Tying a Simple but Snazzy Soft Hackle

I really like to swing wet flies, streamers and soft hackles for trout and landlocked salmon.  And I also like to add a little bling to them.  This soft hackle is a case in point: its a knock-off of that old stand-by, the gold-ribbed hare's ear, which I always had great success with.  The colors of this fly are very similar...just with that added flash of the olive brown Ice Dubbing.

Materials list:
Tail - a few ring-neck pheasant tail barbs
Rib - small oval gold tinsel
Thread - Gray Gordon Griffiths 14/0
Underbody - Brown Uni-Yarn
Body - Olive Brown Ice Dubbing
Hackle - Hungarian Partridge
Hook - Your favorite wet fly/nymph hook

Tying:

A good place to start is by putting your hook in the vise and getting the thread started on down the shank.

 
Tie in 3 or 4 or 5 barbs from Mr. Ringneck's tail feather.

Bind it down, running thread up towards head, clip off excess, and run back down to the butt.

Tie in the oval gold tinsel ribbing.

Bind it down same as the tail.

At this point I like to wrap the shank with something like Uni-wool.  Dunno if it makes the fly sink quicker when it gets soaked or not.  I just like the way it makes for a fuller body.  Guess you could use anything you wanted to accomplish that, if you felt that "fuller body" urge, too.

Dubbing time.  First, I roll a "noodle" of the Ice Dubbing on my thigh.  Denim jeans seem to create just the right resistance to make a nice noodle.

Now make yourself about a three inch dubbing loop (horrible pic, sorry).

Insert the noodle into the loop.

Give 'er a spin.  I use a crochet hook thingy I boosted from my mother's sewing kit about 35 years ago to spin the loop.

Wrap the shank with your Ice Dub rope.

I forgot to take a pic of it, but now would also be a very good time to wrap the tinsel ribbing up the shank.  Five turns looks nice.

Time to hackle the beast.  Pluck an appropriately sized Hungarian partridge feather, and prepare thusly:

Tie in thusly (I'm on a thusly kick, apparently):

Wrap thusly (lol):

Tie off, uh, er, thusly:

Wrap the head and go fishing.

I hooked my largest landlocked salmon to date on this fly a couple years ago at Upper Dam in Maine.  And a year or so ago, fishing the Mettawee in NY, there was a nice fish rising in a long, glassy glide.  I drifted dries over it for about 15 minutes; never put it down, but never brought it up, either.   Decided to change tactics.  Waded carefully out of the river and went upstream of the fish (which was still sporadically rising).  Tied on this soft hackle in, I believe, a size 10, and got back in the river.  You knew this was coming...on the first swing past the fish, it took, and I landed a nice 15" brown trout.   Also have great luck with it on tiny little streams for brook trout.

Try it.  You'll like it.

Shades of Claret

As an American fly tyer, I've begun to feel a bit cavalier in my attitude towards the various shades of claret especially compared to tyers in the U.K. and even more especially compared to Irish fly tyers.  Through my visits to www.salmonfishingforum.com (a largely U.K. populated forum), I'm gaining new appreciation claret's many nuances.

A recent post about claret on that forum motivated me to post a photo of 3 different capes I had dyed claret.  A salmonfishingforum friend, Kenny (kgm on that board, and a scotsman living in Ireland), took me gently to task, mentioning that true clarets couldn't be gotten from dyeing over pure white.
Here are the capes in question:

Well, Kenny took the bull by the horns and sent me 6 or 7 claret-dyed seal samples from Frankie McPhillips of Northern Ireland and Steve Cooper (www.cookshill-flytying.co.uk) .  Yikes, my claret is so vanilla compared to those samples.  I mean, the Irish take their claret (the fly tying kind, dunno how they feel about the wine with all that Guiness flowing about) very seriously. 

Being a fan of visual comparisons, and dying to use Bridget's new label-maker thingy, I decided to lay out some differences for us all.  To wit:

 

Photo taken in direct sunlight (rare occurence around here) with my old Kodak point and shoot.  The good news is, and definately as luck would have it, I'm pretty close to 3 of the clarets.  And they're probably the ones that count for me.  That black claret is some myserious concoction, I'd say.

