Here's a bit of trivia for you, about flies with hackle running all the way up the length of the body, like woolly buggers & others, which we call under the general term of palmer flies:

The palmer fly derives its name from the caterpillar. The caterpillar, in turn, gets its name from the term that used to be used for a pilgrim who had traveled to the Holy Land (think Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). Those pilgrims would then walk about, spreading their message while carrying a palm leaf, to show that they had been to their Holy Land. So a "palmer" was sort of a roaming preacher carrying a palm leaf. The caterpillar got its name because of how it moves about & never stays in one place. The category of fly derives the name because hackle tied in that style resembles a caterpillar.

​Did you follow all that? Good. 

Incidentally, I stumbled onto this information while reading "The Complete Fly Tier" by Rube Cross, an absolutely excellent older book which I'll share with you in a future article.  

There you go. Now you can dazzle all your friends at your next fly tying gathering or whenever you bump into other fly anglers. Folks will be amazed at your vast knowledge & you're sure to be the life of the party!

Coq De Leon feathers are taken from a specific line of chickens that originated in the village of Leon in northern Spain. For those of you not familiar, these birds grow some very special feathers. Hackles made on them are the cleanest, neatest hackles you will ever use. Each barb of each feather is perfect & so very fine - like gossamer silk. This makes for a superior hackle on wet flies, streamers, & nymphs, as the feather moves so well in the water. No feather looks as life-like in the water as the Coq De Leon.

Spain has a very rich history of fly fishing - especially in the northern mountain region. Anglers from all over the world have coveted these feathers for generations because they're the best you can get. Some believe that it has something to do with the soil & environment in Leon that made these chickens grow special feathers. At any rate, these extremely desirable feathers were rarely available to fly tiers on the market until Whiting Farms in Colorado got involved in breeding these birds.

Below is a video taken on Whiting Farms explaining all about how they got into raising these birds & all about their special feathers. To anyone who ties their own flies, this is very interesting. 

There are times & places you'll want to get the color of a fly exactly the same as the natural bug. These are times when any old brown, olive, or cream color just won't do.

To get dubbing in a color you can't buy you're going to have make it yourself, which will require some research. If you're lucky you can find a recipe for the proper color mix in a reference book (Hatches II, et al). Lacking that you'll need a photo of the bug you're trying to copy - or even a real life sample. Some experimentation will have to happen before you get the color just right.

Fortunately, mixing dubbing is easy to do. Start with the colors of dubbing you'll be mixing together, in the correct proportions. Here, I'm mixing up some dubbing to get the color of the Whitefly (Ephoron leukon) nymph which calls for 1 part cream; 1 part yellow; 2 parts brown.

Put the pieces of dubbing you want to mix together in a jar with a good, tight fitting lid. Pour in some hot water (not boiling) until the jar is about two-thirds full. Let this sit for a few minutes to allow the dubbing to soften in the warm water.

​Now shake the jar vigorously for at least a minute or two. You'll see the colors of the dubbing begin to mix together.

Drain the water out of the jar & pat dry the dubbing mix on an absorbent towel. Examine your results.

Chances are you'll need to do this at least one more time to get the colors mixed through. Each time you do this you can see the dubbing softening in the water & mixing together more & more. Compare this photo below of the dubbing in the water to the one above. You can see the colors mixing even more on my second time through.

You can see just how much more the colors are mixed through after a second time in the jar:

I'm pretty happy with this color, so I'll stop here. It's pretty close to the color of the natural Whitefly nymph, which is a burrowing nymph & lives in areas of the stream that have a sandy bottom. This should work.

Remember, nature is rarely perfect so a few mild streaks of color in your mix is fine. Also note that you should let the dubbing air dry for a while. Some mixes will change color a bit after the dubbing is completely dry. Certainly make sure it's totally dry before you store it away in an air tight container or bag!

Mixing dubbing to a custom color (once you have the proper recipe) is quite easy. You'll be able to tie flies that match the color of the natural bug more closely than anything you could buy in a store or from a catalog. Happy mixing!!

An absolutely fantastic early season fly for me has been the Orange Fish Hawk. This is a very old pattern, dating back to at least the early 1930's. It caught trout back then & it will do so now.

