I’ve never been to a fly tying demonstration, let alone sat in on one. In fact, I’ve never had any classes or lessons on fly tying. When I first started fly fishing, my fishing buddy Chris was taking some tying classes. I watched him tie flies a couple of times.

About two years later my mom bought a used vise and a couple of tools from a workmate of mine. My sister picked up Poul Jorgensen’s book on tying flies: Poul Jorgensen’s Book of Fly Tying: A Guide to Flies for All Game Fish. So I’ve had the same vise and equipment for 20 years now. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a utilitarian tier only—it comes in handy to make what I want the fly to look. There is no beauty whatsoever in my flies.

Anyhow, because of this background, I was nervous to tie in front of people. I thought the four of us would tie flies at the same time, and people would wander around and look at the flies over our shoulder and ask questions if they were interested. But NOOOOO… that’s not the way it works! We each took a turn announcing the fly and then talking through the entire process as everybody looked on. Then we handed our flies out to the audience so they could look at them. <gulp!>

Apparently I wasn’t thinking too clearly, because I should have taken some shots of the material we used. Vic (one of the owners of RoundRocks) received some fur/hair from a friend who had been on a safari in Africa. (Just another layer of nervousness—tying with unknown materials.) We had wildebeest, zebra and springbok. Bob brought a patch of klipspringer (labeled “cliff springer” on the back).

There were four of us: Chris Thomas (Utah’s Trout Unlimited president), Bob Trowbridge (introduced above), Dan Line (my fishing nemesis buddy) and myself.

Chris tied a fun little golf tee popper/salmonfly thingy (can’t remember the name—if anyone out there knows, let me know). He used the wildebeest hair for a spent wing look to the salmonfly golf tee, much like y struggling salmonfly concept, but I’m sure it floats much better.

Bob tied a compara dun using springbok hair. The hair is quite luxurious in feel and Bob said it was difficult to tie with because it was so slick. His other fly was an “elk” hair caddis made from the klipspringer. The klipspringer fur was excellent stuff. It’s hollow like deer, but more fine (closer to elk) and has some nice coloring.

Dan tied one of his favorite patterns, the beetle. He also tied up a cdc double midge that he first tied on one of our trips to Idaho a year or so ago. I drove and he clamped his vise on to the door arm rest and played with the pattern.

I whipped up (okay, not so much whipped, more like trembled up) a sprout midge. I figured that it was small enough and the folks were sitting far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to see me choke. I used some white zebra hair for the tail and some white wildebeest for a post to tie on the parachute. It would have been nice to have some bird feathers from Africa too, but I just used some white hackle.

I also went ahead and tied my struggling salmonfly, even though Chris tied the same kind of thing with a much more interesting golf tee. I used the wildebeest hair for both the tail and the outspread wings. The hair is actually perfect as far as stiffness goes. I’ve been looking for the right material that is stiff, but doesn’t buckle and bend back. I’ve been using antron-type stuff. I’ve also tried elk hair, but it buckles next to the body. The wildebeest is quite stiff, which is good for keeping the wings out, but it bulked up where I was tying it into the body. I’ll have to mess with it some more and see if I can fix that.

All-in-all, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it was pretty enjoyable. My tying didn’t improve, and I’m not ready for the big time, but I would do it again for a local cause.

On a side note, I took my fly tying box with me. About seven years ago I talked my wife into letting me buy some woodworking tools (the deal was that if I bought the tools, I’d make the kitchen cabinets for the house we were rebuilding—in case you’re wondering, yes, I followed through on my end of the bargain). I built a small shop behind our house on the site of an old shed/chicken coop.

When I was tearing down the old shed, there was a large shelf/ledge thingy. It was made from some old growth tongue-and-groove fir. I think it was flooring originally. I cut the tongues and grooves off, planed and jointered (jointed?) the wood. I wasn’t sure what to do with it because it was such narrow strip by the time the tongues and grooves were removed (about 3″ wide).

I saw some boxes I liked in catalogs, but I didn’t have any plans. So I drew some up and came up with this:

You’ll notice in the above picture the light colored streaks on the front. Fir is very brittle and there were a couple of chips that I tried filling (not so good matching the color).

Inside:

It happens all the time, at least to me. I get a great idea for a fly, tie a few up and hit the river. The first opportunity I get to try the fly—as in, the second I hit the water, regardless of what is/isn’t coming off or what the fish are/aren’t rising to—I fling it on the water for a test run. Trouble is, sometimes occasionally usually, the experiment is a complete bust.

How often do you check your fly box(es)? Do you ever see little gobs of fur huddling in the dark recesses of that box? Did that killer palmered-hackled-bead-headed-foam-bodied-articulated emerger become so rusted gnarled that even the fish won’t touch it any more? Has that chartreuse and hot pink streamer expended its usefulness already?

Have you ever wondered what the half-life is of the flies in your box? Of course, the beauty is, half-lifing your flies never actually gets you to zero—you can justify keeping your flies forever because there will always be "usefulness" left in them.

I was recently digging through my mayfly box wondering whatever happened to the usually ubiquitous parachute adams patterns. A mayfly box without an adams is like moldy chum sans mold, singlebarbed without brownlining or underground trout above the ground.

But I digress. What was equally as startling as my lack of adams was the unused items collecting rust lint (my fly boxes never get wet when I fall cool off in the water). So I figured it was time to clear out the linted, experimental, chewed up and slightly gaudy flies. But what to do with them? Being the tightwad green conservationist I am, I couldn’t see just tossing them as the solution.

"Reduce, reuse and recycle." The tightwad green in me thought of these words, and there you have it:

Watch those fingers!

That’s the cheapest friggin’ a Class 1, nickel-plated, APA (American Painter’s Association) approved paint scraper.

Careful with that blade, Eugene!

Saving a few shekels and keeping the world a better place. Just chuck all of the removed items into your coffee blender (the special one for dubbing, not your wife’s special one for beans), let her rip, and you have some great material for a bass bug:

Bass bug fodder.

What’s your favorite method for deconstructing the fly, rescuing hooks and being green?

Update June 17, 08): Officially named Splayed Salmonfly (the fly formerly known as The Foam Cross).

Here’s my not too pretty, but (for me) very productive "Foam Cross" (okay, a bit lame, but Dan is the master of name calling making, so until he gives it a better moniker, that’s the name).

(Recipe and Pictures below)

Hook: the size salmonfly you are trying to imitate (in the picture I’m using a Daiichi 1270 #4)
Thread: Orange 3/0
Wing: cream/white Z-lon or Antron (or whatever you can get that provides a fairly stiff wing—the problem I run into is that the longer the wings are, the more they tend to fold back against the body). I have also experimented with craft yarn (sold at craft stores), but it isn’t as crinkly as i like it. The pictures have a creamier and whiter portion to the wings. the cream is the Antron and the white is the craft yarn.
Body: orange 2mm (1/16" or 3/32") craft foam cut to about 3/16" widths
Tail: stacked deer hair
Hackle: grizzly—notice the picture shows the hackle palmered, my bad, but I couldn’t be bothered fixing it (they catch the same number of fish no matter which way the thing is tied)
Head: grizzly hackle

One word of warning: The wings tend to want to flatten against the body. Apply plenty of flotant and false cast a lot to dry the bugger between casts.