From owner-flyfish@LSV.UKY.EDU Tue Mar 19 17:18 PST 1996
Date:         Tue, 19 Mar 1996 17:16:15 -0800
From: David Alexander Mason <dmason@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject:      Exhaustive FF@ lunch & tyer's expo report
Comments: cc: bonamici@oregon.uoregon.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list FLYFISH <FLYFISH@LSV.UKY.EDU>

Hi.

So despite the fact that the Idiots In Charge (tm) decided
it would be fun to have final exams occur during the week
following the tying convention this year, I spent the entire
day at the fairgrounds inhaling napthalene & meeting some
fellow listers  (...still trying to decide if these two actions
are causally related...  probably depends on how much napthalene
one inhales...).  Anyway, as much for my own benefit as the
list's (?) I figured I'd put my notes in some sort of readable
form & post them before I forgot what my handwriting said:

My friend Steve drove down from Seattle again for the convention,
though this time he was smart and came down the night before...
We wandered in at a bit past 9:00, there were already quite
a few people there.  First thing I noticed as I was paying
to get in was a sign emblazoned with "FLYFISH@" and half
a dozen names, informing me to show up back there at noon
for lunch.  Cool --

Started out with the standard orbit, checking to see who was
there & who I wanted to see...  Noticed quite a few of famous
tyers showed up this time:  The Beatty's, John Shewey, Alec
Jackson, Henry Hoffman, Deke Meyer, Kent Bulfinch, Stan
Walters, Dave McNeese.... and so on and so on...  Anyway, first
stop was at Al Beatty's bench:

Al Beatty:
~~~~~~~~~~

He was tying some dry flies, I saw him do a poly yarn humpy
and something he called the "quick & dirty".  For the humpy
he first tied in a few fibers of moose for a tail.  He
pointed out that the best way to determine how many fibers
one should include in the tail was to clip off a few, grasp
the clump in your hands, twist them, and hold them next to the
eye of the hook.  If the diameter of the twisted section is
the same as the outer diameter of the eye of the hook, then
you have the right amount.  After doing that he clipped off
a bit of grey poly yarn, and tied it in for the shellback.
At this point I would have thought he'd have tied in some
floss, and wrapped an underbody, but instead he just used
his thread.  Then he pulled the poly yarn over the top and
tied it down.  He didn't clip the tag end of the poly yarn,
however, but instead propped it up, divided it and turned it
into a pair of wings.  Then he tied in & wound the hackle, &
finished off the head.  He mentioned that a variation of this
with yellow poly on a #18 hook is a killer during a PMD hatch.
I'll probably give that a try this spring...

The other fly he did he called the "quick & dirty".  He said
it was based on something the Europeans call a "wonder wing",
where you use a pair of oversized hackles to make both the tail
and the wing.  This is a bit complicated to explain in words,
so bear with me...  He took a pair of hackles from the
posterior end of the neck (where the big hackles are), and
stroked the fibers down toward the butt ends of the feathers.
He then cut out a section (including the stem) from each
feather and trimmed it so that the stem section in the middle
was the appropriate length for a wing.  Then he paired up the
two sections, dull sides out and tied them in by the swept back
fibers for the tail.  He then continued wrapping until the
reaching the stem.  So the bent back fibers and the stem of the
hackle section formed a wing, and the fibers continued back to
make a tail.  When he first tied it in, he placed it so that as
he continued wrapping, he would reach the beginning of the stem
section right where the wing should be.  This meant that some of
the tail fibers were too long for the fly.  To fix this he just
pulled those fibers off to the side and cut them off.  He then
dubbed the body and wrapped the hackle in the usual way.  The
result of all the tomfoolery with the wing/tail hackles was a pair
of nice oval wings.  Undoubtedly after reading this you are now
completely confused as to what he was doing... Like I said it is
tough (for me at least) to explain this without drawing diagrams...
Luckily, he was quick to inform us that this fly was going to
appear on his next video...  Or, you could go to the expo next
year and ask him to tie one for you....

Dan Trachsel:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan was tying what he called a "Flaming Skunk".  It was a pretty
standard steelhead fly, though on a smaller hook (#10).  He
started out with a red hackle tail, and a silver tinsel butt
section.  Then he tied in some fluorescent green floss, and
wrapped it back, then forward over the tinsel.  This gives the
floss some flash in the water. Then he did the thorax section
in black ostrich herl, ribbed it with silver tinsel, and hackled
the fly with black hen hackle.  Then he tied in two fluorescent
orange saddle hackles as a wing reaching back to about the bend
of the hook, and added a shorter topping of black skunk hair
(~2/3 the hackle wing length) to finish it off.  Probably not
many innovative tying techniques here, but it was a pretty fly
when he was finished.  He says its a good pattern for the few
searun cutts that are left...

Alec Jackson:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So at this point I figured it would be worthwhile to check out
what they had at the materials sale table, when I noticed some
space open up in the swarm surrounding Alec Jackson, so I wandered
over there.  He was just getting starting on a fly called something
like "Radcy. Skunk".  I put that in quotes, because thats my
interpretation of what he wrote on the card attached to the fly.
I didn't think to ask him what it actually said.  If anybody has
any ideas what the "Radcy." means, let me know!

Anyway, he uses a Nor-Vise, designed for high speed rotary
tying.  He placed the hook in the vise and attached some fluorescent
orange thread near the eye of the hook.  Then he wrapped back to
the bend of the hook, pulled off a couple red saddle fibers tied
them in there.  He threw a loop or two of thread underneath the tail
to get it to stick up and spread out a bit.  Then he tied in some
peacock herl and tinsel and wound over the tag end almost up to the
eye of the hook.  Undoubtedly he did this to make a smoother body.
The peacock herl he selected was from an actual eye, and not from one
of those bulk clumps of loose herl.  The herl around the eye (of the
quill, not the bird...) has a nice taper, and he exploits that for
his flies.  So he clamped the herl and tinsel in some hackle pliers,
and spun them together clockwise.  He then proceeded to build up the
back half of the body, being careful not to overlap the wrappings.
Then he clipped that off and tied in some black ostrich herl and
silver oval tinsel.  Using the same technique, he spun it, and
finished off the body.  Then he searched through his shoe box and
found a hen neck with with the right size & color (black) hackle.  He
tied it in by the tip, and wrapped it, folding it as he went.  He tied
that off and added a short wing of polar bear.  He finished off the
head, and applied head cement from a sawed off syringe.

While working on his next fly he mentioned some things about
hook color that I thought was interesting...  Contrary to what
I would have thought, the least visible hook color is silver,
because it reflects and takes on the color of the water.  Next
comes gold, then bronze.  The most visible is black, and it
seems the only reason it is commonly used in steelhead fishing is
tradition...

Ray Phelps:
~~~~~~~~~~~

