tipton-best-bore-brush-3-pack?

👍😃 Well done!

Looks like you tied the fly on a scud type of hook, 2 extra short (XS) (not 2XL = 2X long); plus the presence of a bead that takes up 1/3 of the hook shank length further shortens the effective hook shank length you have for materials. The wing case you tied is slightly longer than the rest of the body of the nymph PROPER PROPORTION and CONSISTENCY. Those are the hardest things for a new fly tier to master so those are the two things you need to work on. PROPORTION is really important. If your friend came to see you and had a huge head and short legs, you would know there is something wrong. Pay attention to proportion. Proportion is to fly tying what presentation is to fly fishing. The proper amount of material placed in the proper relationship to the proper part of the hook in the proper manner results in a well proportioned fly. Here is some suggested reading to get you on the right track. Copy and paste the links into your browser. http://www.sexyloops.com/flytying/proportion.shtml https://www.flyfisherman.com/editorial/tying-flies-beautiful-flies/151957

I nominate Royce Damm - honored by his fellow fly tyers and fly fishers as one of the best ever. https://www.flyfishersinternational.org/Portals/0/FlyTyingGroup/FTGDocuments/Buszek/1994_RoyceDam.pdf https://www.flyfishersinternational.org/About-Us/Awards/Fly-Tying-Awards I have 3 of Royce's Shadow boxes. The following photos reveal the depth and breadth of his skill, not only in traditional trout flies but in full dress salmon flies and hair bass bugs. I know of no other fly tier who is accomplished as he is over the entire spectrum of fly tying. The first is a shadow box I ordered from Royce with the USPS special issue commemorative stamps of flies. This was series of 5 stamps with a Royal Wulff, Jock Scott, Stu Apte Tarpon Fly, Lefty's Deceiver, and Muddler Minnow. The entire plate is shown then close ups of the Jock Scott and the Royal Wulff. The photos below are of a deer hair bug. Notice the alternating green and yellow bands of deer hair that he has tied and how tight the hair is. The photos below are of a stonefly nymph plate and a close up of one of the nymphs. Buz Buszek Memorial Fly Tying Award The International Federation of Fly Fishers’ Buz Buszek Fly Tying Award is the most prestigious award in the world of fly tying. 1970 - Jacqueline Knight 1971 - A.I. Alexander 1972 - Dave Whitlock 1973 - George Grant 1974 - Ken Bay 1975 - E. H. "Polly" Rosborough 1976 - John Schollenberger 1977 - Andre Puyans 1978 - George Harvey 1979 - Everett Drake 1980 - Boyd Aigner 1981 -Doug Prince 1982 - Darwin Atkin 1983 - Art Flick 1984 - Frank Johnson 1985 - Bill Blackstone 1986 - Billy Munn 1987 - Dick Nelson 1988 - Bing Lempke 1989 - Jimmy Nix 1990 - Kent Bulfinch 1991 - Wayne Luallen 1992 - Stanley Walters 1993 - Chuck Echer 1994 - Royce E. Dam 1995 - Marvin Nolte 1996 - John "Ned" Long 1997 - Judy Lehmberg 1998 - Jeff "Bear" Andrews 1999 - Al Beatty 2000 - Bob Jacklin 2001 - Bruce Staples 2002 - Helen Shaw Kessler 2003 - Bill Heckel 2004 - Chris Helm 2005 - Reginald Denn 2006 - Gary Borger 2007 - John Van der Hoof 2008 - Henry Hoffman 2009 - John Newbury 2010 - Scott Sanchez 2011 - Tony Spezio 2012 - Steve Fernandez 2013 - Walt Holman 2014 - Oscar Feliu

Have you tried wearing a KN 95 mask so that you are not directly breathing in cold air? It help a lot. I know since I live in Wisconsin where outside air temps get below 0 degrees F. It has to be the kind of mask below so that it is tight and it keeps a pocket of warm air that helps warm the cold outside air that you breath in.

Why not just look at your fly boxes of your tied flies? If you don't know the flies, put labels on the fly boxes. Print out the pattern and put them in a notebook sorted alphabetically with dividers sorted alphabetically. It really isn't hard. You are not going to tie that many patterns to start and you are not going to fish that many different patterns. Just by looking at the fly, you will be able identify the materials in the fly. You are making it way more complicated than it has to be.

What you are talking about is a fly tying pattern. There are books of fly pattern but these days you can just look up a pattern using a Google search. For example, look up a parachute adams and you will find: https://www.google.com/search?q=parachute+adams+fly+pattern&sca_esv=

Wullf?

I suspect that some of the best fly tyers are the commercial fly tyers in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chaing Mai is the hub of the fly tying industry in Asia and many of the flies you buy are tied there. Almost all of them are women. They work out of their homes and they make more money than their husbands. They tie over a hundred flies a day, thousands in a month. And tens of thousands in a year; year after year. Gary Borger was hired by a company to teach new patterns to these tyers and he said that they were some of the best fly tyers he has ever seen. He said one lady specialized tying Royal Wulffs which is a difficult fly to tie. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/20/fly-fishing-industry-catches-on-in-thailand/f88f8f8c-76aa-4240-9f97-42b8de3f362b/

You should do some reading about epigenetics and how the expression of our genetic code is regulated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm "Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. Gene expression refers to how often or when proteins are created from the instructions within your genes. While genetic changes can alter which protein is made, epigenetic changes affect gene expression to turn genes “on” and “off.” Since your environment and behaviors, such as diet and exercise, can result in epigenetic changes, it is easy to see the connection between your genes and your behaviors and environment."

