Christmas Salmon Fly

[kbproctor]

I tie lots of display flies and many full dress salmon flies as well and have for nearly 50 years... Your body floss looks quite good, aside from the early lump. I tie in all materials to the full length of the body. That will keep the body uniform.

Tie in floss at the front end, wrap back and then forward. Good floss is a huge help. With cheap floss you get exactly one chance to get it right...
art

Thank you. Eric Austin has worked with me a lot on the finer points of floss bodies, tinsel tags and the like on traditional winged wets. I have not got to the point of counting thread wraps, yet, but find myself slipping that direction sometimes. I have found that the techniques Eric has been encouraging me to use carry over to lots of flies, dries, wets, nymphs, you name it. I was attempting to apply technique from the traditional wets to the salmon fly and it worked most places. I could not, however, keep that topping from rolling on me. Eric's tutorials are quite good on these subjects as well.

I was trying to keep the bulk of the body down but would normally tie the materials the length of the body with a wet for the same reason you mentioned. Now that it has been mentioned, I seem to remember either reading or being told by Eric something about the core of the oval tinsel to avoid just this thing.

The floss is one strand of 4 strand Danville floss wrapped back and then forward. The thread I used for the bulk of the fly is white UTC Ultra 70. That stuff flattened out very nicely helping with the smooth body a lot.

I have another one in the vice that is much more involved. I have not settled on a wing as yet. I am leaning toward building another set of those married wings I destroyed on the first one. We'll see.