Friday Night Flies

Alright! It’s not Friday night so sue me! Better yet, fire me! I hope to present these sorts of things, articles, stories, posts – maybe even on a Friday night in the future. Time just got away from me this past week. So, here we are – Tuesday.

Maybe the experience of reading this post will be worth all this harassment if I show you what I’ve been tying. I saw a YouTube video on George Daniel’s Czech Catnip which intrigued me. I liked how it looks and he used both a heavy tungsten bead-head and several wraps of lead wire under the body components. So here’s my attempt, it’s not real pretty and it’s not quite like Mr. Daniels’ – but I still like it – as I think it’ll fool some trout this coming fishing season.

I think this might have been the second one I tied. I can tell by comparing it to what I saw on the video, that I need to make the casing/shell back wider. It’s not obvious in this picture but the casing is there and I lash it down with mono. I believe I use 0.009″ mono and that is indeed micro chenille. Not sure if it’s the UV classified stuff or not but I’ll tie each version and see if there’s any difference in response to it. I just happened to use a lighter colored thread on this tie. I’m trying to decide if I want to color code the specimens I tie in these sessions. Different color thread could then differentiate between lighter and heavier versions. Adding flattened lead to the thorax area would make those quite heavy which I suppose could be fished in Pine with that much weight. But, I might be able to get away with just the tungsten bead-head for offering these up the runs.

I need to tie a couple of dozen of these but I switched to a caddis pupae that I saw somewhere on YouTube some time ago. A youngster was tying it I believe – and since it looked so good, I wanted to tie some of these versions up and give them a try this year.

I’ve had some success up the runs with caddis pupae in the past. And I’ve tied caddis pupaes in past years that seem to have most of these elements in this particular composition. They got somewhat complicated those years ago with legs and wing-buds and eyes and antenna. Complicated enough to drive a fly tier batty! I noticed that this seemed a little easier to tie so I thought I’d tie some of these up this year.

Hard to see but it uses latex for the abdomen, then partridge for legs along the sides. More latex for a ‘wing case’ ( I know… caddis don’t have wing cases… this tie just seems to have it) – dubbing a thorax, adding some antenna and tying down the wing case that shouldn’t be there on a caddis. It’s using a tungsten bead like the Catnip above and I’m considering tying heavier versions like the flies above. I’d lash down several turns of flattened lead in the thorax are before dubbing to accomplish this.

Anyway I know some of you are right now tying for this coming year’s adventures. If you would want to submit any pictures of your creations (or mail to me a sample that I’d take pictures of), I’ll post them in here for the rest of us to see. Maybe we could have a quick phone conversation about the fly you tied and I could post that with your tying specimen. Drop us an email at slaterunsportsmen.com if you would like to pursue this idea.

Ok folks, spring will be here sooner than we think. I can see the ‘days are getting longer’. While we haven’t had the early in the season snowfall like we have had in the past here where I reside – I see PA is getting quite a storm as I write this (Monday late afternoon). So I hope the mountains in PA will be all charged up with the appropriate amount of snowfall so we don’t start out with drought conditions at least. The previous few years were, in my opinion, too wet. Then a drought followed last year. Can’t we get a break and just have a “normal” year precipitation-wise? Is that too much to ask for?

If I figure out how to control the weather, I’ll let you know.

Till we see each other again… UB