Addicted to Married Wings

Lately I find my self tying up more married wings than any other fly, not sure why, they take way longer and are way harder to tie. But they sure are pretty and fun to fish....

This fly was a big step for me, I have always had issues with marrying turkey to goose for some reason. I was amazed that after I set the wing the barbs were all still married together. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out in this fly ( floss, herl and the topping) but I have gotten the hardest part down.

I am now in need of some higher quality Jungle Cock and some nice swan to continue with this style of fly

I thought you may like to see what a set of wings looks like before they are tied in. This wing is mad up of Lady Amherst Tail and Turkey Tail.

Success! This wing went on perfectly without splitting the wing. All that is left is the Jungle Cock eyes and then trimming the waste material at the head. (I use a razor blade to trim the head because its easier and cleaner.)

Thanks for reading

Chris

Steaming Feathers - Save Money, Tie Better

If your like me then you really hate opening a package of material and seeing that all your feathers are folded and kinked....... garbage right?.... not

This is a great post to help you save some of those garbage feathers and some money.

I am using bronze mallard in this demonstration because it tends to have this problem a lot  and if you have tried tying in mallard before you know that it can be one of the most frustrating materials to work with. To generate steam I use a simple tea kettle, it works perfect for this job. 

Here is what the feathers look like right out of the package, you can see that there are lots of folds and splits in the feathers.

Nasty fold, most people would view this as a garbage feather.

Nasty split, again another type of feather typically thrown out.

Prep - I start by stripping off all of the fluffy fibres, this leaves only the usable part of the feather left. 

Material that was stripped off the feathers.

Before steam treatment.

Close up of a split feather right before it hits the steam.

Same feather after some steam... magic. this feather has now been saved from the garbage and it has now been returned to its natural shape.

This will work with most feathers, and will make tying flies much more enjoyable.

Hope you enjoyed this tip

Thanks

Chris

M & M's - Married and Mixed Wings

Thought I would do a post on some classic style salmon flies I have been tying. Most of them are just freestyles that I have come up with,

I will be taking these flies for a swim this weekend. Hopefully i will be able to find some nice hungry Steel with these!

Above is a mixed wing that I tied up tonight, wing is made up of Amherst, Goose, and Turkey.

Above are two flies that I tied trying to learn how to deal with Amherst Tail, its a very tricky material to marry, it often likes to split once mounted. 

Here are a couple pictures of my fly box for the week end, lots of classic style flies, hopefully they will get bitten. 

The above two flies were inspired by the classic "Floodtide", i really like the use of marabou for a body hackle, I am really looking forward to seeing these things swim.

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Chris

Lynn Valley River

Lynn Valley River - Brown Trout Haven

There is nothing quite like returning to the waters where you learned to fish. These past holidays my wife and I spent a week in southern Ontario visiting with family. 

We decided to go for a hike along the river in the back yard, where I learned to cast my first rod and release my first fish. 

This river is jam packed with lots of hungry and aggressive browns, its not uncommon to catch 15-25 browns in a couple hours. 

This post is going to be very picture heavy ha..... loving this new camera

Nice deep pool, directly behind my parents house.

Lots of fishy water, with lots of tree cover, I try to forget how many flies and lures I have lost to those wooden thieves.

These browns love to hide in the smallest of eddies.

They are also fond of undercut banks.

Nice little run to swing some streamers through.

Pretty little tail out that always seems to hold fish.

Nice steady run, often over looked because there is not much "visible" structure. its good to fish these low traffic areas.

Nice panoramic shot

This is obvious holding water, never walk past spots like this with out throwing a cast through

Another nice little pool, there is a sunken log which created a very nice sized eddie.

Browns seem to love logs.

Another nice panoramic.

Another gorgeous tail out.

Extremely fishy looking water.

Knock, Knock, anyone home?

Hope you enjoyed this post, not fly tying related, but still keeping it fishy.

Chris

D.I.Y. Dubbing Brushes

Hey Everyone,

So I thought I would take some time while on holidays and show you how to make your own dubbing brushes.

When I say dubbing brush most people think of a stick with some velcro on to brush out dubbing, but a dubbing brush is a pre-maid section of thin wire with material spun in between it.

Basically it is a pipe cleaner with different material spun between the wire.

So I will take you through the process of making your own dubbing brushes, in this brush I will be using Bucktail for the material. Bucktail is a great material to spin if you want to tie larger flies for warm water and salt water species.

Hopefully the pictures are easy to understand, if not just shoot me an email and  I will help you out, I did finally get a new camera so this will be my last post with this camera, I will probably be making a video in the near future on dubbing brushes to help clarify the process.