As you might have guessed, I'm a big fan of the old soft hackle wet flies & the Orange Fish Hawk is one of those. I think, to the fish, it looks like certain caddis flies & certain types of mayflies that hatch out in early to mid April. Either way, I know it works. (one friend once compared it to what some bait fisherman use for trout, calling it 'the orange salmon egg of fly fishing', which of course it wouldn't be, as we actually have orange salmon egg flies, haha!!)

If you haven't tried this pattern before, you're missing out. Use this fly when the water's still a bit cold & the trout aren't feeding on any visible hatch. Here's the recipe:

Tag: Flat gold tinsel
Ribbing: Flat gold tinsel
Body: Orange floss
Hackle: Badger hen hackle, two wraps - no more than three.
Hook: Wet fly sizes 10 - 14

You can substitute orange yarn for the body if you wish & you can also use different feathers such as partridge, grizzly, or grouse for the hackle. As you can see, this is just a very old modification to the Partridge & Orange fly pattern.

Easy to tie & fun to fish, the Orange Fish Hawk just might make an early season day on the water a very memorable one, indeed.

The other day someone asked me if it's possible to tie a fly using common yarns sold at craft & hobby stores. The answer is most certainly yes!! Not only can you use all those yarns, but there are many different ways to use them in fly tying. 

First off, yarn can be used as a substitute for chenille in any fly calling for that. All those woolly buggers can be tied with yarn bodies. It can also be used in wet flies & nymphs, too. Simply separate the stands of the yarn (it's usually three stands twisted together) & use one strand of it as you would chenille to wrap about the hook. It's good practice when using yarn in place of chenille, to secure it down with wire or tinsel, wrapped in the opposite direction. Otherwise, it's fine. If you're making a body that's palmered with a hackle feather throughout its length, such as the woolly bugger, then that would work as well.

In addition, you can make your own dubbing out of yarn. Yep, that's right - all that yarn you see in the stores can be turned into bags & bags of dubbing at a fraction of the cost for normal dubbing. Plus you can mix different colors together to get the exact color you need. This is perfect for matching a specific local hatch, or for those rare fly patterns where dubbing from a catalog just won't do. Now you can make your own colors.

To do this, you basically cut the yarn into small pieces & put them in a coffee grinder. You use the coffee grinder to shred the yarn into dubbing. Again, you're not spending much money here, as you can get a coffee grinder fairly cheaply. Just be sure to dedicate one only for dubbing blending - you don't want coffee oils & smells on your flies!!

Here is a short, direct video that's straight to the point showing you how simple it is to turn yarn into dubbing with a coffee grinder:

This dubbing works great on everything from nymphs to dry flies & everything in between. Just realize that it will absorb water a bit differently than fur dubbing. For nymphs & wets, this means that it might take a bit longer to absorb the water, making it longer for your fly to sink. For dry flies, it can hold onto water a little longer than fur, so it might take a little longer to dry. You should always test the yarn ahead of time to see how the color will be effected when the yarn gets wet.

Acrylic, wool, synthetic wool, or any other type of yarn you see at the store can be used these ways. So the next time you're in a big chain store that sells yarn, stand back & look at the wall of yarn & know that you can turn all of that into dubbing for your flies!!!

Furnace hackle - brown with a distinct black stripe in the middle - is, to me, much under used in flies. The black middle section, when turned around a hook, looks like a small body with brown legs protruding. The barbs of the feathers have a fine quality to them & the contrast of black center to fine, brown legs gives the fly an appearance of life just sitting in the vise. You can imagine how much more life these feathers will imitate when pulsating in the moving water. Often, the trout will agree, too.

I like to use furnace hackle on a 'general' soft hackle wet fly ("spiders" to the British) that I fish when I don't know which bug to imitate. Basically, it's just a body of spun dubbing, a rib of wire turned on in the opposite direction,  no more than 3 (preferably 2) turns of furnace hackle. Simple. The only trick is to get the body not too thick - a nice, skinny body will do with just a few guard hairs sticking out randomly.

