Hi,
What do you think of this fly?
Photo by Hans Weilemann
His web site: www.danica.com/flytier/
Is it a dry fly or wet fly? Either way, it looks nice
Haystack with different dubbing. Also, not sure if the tail/wing clump is deer or something else? Nice colors.
Allan
That’s what I was thinking also. That’s why I asked about it being wet. Just doesn’t seem like it will float well
NewTyer,
Hey, put a glob of Gehrke’s Gink on any fly and it’ll float, LOL.
Allan
Spread the wing out to 180 degrees and it will float quite nicely.
The quality of the tie and the materials used do not appear to be your norm. That’s the biggest barb on a hook I’ve seen in awhile.
That may be because it is not Byron who tied that fly. It is a Fran Betters’ tied Haystack - and it is one tied in his later years, not that long before he died. I know this because I have the actual fly, one of a set of Fran’s flies kindly provided to me by a friend who obtained them off Fran direct, and took the photograph.
That’s the biggest barb on a hook I’ve seen in awhile.
Not the most elegant of hooks, I agree, and that indeed is some deep cut barb 
For this Haystack’s details, the rest of the set and some background, go here:
http://www.danica.com/flytier/fbetters/fbetters.htm
Cheers,
Hans W
Hilarious.
In case no one has noticed on the “set” of flies posted, each one either has a red or orange head which relates to another post about using red or orange for the head which I feel produces more “strikes” for me.
WTH! Okay, I get it. The way this fly was presented was shady and underhanded, This person posts the photo of a particular fly and asks for comments. Wonder what his motives were? Maybe to see if we’d give it a good/neutral/bad review and then he’d share with us the name of the actual tyer? Then he would be able to make some comment about how difficult it is to evaluate quality or something like that. Maybe to embarrass the commentors? Or maybe to support his idea of the relationship of this tyer and his flies to the previously started thread about the idea of ‘Expert’ or ‘Famous’ tyers.
I don’t know. I’ve not written anything personal about him and I don’t care or want to know what this guy writes in response to this post. What I do know is that this is my last response to anything this guy posts, here or elsewhere.
Allan
Allan,
I understand why you feel the way you do, but, I feel you may have taken the post wrong or should I say, I hope your “take” was wrong. I took the post as something to get tyers to understand that maybe we get too particular about how a fly is tied. If the fly is a good fish “getter”, than maybe we need to not spend so much time on getting the tail stacked and the porportions just “so”, etc. I have Fran’s book signed by him and his flies are rather “rough” in appearance but they do catch fish.
Anyway, I hope your “take” was wrong and the post was made to get us to think more about tying a fly that works and less on tying a fly that is “perfect” in all respects to the human eye.
Byron- I loved your post! My first thought was “It’s ugly, but it will catch fish.” I knew right off that you didn’t tie it. I’ve seen quite a few flies tied by various “famous” tyers and often I’m surprised at how rough they are.
I take issue with quite a bit of what you post, but this was very well done.
Big time difference between here and the East Coast. just got up.
I happen to think Fran Betters was underrated as a tier. I am actually considering the purchase of a shadow box of his flies from his family.
One reason I posted this particular fly is that it may well have led to the comparadun and then to the sparkle dun - probably one of my favorite flies. Yet, it does not look earth shattering. It does not look like it is tied with a lot of finesse and yet it led to the development of one of the most standard of all flies - the sparkle dun.
The other reason I posted this fly is that it could have been tied by anyone. But it wasn’t. It was tied by someone who knew what would float and represent a common trout food source. The story goes that a fellow he was tying for gave him a piece of deer hide and said: “Here, make me a fly with this” - or something on that order.
I for one thought that this was a good post and a lesson learned. Sometimes it seems as if we get so caught up in the looks of a fly IE: the length of the tail, wings not being perfect etc. that we don’t remember that we aren’t tying for us, we are tying to catch fish and they don’t care what it looks like as long as it is close to what they feed on. Point taken, many years ago when I first learned to fly fish by my now deceased father, my girlfriend bought me an ORVIS tying kit. Inside the book was a pattern for a Jassid. The fly did not look anything like the picture but, I went fishing. My casting was bad and when I wasn’t pooling the line in a bunch and got a decent cast, I caught 26 brook trout in an afternoon. I feel the only time you really need to be concerned about correct proportion is when you are selling flies, because the customer always wants perfection for the money. Just my opinion.
I think you are exactly correct Scott. We all like our flies to look nice to us, but the trout do not see the flies as we do. The general impression the fly presents, the way it floats, etc. are probably much more important!
To see the fly as we do, the fish would have to jump pretty high out of the water to inspect it…
Me, I want my flies to come out as I want them to come out. It is that simple 
That way I like them better and I will fish them with confideence.
Cheers,
Hans W
Great to see you posting here Hans!!
You are in a rather unique position to answer this question: yourself excepted, out of all previous and current tiers, whose tying do you most admire? Both from technical ability as well as groundbreaking abilities/demonstrations? Or, at least top 3.
Thanks
Byron
looks good maybe a fall fly …what size is that ?