Kenny sent me one new pack of Frankie McPhillips dubbing in Fiery Brown.  It's so cool for me to have it's just getting tacked up on the wall, unopened.

Of interest to me is how lacking the color claret is in (particularly) atlantic salmon flies tied for the Miramichi system.  In days gone by, flies like the Logie, with its body of dark claret floss, was in use on that river.  There's a photo in John E. Hutton's book Trout and Salmon Fishing (Little, Brown and Co., 1949) of hisownself sitting in a canoe on the Miramichi, playing a fish.  The caption reads: "...Fish hooked on No. 12 Logie."   But even the poor Logie has become "de-claretized".

In Kelson (1895), the Logie's body is listed as that dark claret floss.  Along comes Pryce-Tannatt (1914) and voila! the body becomes ruby red.  If you peruse that excellent purveyor of salmon fishing equipment W.W. Doak's catalog, there is not a single fly that appears to use claret anywhere on the fly.  (Thus endeth today's academic adventures)

All is not lost.  Great fly innovators like Bob Warren have used the claret-ish colors of the Golden Pheasant to very great effect.  His Golden Pheasant Spey is one of the most effective autumn patterns I've seen:

I dyed a GP skin claret, and kind of like the Golden Pheasant Spey even a little farther into the claret spectrum:

Of course, then I went totally overboard, claret-wise, when my wildflower garden was in bloom:

The Celtic Beauty was born with a claret throat, and continues to be dressed with claret in its iterations other than pure hairwing:

and the latest, inspired by landlocked salmon fishing buddy, John Miniaci:

Dyeing and playing with colors has become much of the fun of fly fishing for me.  I'm very happy to have acquaintances like Kenny helping me enjoy it even more.  Thanks for the color, Kenny!

THE RUSTY RAT

The venerable Rusty Rat, that famous-among-hairwing flies, came about as a collaborative effort between Joseph Pulitzer II and Restigouche County, NB fly tyer Clovis Arseneault.  The story goes that Pulitzer had been fishing the Restigouche with one of Clovis' Black Rats , the black body of which had an underlying layer of rusty-colored dental floss.  A couple of good fish withered the black body, exposing the rust-colored floss.  Pulitzer proceeded to land a 41-pounder on the "rusty" fly. 

He took the fly to Clovis, and had him create a reproduction of it.  This was in 1949.  The rest of the story, is, as they say, history.   For the best account of the fly's history, check out The Origin of the Rusty Rat in Joseph D. Bates, Jr. and Pamela Bates Richards Fishing Atlantic Salmon Flies: The Flies and the Patterns, page 329.  Bob Warren edited the book, which, besides being a great resource, I find to be downright inspiring.  Out-of-Print and mucho dineros if you find a copy.

One of a group of Rusty Rats I've been tying (size 6 Gamakatsu T10-6H):

The Pattern as I've tied it:

Tag and Rib - Lagartun oval gold tinsel, size small
Tail - Peacock sword (four or five fibers)
Body - Rear half Rusty Orange Uni-Floss, front half Peacock Herl.  Note that a piece of floss veils      the rear half of the body, extending to about half-way over the tail.
Wing - Gray fox guard hairs
Hackle - webby grizzly hen saddle (in this case from Theriault Farm in Maine
Head - Red 

Here's a Rusty Rat tied by the man himself, Clovis Arseneault (courtesy Vin Swazey):





Notice the black head.  All of the Rusty Rats I've seen actually tied by Clovis have black heads.  All of the samples of his work in the Bates' book also have black heads.  Don't know when the switch to red occurred, but I do like it better...and my hook, my rules!