Firstly you will need a small board, here I use a simple piece of pine board with a screw into the wall to wrap the wire around.

Here is a close up of how I wrap the wire around the screw, there is a small piece of dense felt that I use with the screw to hold the wire more secure.

I then lay the wire across the board.

I use a rotary tool to spin my brushes, you will have to make some sort of hook to put into the tool to hold the wire, I use a paper clip and it works great.

The next step is preparing the material to spin in the brush, as stated earlier I am going to use Bucktail for this brush, make sure you comb out the under fur in your material, if you don't then your brush will be very thick and will look to bulky when you wrap it onto your fly. 

Here is how I lay out my material, I like to use a shorter/darker section of fur near the end of the brush, this dark section will be wrapped near the head of the fly and will give the fly a tapered look because of the shorter coloured material.

The next step is to wax the other section of wire with some tacky wax, then lay the wire on top of the material, this will "sandwich" the Bucktail between the wire  and will help lock the material onto the fly. Then just wrap the other end of the wire around the same hook you first wrapped it around.

Now you are ready to spin the brush, I use a rotary tool for this because its easy and fast. Its important that you start slow, this way you can make sure the material isn't tangling up when you start to spin it. When you are happy with the way the material is spinning, then you can go faster, you can just keep spinning the material until the wire snaps. The material will snap at either the rotary tool or the screw.

When the wire snaps you will be left with a perfect dubbing brush.

Lastly all you need to do is brush the hairs all to one side. 

Here is an example of a really simple pike fly that is tied with the dubbing brush that was just made. The tail on this fly is just a couple purple and green hackles, then tie in the dubbing brush. Make sure you tie in the end with lighter and longer hairs first, so that the dark short hairs will end up at the head of the fly

Then wrap the brush forward while folding the hairs towards the back of the fly. Then just tie the end off and head cement it and your good to go, you can also super glue some eyes on to it to make it even fishier.

Thanks, Hope you enjoyed the post, let me know if you have any questions, ill be happy to help you out.

My next post will be on my home river where I learned to fish, its always good to visit your roots.

Take care and Merry Christmas

Chris

Wing Tapers

Hey Everyone,

So tonight I thought I would take some time and talk about tapering wings. I have found that a lot of tiers do not taper the hair or fur they use for wings. The taper in the wing is what gives the fly its profile. 

I tied these four flies tonight with both tapered wings and untapered wings. You can see how the tapered wing changes the look of the fly. Without a tapered wing the fly has a "blocky" look. as you can see a tapered wing blends the under and over wing together to make a more natural looking looking wing.

Non-Tapered

Tapered

Non-Tapered

Tapered 

In order to taper a wing all you have to do is simple pull out a few up the hairs so that they extend farther than the rest of the hair, you can either do this while holding the bunch of hair in your hand, or you can tie the bunch of hair in and the taper it on the hook. I prefer to taper it in hand, but to each their own. 

Later tonight I am going to experiment with making some dubbing brushes to tie some bait fish patterns

Thanks 

Chris

Fly Tying Area

Hello Everyone, 

So I thought I would take some time and post about my fly tying area. I used to tie on a small glass desk ( the one pictured below), this served me pretty well until I started to tie flies commercially, then I needed a much larger space.

There are several things I was looking for when I settled on my new desk:

• Space - I wanted to have plenty of space to lay materials out in order
• Height - When tying dozens of flies at a time its really easy to get a sore back and neck
• Lighting - Lighting is also extremely important, low lighting makes tying intricate flies very difficult and hard on the eyes
• Location - I wanted to have my tying area in the living room (I can't believe my wife agreed to it) with my tying area in the living room I can easily put on a movie and just tie away. 

I chose an L shaped desk because I like the amount of space it offers and I find it very comfortable to tie on.

On one side of the desk I have a photo box where I take all of my fly pictures, I also set up my tube fly stuff on this side of the desk as well.

I just hung up 3 shadow boxes that I made up last week.

This is the corner of the desk, I have my vise, radio, 2 lamps, tools, head cement, and 2 boxes with beads and some eyes.

Shelf with printer, books, cork board

Here is where I store my material, I used to use to have all my material up on a cork board on the wall, but I found it to be more annoying because it became a pain in the butt to constantly be pinning material back up on the wall. In the future I may look into trying it again with peg board.

My tying companion, although sometimes she gets into the material...... so far only one calf tail and one grizzly hackle cape.........

Hope you enjoyed

Chris