Thanks for posting the Charlie Craven video.

Here is where it has practical experience for fishermen. We know through experience that wild trout are different that planted trout. That difference is due to epigenetics. If you take the eggs and sperm of wild trout, fertilize the eggs but raise the trout for a single generation in a hatchery, the offspring of those hatchery raised trout are changed epigenetically and are less able to live in the wild than trout from eggs hatched in the wild. A single generation of domestication heritably alters the expression of hundreds of genes Wild Steelhead Trout from the Hood River http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10676 http://tinyurl.com/hgq64dp “We find that there are hundreds of genes that are differentially expressed (DE) between the offspring of wild fish (W × W) and of the offspring of hatchery fish (H × H) reared in a common environment. By using reciprocal crosses, we further show that these differences in gene expression cannot be explained as maternal effects, sampling noise, or false discovery. Thus, our data suggest that the very first stages of domestication are characterized by massive, heritable changes to gene expression.” “Remarkably, we found that there were 723 genes DE between the offspring of wild fish (W × W) and the offspring of first-generation hatchery fish (H × H)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance 'Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is the transmittance of information from one generation of an organism to the next (e.g., parent–child transmittance) that affects the traits of offspring without alteration of the primary structure of DNA (i.e., the sequence of nucleotides).[1][2] The less precise term "epigenetic inheritance" may be used to describe both cell–cell and organism–organism information transfer. Although these two levels of epigenetic inheritance are equivalent in unicellular organisms, they may have distinct mechanisms and evolutionary distinctions in multicellular organisms. Genetically identical mice with different DNA methylation patterns causing kinks in the tail of one but not the other.[3] Four general categories of epigenetic modification are known:[4] self-sustaining metabolic loops, in which a mRNA or protein product of a gene stimulates transcription of the gene; e.g. Wor1 gene in Candida albicans[5] structural templating in which structures are replicated using a template or scaffold structure on the parent; e.g. the orientation and architecture of cytoskeletal structures, cilia and flagella,[6] prions, proteins that replicate by changing the structure of normal proteins to match their own[7] chromatin marks, in which methyl or acetyl groups bind to DNA nucleotides or histones thereby altering gene expression patterns; e.g. Lcyc gene in Linaria vulgaris described below RNA silencing, in which small RNA strands interfere (RNAi) with the transcription of DNA or translation of mRNA; known only from a few studies, mostly in Caenorhabditis elegans[8]”

Exactly. Most materials we use as posts are heavier than water so once submerged, heavier than water post material cannot help a fly float.

DNA is the genetic code in our cells BUT for the DNA to have an effect it has to be EXPRESSED. A simple example is eye color. Blue eye color is recessive so a blue eyed person has a blue eye gene from the mother and a blue eye gene from the father. But if the child has a blue eye gene and a brown eye gene, their eyes will be brown because brown eye color is dominant over blue. So the blue eye color is not expressed. So a gene has to be expressed. And if it is expressed, how it is expressed also has an effect on the end result of what we see. How it is expressed and how that person's gene expression is then passed on to his children is epigenetics So epigenetics is about gene expression BUT also the life experiences of the person. These life experiences can be passed on when the changes are made to the epigenome. For example, it a person has a traumatic experience , the effects of that trauma can change how that person's genetic code is expressed in their children. Maybe this will help: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/what-is-epigenetics-and-how-does-it-relate-to-child-development/

Not only can fish "learn" via operant conditioning but they can pass that behavior to their offspring via epigenetics inheritance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics https://www.theflyfishingforum.com/forums/index.php?threads/what-the-heck-is-epigenetics-complex-science.502273/#post1047017

What a fly fisher is trying to do in the most difficult situation is to fool a trout that is feeding selectively. If a fly fools a selectively feeding fish, it follows that the fly will fool a less selective fish. Since I tie my own flies, I want them to tie them to fool the selective fish. So how the fly "sits" on the meniscus is important when fish are selective and I tie my flies to present the profile I want in the water layer I want. Brain size has little to do with selective feeding. It is a based on Operant Conditioning, Operant conditioning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia as first described by B. F. Skinner. The fish is rewarded when it feeds on an item that is food and if there is enough of this particular item, the fish becomes conditioned to feed only on that food. That conditioning is what we call selectivity. Even organism without a brain can "learn" as this experiment revealed "For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an organism devoid of a nervous system is capable of learning. Biologists have succeeded in showing that a single-celled organism, the protist, is capable of a type of learning called habituation. This discovery throws light on the origins of learning ability during evolution, even before the appearance of a nervous system and brain. It may also raise questions as to the learning capacities of other extremely simple organisms such as viruses and bacteria." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160427081533.htm

I wrote "Anything that is ABOVE the water adds weight to the fly and makes the fly sink lower in the water. So a fatter post requires more material a fly with an overly fat post will ride lower in the water. " Maybe you misunderstood me. ANY mass you add to the post results a lower riding fly. It does not matter if the material is "lighter than water." It still has mass (weight) so a fatter poly wing has more mass than a thinner poly wing. Therefore the fly will not a float as high because a large wing adds more weight above the water. Anything ABOVE the water cannot act as a life vest. Anybody with a physics degree please chime in to confirm what I have written.