An Attempt at a Callibaetis Spinner

[Byron haugh]

Not the neatest tie, but saw a pattern for this spinner and thought I might tie one. Top view.

[fishdog54]

Nice Byron - a keepa for sure!!

Best regards, Dave S.

[texfly]

Very nice proportions. Gotta love a quill body.

[pittendrigh]

I tied this one up this morning:



Actually I did a little gunkholing on Meadow Lake, near Ennis MT. When I got home there were close to 50 of these inside the cab of my pickup. So I snagged a few and took them downstairs to my fly-photography setup. The fishing was good too, by the way. The Duns seem to start hatching at 8:00am or so. The spinners (perhaps from yesterday's duns) start showing up around 11:00am, right about the time the duns start to taper off. Both are around together, for an hour or two. From noon on it's spinners only. A big white-winged Royal Trude with a dry fly dropper seems to work just fine. They don't byte the Royal Trude, but it does make it a heck of lot easier to spot your fly. They're nervous fish. You get one or two shots at a rising pod and then they move off another 50'. You have to cast to the air 36" above your landing spot. And then hope the leader and fly floats down gently. Else they're gone. There are a surprising number of 8-10" tiddlers out there. Which is good. But plenty 18-22" as well--although I must say the Ennis Lake rainbows are a bit snaky and thin compared to the corn-fed hogs up at Canyon Ferry.

[Byron haugh]

Wow!! What great photos!!
Lens?

[pittendrigh]

105mm Macro Nikor, at first with a single extension ring.
The last ultra-close shot was done with a bellows. The fly tying vise is inside a homemade light tent, with incandescent (Tensor study lamps) light. Getting the bellows to focus sharply is difficult. You have to open the iris to let enough light in to see. Then you focus. Then you close the iris manually, with a lever, and take the shot. But you inevitably jiggle the camera slightly when you close the iris lever. Which knocks it a tad off focus. At that level of magnification, a 1/124" of lense movement buggers the whole deal.

4 seconds at F32, ASA 800. Infrared shutter trip (so you don't have to touch the camera to shoot).
Phew.

[pittendrigh]

Four eyes:

[Steve Molcsan]

Some kind of mutation,?

[Byron haugh]

Can you imagine if they were human size? Horror movie time.

[Steven]

Not the neatest tie, but saw a pattern for this spinner and thought I might tie one. Top view.

First, great looking pictures of those bugs. Really unbelievable.

Byron, did you cut off the top and bottom of the hackle to create the spinner wings? It kind of looks like it.

Think about putting some dubbing on your tying thread and doing figure-8s to separate the hackle both above and below. More hackle, better flotation, no? This is an AK Best recommendation. Good looking use of the stems from the body!