First Royal Wulff

[Great Lakes Freak 0]

Here's my first royal wulff try.Any thoughts

[Futzer 0]

Hi GLF, I applaud your first effort. I have tied more RWs than I care to remember at this point, and I would make a few constructive criticisms. I preface that with a Royal Wulff will get trout tiers as passionate as any classic Atlantic Salmon fly tier, that is the Holy Grail of flies both RWs and Salmon flies. I am going to recommend that our good friend Dart tell you his recommendations. Dart just hosted the Royal family swap and he and I have been mentoring about RWs for a while. In the mean time, since I know Dart is working a great deal from now through the holidays, go tie # 2 and throw it somewhere, and make sure it lands correctly. Keep #1, as you can always pull it out 10 years from now and say that was my first, proudly.

 

Keep tying; Royal Wulffs are a simple fly, but definitely the big leagues.

 

Cheers Futzer.

[Bruce Derington 0]

The fly appears to be well tied and I think if you shorten the tail and hackle she'll fish better. Hard to tell till you fish it. Typically tail should be equal to the length of the shank and hackle 1 1/2 gaps.

[fishinbub 0]

Looks like the tail is a bit to long and thick. Hard to tell from the pic but it also looks like you crowded the head a little. Both are very common mistakes I still make from time to time. For your first Royal you can't expect any better, terrific job. :clapping:

[Dart 0]

For a first Wulff, not bad at all. It looks very similar to my first attempt. I've spent a lot of time reading about proportions of the fly and application techniques so I'll try to share some of it here.

 

The first thing to realize is there's more than one way to tie a fly. I've found that the materials that I like to use are:

white calf body hair (wings)

moose body hair (tail)

peacock herl (single strand)

Danville's 4 Strand Rayon floss (single strand)

brown dry fly hackle

 

You will find some substitution for those materials depending on the tutorial you view (most notably in the wing and tailing materials). Kip tail is frequently used in the wing, but is more wavy and harder to stack and then divide into a split wing. Sometimes deer body hair or another form of hair is used in the tail, but for me, moose body hair provides the proper amount of flair and buoyancy in the fly. Feel free to experiment with different materials and see what you like the best.

 

Here is a thread I started that "showcases" the 9th fly ever off my vise and MY first Royal Wulff. If you study that picture in comparison with yours, I think you'll notice we had many of the same issues. In that thread, you will see some pictures of progression and notice a tutorial that helped me. This is the last picture I took of one of my Wulffs, and you can see how they've improved. I can now see that one still needs some work though, so it's something we continue to improve on.

 

Also, you have to consider what are you trying to accomplish with this fly? Are you tying to make display flies to hang on a wall, or to fish? If you approach learning to tie a pattern for the purposes of displaying it, you will pay better attention to the details. You will learn where exactly to set the wing, end the body, etc. If you do this and learn to tie a nice presentation quality fly, your flies for fishing will be much more consistent and appealing. You will also be able to crank them out much faster.

 

Now after all of that babbling, on to some constructive criticism!

#1) Where you set the wing is very important. Is sets the tone for the rest of the fly. If you set it too close to the eye, the fly will be cramped, if you set it too far back, the body will be cramped and the hackle will flair out. Look at the tutorial here: http://flyguysoutfitting.com/royalwulff.html and look at the 2nd picture. This is where the wing should be located. You set yours a little too far forward - that's why the head is crowded.

#2) As others have said, the tail has too many fibers and is too long. Shorten it up to 1x the shank length.

#3) From what I can tell in that picture, the body work looks pretty good. The peacock sections may be a little wide though. Make sure each section of the body is split into equal thirds: ███

#4) The wings are really leaning forward on this one and it interferes with being able to hackle the fly properly. Pay attention to the figure eight wraps section of the tutorial and work on getting your wings to stand straight up.

#5) The Royal Wulff is a very heavily hackled fly. This pattern utilizes the hackle to help the fly ride high in rough water. If you're using a long enough hackle, you just need to tie one in. Do so behind the wing and give it 5 wraps behind the wing with each wrap touching the other. Then do 5 more wraps in front of the wing and tie off.

 

Overall, a very solid first attempt. Don't expect to correct all of these things in one fly... or even in a dozen. It's a process! I'm no expert, so I'm still right there with you learning. Keep posting and we'll keep trying to help. And don't forget... HAVE FUN!

 

Jeff

[Futzer 0]

I told you that Dart is thorough. What Jeff said, plus for display flies, don't touch the floss that will be tied in with your fingers, use a fine tweezer to hold it for the tie in. The oils on your hand will cloud the floss eventually.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Cheers, Futzer

[Dart 0]

Another tip that I forgot:

I like using white thread to tie in the materials when I'm using floss. This way, when the fly gets wet the floss doesn't darken. If you use black and put a layer of red on top, it turns almost black once it's wet. Then at some point after you get the floss done, change from white tying thread to black for the head.

 

I hope this helps!

Jeff

[Futzer 0]

Another tip that I forgot:

I like using white thread to tie in the materials when I'm using floss. This way, when the fly gets wet the floss doesn't darken. If you use black and put a layer of red on top, it turns almost black once it's wet. Then at some point after you get the floss done, change from white tying thread to black for the head.

 

I hope this helps!

Jeff

 

Also try tying in a piece of un-flavored dental tape a couple inches long with the first Peacock herl, use it to even the body diameter the same size as the wing post tie point, I tie the wing post facing the tail of the fly. For the same reason Jeff uses white thread.

 

Cheers Futzer.

 

[mouse6196 0]

Very nice...fish it and then see if a shorter tail would lay on the water better for you.