... not larva lace.
Recently, while making a new leather case for my latest .22 rifle acquisition, I used the best part of a spool of leather lace - premium calf lace from Tandy Leather.
About a week ago, I was getting ready to tie up a fresh batch of FEB Salmonflies. It occurred to me that the 3mm leather lace might make an easy and effective substitute for the FEB part of the fly. A bit concerned that it might be heavy enough to want to sink the fly or that it might get soggy and collapse. But ... I went ahead with the substitution and gave it a go. I did beef up the width of the foam body and the wing to offset any sinking the leather might cause.
The leather lace extended body did not sink the fly. Perhaps because this fly is designed to ride very low, it actually enhanced the effectiveness of the pattern. Also, even after a couple hours in the water over the course of a day and a while on day two before I lost the fly on an errant back cast, the extended body remained firm and extended. Another benefit was the color of the leather lace - an almost perfect match for a natural.
And the modified pattern was effective, as effective as the original FEB has been, which is plenty good enough for me.
Certainly the leather lace could be used in other patterns, and might stand in for other materials on nymph patterns. The leather lace is much different, as a finished product, than leather scraps, say from veg tan leather. I suspect that other leathers might not function as well in fly tying applications as the lace product.
Cost wise, leather lace is available locally at a Tandy dealer for about fifty cents a foot. Considering it only takes about half an inch per fly, that's about 24 flies for fifty cents, or two cents per fly. :roll:
John
