Sunday, August 15, 2010

Soft Hackle "D" rib Golden Stone Nymph

This is a creation I have been playing with for a while. The rear half of the nymph is from my "D" rib Golden Stone nymph. The front half came from another nymph I saw. The combination of patterns has been deadly on the water. The soft hackle collar is a combination of CDC and Whiting Farms Brahma Hen neck in a Golden Olive.  When this fly is in the water it has a lot of movement. With the tungsten bead and the under body of lead tape will allow this nymph to get down deep fast. On my last trip I was trialling this of  a DH Hopper with great success.

Rear view

Group photo

Brahma Hen Neck

Brahma Hen Neck Golden Olive

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Razor Foam Caddis tying tutorial

Razor foam Caddis, simple but effective fly.
Three basic materials for this fly. Standard dry fly hook, deer or elk hair for the wing. Standard brown dry fly hackle, and of course razor foam. For this pattern I like the razor faom from Wapsi. It is a little more elastic and that helps with getting a nicely tapered body.

Step 1: Lay down a base of thread on the hook shank

Step 2: Cut a narrow strip of razor foam, taper at the tie point. The thickness of razor foam I use is based on the hook size, size 14 and smaller I use .5mm thickness. Size 12 and up I use the 1mm thickness

Step 3: Tie in the razor foam, I lke to tie in at mid point of the the hook shank and bind it down towards the bend of the hook
Step 4: Wrap the razor foam foward, adjust tension on the razor foam to create a nicely tapered body. Wind forward to just past mid point of hook shank
Step 5: Clean and stack a clump of deer or elk hair for the wing. Tie it in and bind the ends. Cover the ends with thread. With right type of elk or deer hair you can tie this fly down to a size 20 with out any problems.
Step 6: Select and tie in the apporiate sized dry fly hackle. I tie them shining side up.

Step 7: Wrap the hackle forward and tie of at the head. Do not crowd the head like I just did




Completed fly

I tie these also in black, olive and yellow

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Anglers All Fly Shop Winter tying demo schedule updated 9/5/10

Just wanted to let everybody here in the Denver metro area that I'm working with the new owners of Anglers All (Gary & Chris) helping them set up a winter tying demo schedule. The demos will be Saturday mornings starting at 10:00 going till 12:00. All demos will be shown on a HD TV up behind the tier. The shop has a first class set up, they also have one of the better stocked tying sections in the metro. Check there web site out under events, they will be updating the list as I add tiers.

http://www.anglersall.com/

Here is the list of tiers I have scheduled so far


10/30/10

11/6/10 - Carl Pennington

11/13/10 - Chad Gaurke

11/20/10 - Juan Ramirez

11/27/10 - Jason Goodale


12/4/10 - Vincent Stu

12/11/10 - Shea Gunkel

12/18/10 - Marty Bartholomew


1/8/2011 - 2011 Fly Fishing Show

1/15/2011 - Ty Clifton

1/22/2011 - Larry Jurgens

1/29/2011


2/5/2011

2/12/2011 West Denver TU Fly tying clinic

2/19/2011

2/26/2011



3/5/2011 - Rick Takahashi

3/12/2011 -

3/19/2011

3/26/2011 - Al Ritt

Sunday, August 1, 2010

DH Hopper protype

 I have customer that really likes the Streambank hopper, he also really likes my DH Hopper. The one thing that caught his eye with Streambank Hopper was the strip of orange. He challenged me to incorporate the orange foam into my DH hopper. The first challenge is trying to figure out the best glue to use. Super glue and Zap A Gap dose not work for gluing foam together. When the super glue dries it will not allow the thread to compress the foam. In tying the DH Hopper you need the thread to compress the foam down alot.  I went on the search for the correct adhesive for gluing foam together. What I found was that regular contact cement works great. It leaves the foam in a pliable state. Now it comes down to playing with the thickness of the foam, the one tied above is tied with 2mm brown and .5mm orange. Finding the thinner foam for this is a little tricky. Raineys cross link foam comes in thicknesses of .5mm. 1mm, & 2mm. I also found Wrigthway foam has the same thickness. I hope to have a fishing report sometime later in the week for the above hopper.

 Streambank Hooper
 Streambank Hooper

 DH Hopper
DH Hooper