i intended to go fishing this morning, but it has rained for the past 6 hours. I need some generic flies for a trip next weekend, so this swap topic inspired me...

my goto material for tying nymphs is red fox squirrel, so this is yet another variation and I am continually surpised at what one can create for this one animal. There are some many colors and types of hair on this one beast!

here is an assortment:



2 basic variants pictured here use SLF RFSN abdomen dubbing (ginger) or SLF RFSN thorax dubbing (mix various but basically grey) and RFS tail of two types for the hackle. there are 2 main types of hair on a RFS tail - the dorsal side of the tail is a mixture of ginger, grey, black, white, etc... usually banded and different at various seasons of harvest and the ventral side which is uniformly ginger/orange. uniquely, as you can see if a few of them above is that the tips of the dorsal tail hair are ginger/orange and if you tie the hair in just right, when you even the tips it leaves orange/ginger tips on the hackle, which is a really cool touch. one can really mix the colors up:

ginger body & ginger hackle
ginger body & darker hackle
thorax dub body & ginger hackle
thorax dub body and darker hackle



and here is the one I'd like to submit, unless there are protests or calls for a ginger variant. This one uses the RFSN thorax dubbing and dorsal RFS tail hackle - so the colors of the body and hackle are fairly uniform compared to each other, but have variations in themselves. and this one picture does not have the orange tips on the hackle...



this one has the SLF RFSN abdomen dubbing for the body and orange tips on the hackle. maybe I like this contrast better? the picture stinks - for whatever reason I can't get the abdomen to light up and the body is too fat, but you might be able to see the difference. you can see the difference in the group above.



even after tying several this morning, there are some challenges in tying this fly for me... mainly getting the swept wing evened out all around the fly. i know it is not THAT big a deal and i suppose it could even just be layed back along the top and catch fish just fine, like the fly in the upper left of the group. the second challenge is getting the initial thread wraps around the swept wing. i know why the pictures of these flies I see have somewhat large heads; you realyl have to wrap back to capture the hair because it is relatively stiff. i suppose it would be different with different materials. i tried some with krystal flash and didn't like my initial attempt.

lastly, should these flies be densely hackled or not? does it really matter?

Anyway, thanks for the inspiration, ol' blue and I'd like to join in this swap. and to ward off being tardy I've already begun tying...

oh and it has stopped raining so I'm going to go terrorize some bluegill with the 3wt and my new SHWAPFs!!!

fly_flinger