So I decide to try to make some stacked deer hair bugs. Divers actually. The end result looked pretty good, the hair seemed packed pretty tight, and the body did not spin on the hook. The result seemed pretty good.
So I decided to see how they behaved in water. They floated well. I let them sit in the water for awhile before taking them out and setting them aside to dry.
The next morning I picked one up and found that the hair body rotated on the hook shank fairly easily. All three did that.
Anyone have any idea why the hair bodies that were tight when completed rotate so easily after being soaked then dried?
Because I hate, with a passion, the spinning and stacking of deer hair, I let my darling wife do all the deer hair here. In between each clump of hair, she adds a small drop of Zap-A-Gap after packing it tightly. Don’t know if that would solve your problem or not.
Some of your hair may have compressed a bit after getting wet and drying out, loosening your thread wraps.
REE is correct in VEE’s gluing between each spun clump of hair. Through a half hitch or two after each clump and add a drop of glue. That will indeed make a difference in securing the spun hair. Also the hair may have been packed tightly but the thread may not have been cinched down tight enough. When you pack the hair back, any looseness in the thread will only get loser. I’ve seen some tyers take a coupe wraps back thru the hair after it’s spun to ‘lock it in’ as they say. Other just add the 3 lose wraps (each one pulling a little tighter) then pull down and spin, once tight half hitch and glue.
Many tyers don’t like deer hair flies because they don’t want to take the time to do it right. Even expect hair spinners can only tie one bug in the time and average tyer and whip up a dozen simple dries.
Want decent hair bugs or flies? The biggest tip is you have to have lots of patience Grasshopper!
“…pretty tight” doesn’t work. “Damed tight” does! After spinning or stacking a bundle of hair, and before putting the next bundle on the hook, take three or four very tight wraps directly on top of one another to firmly bind the hair to the hook, and then use the 'three-finger-pull-back" and take several very tight thread wraps tight up against the bunch to hold it in place (you can half-hitch after each bunch if you like–I don’t). Next, pack the hair as tightly as you can, using the thumb and forefinger of the “off hand” as a support behind the hair to serve as a stop to pack against. If you use a hair packer,it MUST apply pressure ON THE THREAD AT THE BASE OF THE HAIR; NOT on the hair itself. It is for this reason that I use the thumb and forefinger of my tying hand as a packer. You should feel the hair and thread move backwards on the shank. Be sure to twist/ wiggle the hair back and forth while packing with the packer or tying hand to ensure a tight pack. When done properly, no glue is required to keep the hair in place after the fly is completed. Very simply stated, you need to apply greater tension to the thread when tying. However, you must use a thread that is up to the task before this will work. I use Danville Fly Master Plus, but there are many good threads out there. It is a Size A thread (210 Denier) (size A nylon rod wrapping thread works great).This is also the thread the students use in our club’s fly tying course, and they have never had problems as you describe, and well over 200 have gone through the course in the last 10 years, men women, and a couple of elementary schoolers!
If you are using a nylon thread, nylon absorbs water and will stretch when it gets wet. When this happened to me, I switched to a braided ‘super’ fishing line (10 pound Spiderwire original braid) for use with deer hair. It has zero stretch, floats, and doesn’t absorb water.
I’m surprised VEE uses Zap a Gap on her deer hair. Every time I’ve tried a CA glue there, it wicks up into the hair and creates a mess. I do use a drop of lacquer between each bundle. It still allows some movement for packing but sets strong once cured.
And, as has been mentioned, tight. At the start of each spinning/stacking session, I pull until I cut the hair off a couple of times so that I know to stop just before that.
Thanks for the thoughts. The bugs will still be fishable but certainly not as durable and require realignment after a hookup.
Some more information:
I am using GSP thead, which tried because I was breaking the Flymaster Plus 210. I am applying enough pressure that I sometimes cut the deer hair and am using a Brassie hair packer. Took a couple of wraps of thread in front of each bunch of hair after packing and added a drop of flexcement.
GSP is pretty slick so I wonder if I might have introduced just enough slack at some point that when the hair was wet and swelled it loosened things up a bit.
I found the process to be fun and I expect to make a few dozen more. Doing one of these in the evening made the work day fade nicely into the background.
Unless you have a spool of rotten thread, which does rarely happen, you are applying too much pressure if you are breaking Danville 210 Denier thread due to too much pressure when spinning or stacking deer hair. You should take as many as 5-7 wraps in front of the bunch, and I would use a head cement other than Flexament if I applied cement after each bundle, and before packing; just my preference! The weight of your bobbin and a half spool of thread should provide sufficient tension to hold the hair in place after a batch has been spun/stacked and prevent any relaxation of the thread to the point that it would allow the hair to later spin on the hook. They beauty of nylon thread is that it DOES stretch under tension, which tends to allow for some relaxation that helps hold the thread in place and under tension. I know that Chris Helm uses, or did use, GSP a lot, but I have never seen a need to change threads. In my opinion, if GSP sweelled when wet, as you suggest, it would be expected to increase the pressure against the hair and the hook, further securing the hair, as the increased pressure exerted by swelling, would occur in a radial fashion, rather than unidirectional, and the hook would not yield to the extra pressure, as the thread would in your scenario.