At the next table over from Alec, was this guy working on tube
flies for steelhead.  I'd seen people do something like this for
saltwater, but hadn't seen it done for steelhead.  For those who
don't know, a tube fly is just that, a fly tied on a piece of
thin tubing instead of a hook.  You then thread your leader through
it and tie on a treble or single hook to keep it in place.

The tubes he was using were purchased pre-made, however he said
it was relatively easy to make your own.  The tubes were about 1/8
inch in diameter, and made of either copper or aluminum.  He uses
the aluminum tubes for summer fishing when the water is low, and
the copper ones in the winter when you want the fly to sink like
a rock.  He had a couple different lengths, 1/2 inch, 1 inch, and
1-1/2 inch tubes, for added control in weight.  They were lined
with plastic on the inside, so that they wouldn't cut the line.
To make your own you would just have to find the right size copper
or aluminum tubing at your hardware store, and some plastic tubing
that would fit snugly inside.  Cut off the appropriate length of
metal tubing, and stick the plastic inside.  You want the plastic
to be a bit longer than the metal, because you then melt the ends
of the plastic to keep it inside the tube.  --Make sure you don't
melt the plastic shut!

Since its impossible to clamp a tube like that in a vise, Ray had
a large needle clamped in it instead, and the tube stuck onto the
needle.  The patterns themselves were relatively simple, the main
difference between them and normal flies being that they were tied
"in the round".  Since you don't have a hook to give you a preferred
up or down direction in the fly, they are tied symmetrically.  He
didn't have any tails on the flies, and didn't include a wing.
The first step was to stretch on a short length of vinyl tubing,
just the right size to snugly fit over the back end of the fly, and
leave a bit to hold the eye of the hook in place.  Then wrap whatever
you want for the body, or leave the metal exposed for some flash, then
tie on a large soft hackle collar.

When you are actually using the fly, just thread the leader through
the tube, and tie on either a barbless treble hook or a single with
a ring eye (so that the hook rides straight).  Stick the eye of
the hook in the bit of vinyl tubing at the end of the fly to keep the
fly from sliding around.