A batch o' Rats (sizes 4-12) hot off the vise:

My good friend Vin Swazey used to buy flies directly from Clovis when he (Vin) ran a couple of corporate camps on the Miramichi.  He still has a collection of about 120 of Clovis' ties...just an awesome sight!  As Clovis' eyes were failing him (born 1902, died 1980, so woulda been 76), he sent Vin this letter (don't forget, you can double click on the pic to see a larger version):

 



Here are a few more Arseneault-tied flies (from Vin's collection):

Left column top to bottom: Silver Doctor, Canadian Black Dose, Durham Ranger
Right column top to bottom: Silver Grey, Silver Grey, Jock Scott

I must report that a dear friend, salmon-fishing buddy and world-class fly tyer who shall remain anonymous remarked that, "It looks like Clovis put his head cement on with a popsicle stick."  Made me laugh. 

Thus endeth today's post.

         

The Picasse

I'm well into an order from a gentleman for almost 200 flies for his trip to the Gaspe' rivers this summer.  Several, more generally known in that region than the Miramichi where I fish, I've not tied before.  The Picasse is one of those flies.  Originated by guide Marc LeBlanc (one of his many effective creations), the fly started life looking more like a streamer than the spey-type fly it is now.  My french (and Italian and English!) speaking fishing buddy John Miniaci from Montreal added this about the fly:

"Story goes that it was named by a fellow guide that found the fly sank like an "anchor" (Picasse translates to "anchor"). Marc wanted something that would be a durable, fast fly to tie that his sports would find hard to destroy from bad casts or fish. Originally, it was tied with clear mono & bucktail with lady amherst cheeks."
Marc very generously took the time to send me a photo of the fly as he now ties it.  This is my rendition:

That fly is tied on a number 7 Daiichi 2059, with the blue finish.  The body is black vinyl D-ribbing, the wing is yellow hair under sparse black flash under black hair.  The hackle is blue eared pheasant with a silver pheasant collar.  Jungle cock eyes and a black head finish the fly off.

A herd ready to head to the Gaspe, tied on number 3, 5 and 7 Daiichi 2059's and Partridge Salar number 9's:

I tied a few for myself, too.  It looks too good not to work in the Miramichi system!

The Cave

Things are never very tidy down here in the Cave, but Tucker and I are quite comfortable in our cluttered little world.  Click on the pics for the Big Picture (lol, if you dare.  Clutter-sensitive individuals may wish to refrain).

When the spirit moves me, it's always nice to have smoke.  And a place to pile stuff that I'll have to organize one of these days.  Or find a place for.  On the other hand, piles of neat stuff like this create an ambience that I'm quite comfortable with, thank you very much!

And from my desk, its comforting to glance over and see a nice heap of good tackle.

Oh, the desk.  Bartered from my friend Jamie.  Big old oak thing.  It has a great green top.  See it?

Nice to be able to just grab a hat and a vest and go.

Books are good to have around.  The un-digitized kind, I mean.

Art.  I have to be surrounded by it.

 

And a coupla dead grouse to round out the decor (PITA members not welcome here, by the way)

Maybe the coziest niche within the Cave's confines, the tying corner.

The bench.  I built it out of 200 year old longleaf heart pine, leftover scraps from the floor we put in the South Carolina house.  Isn't that wood pretty?  Well, it is, take my word for it.

For the most part, Tucker just hangs out.  He'll be thirteen in April.

Thus endeth our tour.  Just seemed like a fun thing to do today.  Instead of some sort of gainful activity or, dare I say it, money-making activity.  We'll do that tomorrow, right, Tuck?

Size 10 Hook Comparison Chart Upgrade

Anticipating (but loathing the possibility of) another low water summer on the Miramichi, I've added some new size 10 hooks to the stash.  I'm liking The Fly Shop's hook, especially it's price: $4.95/25 hook package.  Bob Warren turned me onto the hook a year or so ago.  The Tiemco 7999 is still the beefiest of the bunch, and the Daiichi 2421 the most diminutive of the lot, with the Mustad a close second in that category.  Glad I don't use doubles; the Daiichi is almost a buck per hook!  Hope the chart has some utility for you.  Larger size comparisons can still be found at: http://theriverscourse.blogspot.com/2011/08/salmon-fly-hooksor-when-is-10-8.html.