If you will exert pressure to just short of breaking after spinning a bunch of hair, you should be able to turn loose of your bobbin and let it freely swing beneath the hook without a single hair moving. This will NOT allow for any appreciable relaxation of the thread; at least not to the point of allowing the hair to turn when the fly is finished.
The Brassie hair stacker should SLIDE along the hook shank when properly used. If it is not tight against the hook shank, it is not being properly used. Also, it should be the proper size for the size hooks you are using. I presume you are aware that they are made with different size notches for different size hooks. The overal lsize is the same for all.
Buddy:
This is the first time in nearly 30 years that I have ever heard of nylon thread absorbing water.It definitely stretches when dry! It may ADSORB water, but not ABSORB it. These two tems are NOT synonymous, even though 99.44% of folks use them interchangeably. The best way the learn for yourself what the difference is, is to get a box each of ABSORBENT Cotton and one of ADSORBENT Cotton at your local drug store and take them home and wet a small piece of each in water and see what you get. The ABSORBENT will soak up quite a bit of water, where the ADSORBENT will only get wet. The water is confined to the surface of the filaments of the ADSORBENT; it is ABSORBED into the interstitial spaces between the fibers of the ABSORBENT cotton, acting much like a sponge.Therefore, as I see it, there is no way it will stretch more when it gets wet. Something else has to be amiss.
I have a full set of Brassie packers so that is not an issue.
My theory with the GSP was that if there was a hint of slack in a couple of wraps then then as the hair absorbed some water and expanded, it would push out against the slick GSP thread slight;y and take up what may be a tiny bit of slack. When the bug dried, the hair dried and contracted leaving some wraps slightly loose. At least that is what I think might have happened.
First time in over forty years I’ve heard someone say that nylon does not absorb water.
By aBsorb, what I mean is that the moisture enters the material and causes it to relax and stretch more and stretch easier.
Nylon fishing lines (monofilaments), aBsorb water and stretch more when wet.
Nylon fabric stretches more when it gets wet. Just ask any soldier that’s ever had to get their cot set up properly…wet the fabric, it will stretch into place more easily. Same deal with nylon truck bed covers, convertable tops, etc.
Nylon threads do the same thing, at least all the ones I have do. If you think it doesn’t, go ahead and test it.
Mea culpa. However, this is the very first time I have heard of it ABSORBING water in the 50 + years I have been acquainted with it. After Buddy’s comments, I did check out the scientific/technical literature on it and did find that it does ABSORB water, but only minimally, as shown in the table Ray provided… However, did not see anything that confirmed the claim that wet nylon stretches more than dry. Am pursuing that point further.
I’m wondering if the perception is the reality here. I do know that the cot and cover anology is true, since I’ve done that myself and found that the nylon fabric does stretch more (or at least easier) when it’s wet.
For many years, professional bass fishermen would wrap a wet folded paper towel around their spinning reel spools the night before a tournament to relax the line so it would handle easier. I know it worked because I did it a lot. This was back before those neat new sprays that accomplish the same job in minutes.
We always believed that you’d have to set the hook hard to overcome the stretch of the mono. Many anglers would change rods or reels periodically to get to fresh ‘dry’ mono since the theory was that it would stretch less than mono that had been in the water all day.
I know we ‘believed’ this, but I’ve not seen any test data or inforamtin from any studies done on it. Would be interesting to know for sure.
I may have the answer to this, though I still have not found anything on wet nylon stretching mote than dry. The manufactures now produce two types of nylon; “hard” which only stretches about 10-15 %, and “soft” which can stretch as much as 40%, but apparently typically more in the 25% range. The original was a "soft’. This is why you had to try to “jerk his head off” to set the hook when a bass hit. Now I know why a buddy, who was a professional guide back in the '60’s, would nearly fall out of the boat backwards when he set the hook—40% stretch? Geeze!! I have used the “hard” type for years for snag guards, but never knew the true definition of “hard”. It is stiffer is all that I knew until I read this yesterday. Haven’t given up on the wet/stretch point yet but haven’t given up. My time to persue has been drastically reduced as I got selected for jury duty last Tuesday, and looks like I will “in court” all week this week, and maybe into next.
My condolences. I hate to have to go to jury duty. I know it’s important, but I end up sitting there all day, and I never get picked to actually be on a jury.
As far as the different types of mono goes, they have made tremendous advances in the years since I left competitive fishing. Stretch is way down, knot strength is way up. And it keeps getting better. The new flourocarbon lines are amazing.