Lunchtime:
~~~~~~~~~~

So it was noon by now and therefore time to meet some folks from the
list.  We wandered toward the door and looked around.  I'm not sure
how to express it, but there is something comical about a group of
people trying to meet who have never seen each other before...
Somewhere in amongst the other hungry people waiting for friends to
pull themselves away from the tyers' benches, were fellow listmembers,
but hell if I knew who they were.  There were no obvious signs or
signals so I figured we were early and decided again it would be a
good time to look over the materials at the sale table.  Suddenly
I hear this voice from above: "WOULD THE MEMBERS OF FLYFISH DIGEST
PLEASE MEET AT THE DOOR".  OK, so back we went, and again no obvious
signs.  Just the same glassy-eyed smiling people... Finally, we looked
outside, and were deciding whether to just head out to lunch anyway,
when I hear somebody saying "well, it looks like its just us." and
decided they were listmembers.  I was right, one was Marty Seldon
and the other was William Bragg, both wearing '94 pins.  What happened
next was analogous to how rain forms in clouds.  The four of us formed
a clump, and all the stray "droplets" around started accumulating
until the drop got large enough to fall to Ocean Sky restaurant.
Ooooh! watch the sparks fly as Dave mangles metaphors....  I guess
this means we're all just big drips...  :)

Needless to say, we came, we saw, we ate lunch.  Good bunch of folks.
We're all going to have to get together and fish!  Marty has a picture
of us that at some point will be scanned so the list can have something
to frighten unruly children with...  :)

Note to FF@ pin designers -- next time around incorporate some flashing
LED's & fluorescent colors to the design so meetings like this would
be less confusing...

Cliff Adams:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

So now fully satiated from Chinese food & talk, we returned to
the fairgrounds, and I wandered over to Cliff Adams' table.  He
was working on a fly he called the "North Forker", named for the
North Fork of the Willamette river.  The fly was essentially like
a Yellow Wulff, but with a clipped dun hackle rib.  He tied in the
elk hair wing splayed out as if he were doing a comparadun.  Then
he added the red hackle fiber tail, and clipped a dun hackle to be
used as a rib.  The clipped fibers were about half the hook gap
width.  At this point he tied in some yellow wool, wrapped
it to make a body for the fly, and wrapped the dun hackle over it.
Then he tied in the grizzley hackle, wrapped it and finished off the
head.  Looked like a nice little attractor pattern...

Henry Hoffman:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The main thing I noticed about his setup was that he had a thin
aquarium, complete with small dowel fishing poles to test the motion
of flies in the water.  He was tying with chickabou, and I must
admit that stuff really moves in the water.  He had several patterns
he was working on, most interesting to me was a sort of March Brown
soft hackle tied with brown chickabou as hackle.  He also had some
sort of purple tandem fly in his tank, with both the front and back
sections hackled with chickabou.  The chickabou would move all over
the place, and the whole body would undulate due to the joint between
the tandem hooks.  I'd think something like that would be a killer
lake pattern.


Ray Martinez:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Around the corner from Henry was Ray Martinez, working on some sort
of leather stonefly nymph.  I saw him last year, when he used soft
leather as a tying material for making really juicy looking segmented
caddis larva pattern.  This time he was using the same material to
form a nice segmented abdomen on a golden stonefly.  He tied it on
an Alec Jackson style steelhead hook, about size 6.  First step was
to tie on a pair of tails, made of brown 40# test monofilament.  Then
he tied in a strip of thick natural cream buckskin leather, and wrapped
it just past halfway to the eye, to form a soft, segmented abdomen.  He
said last year that one advantage of the leather was that it is soft,
making the fly feel more natural to the fish, which in turn causes it
to hold on to the fly longer.  After the abdomen was finished he
applied a bit of gold goat dubbing to start on the thorax.  He had a
couple vials containing preserved natural insects, and pointed out a
natural adult golden stone that still had its wingcases after its wings
hatched.  So he then proceeded to trim a pair of wingcases out of the
leather, and tie one in.  Then he clipped off three 2 inch sections of
the brown monofilament and tied them in as legs, dubbed some more goat
for the next section of the thorax, then tied in the second wingcase.
At this point he started working on the wings, made out of "the stuff
you use to clean lenses with".  I don't wear glasses, but think I've
seen what he was talking about...  Its a sort of translucent cloth
probably not unlike the stuff they use for handy-wipes...  He trimmed
two pieces to resemble stonefly wings, and colored them gold with a
pantone marker.  Then he tied them in and started working on some
eyes.  Again taking a bit of the brown monofilament, he clamped it
in some forceps & heated the ends with a lighter until he had a pair
of monofilament eyes.  He tied them in & applied some dubbing around
them to fill in the head.  Then he took out the pantone marker again
and colored all the cream buckskin on the fly gold like the wings and
dubbing, and used a brown marker to add some more markings to the fly.
Afterwards, he clipped the monofilament legs to the proper length, and
heated up a pair of tweezers to bend them into natural buglike legs.
He set it down on the table, then it looked around for a second, and
crawled away.

Steve Probasco:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steve was playing around with this cool material, called "super floss"
that I had never seen before.  It has the elasticity of a rubber band,
but has a sheen to it like floss.  I absolutely need to get some of
that stuff, because it looks extremely useful.

He was using it on a chironomid pattern, tied on a #12 scud hook.  He
attached his thread, then wound back to the bend of the hook, and
attached a piece of black superfloss.  Then he wound forward, tied
it off, and attached a strip of swiss straw (synthetic) for a shell-
back.  Then he dubbed a black thorax, and tied in a wisp of white
poly yarn.  Then he pulled the swiss straw over the top of the thorax
and clipped the poly yarn to simulate gill tufts coming out of the side
of the bug.  Looked very nice, and the superfloss gave it a glossy
segmented body.

I have no connection with the company, but I wrote down its address:

Angler's Choice Flytying Materials
P.O. Box 466
Custer, WA 98240

Don't know a phone or how much the stuff costs, but figured it would
be worth including in the post...


Anyway, seeing as how I'm now well past 300 lines in this post, and
that this is where my notes run out, I'd better stop before the
bandwidth debate starts up again....  It was really a fun convention
this year, and I definitely learned a lot (as usual).  It was
especially nice to meet some fellow FF@ types so I can put some
faces behind the posts I've been reading....

Happy Tying!

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
David A. Mason                          dmason@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Zen Master in the Fabrication of Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
& Future Mad Scientist