Now that I've been introduced to Jason Borger's site and failed at the LREN (low riding emerging nymph), I decided to try one of his other techniqes called diffusion hackling to achieve a similar result. I
also just got some beaver fur and it gave me a chance to try it out. Donald Nicolson had a post mentioning beaver fur and someone had replied that it worked well for dry fly dubbing, espectially when making thin bodies. Since Borger's pattern calls for a thin body, I had to give it a shot. The fibers for the wings are just clipped hackle fibers from the larger feathers from a dry fly neck. The first is a basic nymph pattern. The second fly has a wing that is made of the post material folded back over the thorax as Jason Borger stated could be done to create a wing. It works, but looks a little funny. I tried again using his technique but instead of using to whole post to pull over the thorax and diffuse the hackle, I only used a part of it and left the rest behind for the wing which I think turns out better since the wing then originates from the thorax instead of the head of the fly
.
diffusion hackling 1.jpg
diffusion hackling 1a.jpg
diffusion hackling 2.jpg
diffusion hackling 4.jpg
Greg