Chris_NH

This is a 90 second sped up video of the Hornberg Special tied. Takes roughly 9 or 10 minutes to tie in real time, depending on the size. The Hornberg is the best all around brook trout fly I've ever fished. https://youtu.be/yVVmLWHgJ_s

Just what I was going to say. It could have been 15 minutes live. lol. Here is Charlie Craven tying a honest 2 minute parachute adams. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_XZlX0mau0 I was never under the impression that anyone gave a rip how long it takes me to tie one. The point of the 1 minute speed tie is that it can be watched quickly.

Size depends on what they're eating. The SOS was originally a baetis pattern, and baetis are really small, like 18 or 20, but they don't just take the SOS for a baetis. Color doesn't usually matter all that much, to be honest. It's just a buggy fly that gets noticed. It looks like food, and if you make it act like food in the water trout will oblige. I tie and fish them in 14 and 16 and do pretty well.

The Higa's SOS is one of my favorite go-to nymphs nearly all season long. Recently saw a lighting fast online video of a fly being tied so I thought I'd try. It takes me a little longer than 60 seconds to tie, but... Put together a rapid tying video about a minute long. https://youtu.be/DBfLc1acztI

Put a hotspot or don't... matters little to the fish. What's infinitely more important is the size/profile of the fly and the way it's fished. What's indisputable is that flies with hotspots sell way faster than flies without.

Nice find. And there's plenty left over to make yourself a nice matching speedo/thong set for you and the mrs... summer is coming!

Thanks for the info., and will check out those sources.

I'm looking for a bulk source of marabou. I go through a lot of 2 particular colors (tan and gray) and the best I can find is about $8/ounce plus shipping. Anyone know a decent source for blood quill or similar bugger tail marabou?

By the way stab, every time I see your username for some reason my mind sees dagnabit, and I chuckle. Lol. Funny how the mind works.

Buy a Hungarian partridge skin. Lots of other things things can be substituted, but nothing really looks as good. A $15 skin will give you a lifetime of good soft hackle tying feathers.

Whenever I see "don't ever" I wanna say don't ever say don't ever... The bigger wire accentuates the segmentation and is perfectly fine to use. My poison is generally brassie down to 16's, small on 18's and 20's and x-small on everything smaller. On the bigger stillwater midges I often use medium then coat it with UV resin. Makes for some fine looking chironomids.

I considered a hole in desk, but since desk space is always at a premium I went with a vice mounted waste catching bag. Love it. When it fills up I go dump it. When you cut something you just let it fall and not have to do anything. Doesn't get simpler and saves me considerable time.

The rather obvious pinch is having nothing else on hand and having to set up an extra spool in a hurry. I obviously wasn't advocating the use of mono in place of dacron. And we hardly needed the lecture on why mono isn't optimal as a fly line backing.

Your observation is likely correct, but to say that a downstream facing dun would draw more takes, with all other things being equal seems like a stretch. I think it's no more complicated than doing whatever you have to do to keep your fly line from floating over the fish and getting a drag free drift, regardless of which way the fly is facing. Different types of water benefit from different approaches to achieve this, so always fishing upstream, or always fishing downstream can't be optimal.

More thread tension and another 2 or 3 wraps should do it. Experiment with the thread and see what sort of pressure or tension it takes to break it and try to wrap the wing case with 70% of that pressure - don't be afraid to torque down on it good. If it's particularly slippery material then give your bobbin a good clockwise spin to chord up the thread and give it the ability to bite into the material. Just remember to spin it the other direction to unchord and get it flatter before whip finishing else the thread can tend to break when you pull the whip finish knot tight.

I've used leftover 14 or 20 pound mono when I was in a pinch. I almost never have a fish get me to backing, but it's come in handy a few times when I've gotten the fly line wrapped around a branch or get hung up while fishing quick water in a canoe. Sometimes it takes a while to get turned around and paddle back upstream and the backing probably saved the rod.

Is it a clear line? DT's are a lot easier to mend at a distance than a WF line, and it's only an intermediate line, not a heavy sinking line... just going to hover and sink very slowly, so think of a situation where that might be desirable... I envision swinging wet flies in a river in somewhat shallow water with lots of pockets to hit where you'd want to hover the fly. But yeah, it's a pretty specialized sort of line.

Another vote for hungarian partridge. Great stuff. Ruffed grouse can be good also. You can use so many feathers for legs that will perform just fine that I wouldn't go out and buy anything special. Any mottled looking brownish feather... if a dry fly feather just take the fibers from down toward the base and if a saddle there's a ton of fibers just above the marabou like feathers that would work well.

Well done. I'm a fan of simple also. I tie lots of similar generic midge in size 20, but with different color glass beads and using red squirrel body hair instead of hare's mask. Not much different, just a little darker. They make great droppers for fishing in tandem with darn near any fly, whether a dry, nymph or even a streamer in the winter.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind to improve it is to make it a parachute fly, or an emerger with a deer hair or snowshoe hare wing, as they almost always outfish the traditional dun types. But that's probably not what you were looking for. Seriously though, your fly looks fine. Maybe a slightly shorter tail and a bit fuller hackle would bring it a bit more in line with the traditional tie.

Perhaps I'm missing something but wouldn't 2" dubbing only be usable in a dubbing loop or brush? And if it's a dubbing loop wouldn't it all have to be set in parallel to each other and perpendicular to the thread or wire if it's a dubbing brush? And if so wouldn't you just want to cut the yarn to length then put it a piece across the wire every half inch or so then brush it out after it's spun? Sorry if I'm being dense. But it wouldn't be the first time...

Break the foot off at the closest joint, right where the ankle meets the foot and there won't be any meat. Snap it off clean and make sure nothing stays attached, cutting off clean any tendons. Be sure to trim off any hair that's dirty or blood stained. Dip the exposed end where the leg was cut off in salt and set aside somewhere warm and dry for a week or two. Then take a small container like a tupperware sandwich container or even a ziplock bag about half full of 20 Mule Team Borax from Walmart and submerge the foot in it, completely covering it and seal the container. Store someplace cool, dark and dry and it'll keep like this for a loooong time. Congrats, you've found one of the very best and easy to tie with materials for making wings on dries and emergers. And save all the hair scraps when you trim it as it makes a great dubbing on its own for dries and nymphs, or a great additive to other dubbings to give a sort of buggy translucent when wet effect.

Enjoy your S&M. Though, from what I hear, that can get pretty darn expensive too.

Looks a lot like one of my nymph boxes. What is the long skinny nymph on the bottom with the pink head? I wish I didn't go through so many nymphs, but since I like to drag bottom I lose a ton of them. I like to tie dries but need more than a dozen nymphs for every dry by volume. Wish it was the other way around.

I prefer to wrap them one at a time. I like densely hackled flies so I wrap the first one nice and tight then snake the second one in between.