After the abdomen is completed, a clump of peacock herl is tied in to be used to form the covert. The herl is pretrimmed so it can be tied in quickly and accurately. The thread is wrapped forward to the eye and then back to the rear of the abdomen. Dubbing is spun onto the […]
Day 3 of the show opened at 8 am for me and 20 others with our Bible teaching. Then at 8:30 it was off to another fly casting class until 11 am. At 11:30 I gave a presentation on Reading Waters. After a quick lunch, I gave a casting demonstration, and then signed books in […]
The Denver Show open on Friday the 6th at 10 am with a real boom. The line ran out the door as people waited to get in. And quickly the aisles filled with fly fishers. My first program was a casting demo at 1:5, and the areas around the pond was packed with anglers eager […]
I like to use wire to rib the GRHE because it adds just a bit of weight to the fly, helping it dive through the surface film, and, more importantly, it reinforces the body, making the fly nearly indestructible. Look very carefully at the end of the wire where it’s been wrapped on the hook. […]
I have been asked many times to demonstrate the tying of Hair Leg Nymphs. It’s the dressing of the legs that causes most people the most problems. But there are a number of production tactics that can also be demonstrated by this imitation. So, in the next several blogs we will use the dressing of […]
I love the Poly Caddis because it is fast to tie, rides high, can be pulled under to suggest a diving caddis, and catches fish. Gary LaFontaine used the Poly Caddis on a regular basis for just those reasons. In it’s original design, I just tied the wing in at the head and allowed it […]
Updated (see below). Jason is slaving away over not only hot pixels, but hot photos as well. There’s a great deal that goes into making a page look as nice as the ones below. This is the first page of flies in Chapter 10 in our soon-to-be-released book, Long Flies. I think it’s absolutely top […]
Jason has been involved in fly fishing since he was a little over a year and a half old. He caught his first trout by himself at age 2 1/2. And his thoughts on where he would fish if he had only one day, one river? See his answer at http://eat-sleep-fish.co.uk/content/2011/10/river-runs-through-him
Production tying is about speed, but it is also about well-built flies. We’ve discussed the concept of pre-trimming, and that’s the secret of building great looking heads on hair-wing flies. Rather than tying in a clump of hair, and then trying to trim the butt end to give the head a nice taper, taper the […]
When I started tying flies in 1955, I immediately realized that I was going to have a serious problem with tinsel bodies. First, there was no way that I could find to wrap the tinsel without getting a small gap here and there that showed the black thread underneath. If I ribbed the flat tinsel […]