Tuesday, June 14, 2011

What's Under Your Floss?

A recent Speypages thread concerning floss had the usual array of differing ideas on how to apply floss, and more importantly for the purposes of this post, what underlayment for floss bodies and butts gives the best results.  "Best results" usually meaning "most satisfying to the tyer's eye".   But occasionally, and hopefully, meaning "best for fooling fish."   Well, the old researcher in me got the best of me, and I decided to try a little test:  put the three most commonly mentioned underlayments individually on hooks and wrap with (in this instance) my favorite floss, Gordon Griffiths.  I used flourescent orange and green (click on the pic to supersize the image):


The top hook has a silver mylar base, the middle a white thread base, and the bottom hook has a black thread base.  Dry, they all look pretty much the same to my eye.

So next, I soaked all three hooks in a cup of tapwater for a few minutes.  The results:



Pretty obviously, the floss with the mylar underlayment really "shines" over the flosses underlain with thread.  For my money, floss butts and bodies create a "target of opportunity" for the fish you are after; might as well give them as glowing a target as you can!

5 comments:

  1. very nice, I think that I'll have to upgrade to mylar.

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  2. Thanks, guys. I think you'll see a real difference with mylar under your floss, especially if its a flourescent floss.
    Gary

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  3. Hey Gary I do this when tying any of my floss flies, the green floss really shines when doing this and the thread does not soak through. Nice going on mentioning this!!
    Rod

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  4. Thanks, Rod, it does make a huge difference, especially on any of the salmon flies with a floss butt.
    Gary

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