Have you ever been confronted with a situation that called for a
weighted fly, and stood in the middle of the stream scratching your
head, and hefting flies to see if you could figure out which ones were
weighted, and which were not?
Well, many of us have at one time or another. If you are in this game
long enough, you may well find yourself among the number of the confused.
But, you need not be!
Now before you take some smug satisfaction in the fact that you
never weight flies, and always apply split shot, be aware that in many
places split shot is illegal.
No, not just lead split shot, but any split shot period. There are areas
where putting weight anywhere but inside of the fly itself will bring down
upon you all of the fury the law will allow. Many of our Brothers in the
Canadian Provinces can attest to the strictness with which these laws
are enforced.
So what do we do with the poor guy standing in the middle of the stream
trying to select the weighted fly from a box where they all look the same?
Well I guess we could chuckle at him, but we won't.
What we could do would be to reach into our box and in handing him a
fly say, "here try this, it is weighted."
Now at this point, before he scratches his head so hard as to bore a
hole clean through it trying to figure out how you knew that particular
fly was weighted, show him your box. He may or may not observe
that some of your flies have brown heads, while others have black
heads.
If he doesn't notice you may want to point it out to him. Take a minute
to explain to him that while you are at the bench you always finish your
heads on your weighted flies with brown thread, while the un-weighted
are finished with black thread.
This is a very simple solution to a simple problem. But, this problem
can stop us dead in our tracks when we need to execute a game plan
with a particular technique and can not identify the tools we need to
accomplish it.
You can carry this as far as you like, with one color for un-weighted,
another for lightly weighted, still another for more heavily weighted etc.
But try not to get too carried away, there are only so many thread
colors available.
Remember, white before Easter, or after Labor Day is a definite fashion
faux pas!
If you have any tips or techniques, send them along, most of this
material has been stolen from somebody, might as well steal your ideas
too!~ George E. Emanuel
(Chat Room Host Muddler)
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