Here's an old trick for these wet flies: fish them during a hatch, when you'd normally be using a dry fly. This is especially good if you're not sure which bug the trout are taking. A good 'general' wet fly w/ a gold-ribbed hare's ear body & this furnace hackle can do wonders during a hatch of either caddis or mayflies. Sometimes the trout take these as emerging insects, other times I think they look like a crippled, or stillborn, bug. There are several ways to fish a soft hackle wet to a hatch........

You can grease everything - line, leader, fly - & float them up high (as high as a wet fly can be); or you can grease the line & leader & fish the fly just below the surface. This requires you drying the fly occasionally, like a dry fly w/ false casts, as it will become water logged & sink your line. You can also choose to grease the leader & the hackle only, so the body sits in, or just under, the surface film, imitating an emerging insect. There's a lot of ways to fish these flies.

One other trick: if you'll be fishing these flies up top, in or near the surface, tie them on a dry fly hook. (I can hear the intake of breath from the audience now). Seriously, if you know these flies will be used up higher than a wet fly is usually fished, then give yourself every advantage you can & use lighter, finer diameter dry fly hook. 

Furnace is a great hackle, which I almost always prefer to regular brown hackle when a fly's recipe calls for brown. To me it just looks a bit more life-like & that is the entire point of our flies.

As I write this summer may seem like a far off dream, as it's the dead of winter, but it will be here before we know it. In thinking of summer, one fly you should never be without along the stream in the heat of summer is a good ant pattern. 

If you ever see trout in the heat of a bright summer day, sipping something on the surface while the sun shines bright & hard down onto the stream, take a close look & you'll probably see that they're taking ants. These ants fall into the stream & become trout food. They struggle on the water's surface, drawing the trout's attention. Once the trout have recognized them as food they'll hone in on them & you can do really well with a good ant dry fly.

I like to keep things simple & this ant pattern is just that. You need to make sure you match the size of your fly to the size of the real ants on the water. Fortunately, this fly is easy enough to tie that if you have to go down to, say, size 20 hook, it shouldn't be too bad at the vise. If you're like me, you get frustrated tying complicated, small patterns as my fingers just seem too big to handle those small hooks & feathers at the tying vise.

Thinking of summer makes me think of ants on the water. This is one fly you can use when nothing else will work on those hot days when the trout are being selective to the natural ants. In fact, this fly can save the day when those conditions are present. Give it a try & enjoy the great video below, showing how to tie it up!

If you would limit me to only two flies that I could ever use to catch fish - be it trout, bass, panfish, etc - the gold ribbed hare's ear nymph would be one of the two (a black woolly bugger would be the other, but that's for another day). It is one of the most useful patterns ever created for catching fish, in my opinion.

So, it's no surprise that there are a lot of different versions of this pattern out there. If you've recently began the journey (re: madness) into tying your own flies, then this nymph is one you want to know how to tie. 

Here is a really well made video showing a very nice way of tying up this pattern. You can't go wrong by following the directions here & this version of the nymph is a great one to carry in your fly wallet.

So sit back & enjoy. I seriously wouldn't want to spend a minute on the stream without having one of these nymphs with me, because it's just one of those patterns that will work on days when nothing else will.

Most nymphs move along the stream bottom in a start & stop fashion. Some crawl some swim, some scurry very quickly in undulating motions. No matter how they move, they will get caught up in the water current, losing their footing, & tumble down stream for a bit. When you're fishing with a nymph imitation, you want to try to mimic this movement.

Gary Borger, in his classic book "Nymphing" describes a technique called "The Strip / Tease" (we just called this 'working the nymph' when I was a kid). The method is pretty simple: cast your nymph across - up or down & across, wherever - so that it gets to the bottom in the part of the stream where you think the trout are laying. The, very slowly, strip in short amounts of line (using the hand twist retrieve). Start & stop the retrieve often, allowing some time for your nymph to drift down stream. This will mimic the natural nymph movement well - if you're on the bottom.

You can also use this tactic casting straight down stream, if you're in lower water. It makes your fly look like a nymph struggling in vain to move upstream.

This strip / tease method is very effective in the early season, when there's more water in the stream & the water temperature is colder. Also, use this method anytime & anywhere you see the trout flashing their sides. When you see trout flashing their sides, it most likely means they are rooting the bottom, trying to dislodge some nymphs from the bottom.

One thing about this technique - most anglers do it TOO FAST. You must go very, very slowly!! As a general rule of thumb, the colder the water the slower you must retrieve. Give your fly plenty of time to sink.

As you retrieve the line with the hand-twist method, keep the line under your index finger of your rod hand. You need to be in constant contact with your fly to feel every bump & titch of the line so you don't miss any strikes.

Finally, if you're using any weight or split-shot to get your fly down to the bottom, you need to think about where you put your weight on the leader. In order to mimic the real nymphs, you need to know how far off the bottom they're coming when they lose their footing. There's no way to know for sure, so you must experiment with how far up or down on your leader you put the weight. Keep moving your weight up or down your leader until you start picking up strikes. If you move to another spot on the stream, you might have to move the weight again, but at least you'll have a reference to start from.

So, to summarize:

1.) Cast your fly so it gets to the bottom where the trout are. Give it lots of time to sink.
2.) Slowly retrieve your line in a start & stop manner.
3.) Experiment with where you place your weight (if any) on your leader.
4.) Keep in constant contact with your fly & line so you can feel the fly. 
5.) Remember to go slow. Most anglers fish this method too fast.

​You've seen them advertised : a kit containing everything you need to get started in fly tying including the basic tools & enough hooks & materials to tie up a few of the basic patterns. Maybe that's how you got started - or what you're using now. These kits are a great way to get started in fly tying & I always recommend a good quality kit for those looking to start tying their own. But what do you do after you've used those materials that came with the kit? 


If you're like most of us, you begin to collect materials a little at a time based on the patterns you want to tie. This takes time & if you should find a pattern that calls for something you don't have, then you'll be making another trip to the fly shop soon.

But some of us don't have a fully stocked fly shop just up the road. Those folks usually order their supplies through the mail. These days, with the cost of shipping, it isn't feasible to place an order for only a small pack of fur. You need to order more stuff to justify the shipping costs & to pay less in shipping. So what to do? At best you might be guessing what you'll need in the future & that might end up with you collecting a bunch of material you'll never use. That's wasted money.

So, if you're a beginning fly tier & wondering what you might need in way of supplies (now that you've exhausted your beginner's kit), here's a list of some basic materials that every fly tier should have on hand:

Hooks:
    -Wet / nymph: #12 - #16
    -Dry: #14 & #16
    -Streamer: #8 & #6
Materials:
    -soft hackle feathers in black, brown, & partridge.
    -black marabou feathers
    -animal hair: elk, buck tail, & white calf body hair.
    -body material: dubbing in both natural & colors of green, grey & brown
                          -peacock herl
                          -chenille in black, green, & brown
    -gold & silver tinsel, both round & flat.
    -pheasant tail feathers (these are used in many ways)
    -dry fly hackle: in grizzly & brown colors, sizes #14 & 16.

This list is intended only to give you a start in building a fly tying supply. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but you can tie a lot of different types of flies with the stuff listed above. Of course, if you know you're going to need something for a specific pattern remember that it's cheaper to buy this stuff in bulk when you can. Most of the materials listed above should last you quite a while, too as a little goes a long way when tying most flies. 

This list also assumes that you've got all the basic tools you need to tie flies like a vise, bobbin, scissors, thread, etc. Most kits come with all these tools anyway. The only upgrade you might want to make to your tools would be to get a new vise, as some kits don't include the best of vises. Now you don't need a fancy rotary vise with all the attachments. Those are nice, but you don't need them. In fact, I've been using my same old, simply designed Thompson vise for decades. It's basic, well built, economical, & serves me just fine.

​I hope this list & info helps those of you who spend time looking over catalogs or websites scratching your head wondering how to start building a fly tying collection of materials. Just bear in mind that no matter how much stuff you amass thorough the years, you'll still find yourself needing a type of feather, fur, or hook that you don't have!!! Consider it just an occupational hazard to fly tying with so many different fly patterns in the world.