Have been tying a lot the last little while and finally decided to take some pictures and show off some of my work and favorite AK patterns. Unfortunately PhotoBucket has not been easy to play with lately and they are not auto-resizing on upload like they used to. I decided to leave them large which will require panning across the photos, but I have 10 to post and the total should allow all of them to stay on the front page and any posts should be normal sized after the first page.
First a bunch of Snowshoe Dun Parachutes. I tied 6 dozen this morning along with most of the rest of these, as they are pretty quick. The tail is dun hackle fibers, the post is Snowshoe Hare foot, the body is muskrat dubbed, and the hackle is a dun hair extension. I tie parachutes off on the post.
These are the Caddis adult patterns I use for almost everything, varying size and basic color only… wooops… I also use a LOT of elk hair caddis… Starting on the top are two Goddard caddis, the lighter colored is preferred because I can see it far better. It is spun caribou hair which is much better because it is very fine and when trimmed it can look perfect with minimal effort.
Center left is essentially a Goddard done with rabbit foot. There is no body, just two bunches of rabbits foot trimmed just like a Goddard, with a dark ginger hackle. They are also real fast to tie and float extremely well.
Center right is a caddis adult with an obvious ovipositor in bright yellow. Even when fished around caddis with bright reor other colors the yellow seems to work better than plain… It is just a dubbed body in two colors and the rabbit foot trimmed to form the wings and thorax.
The bottom is just a monotone body, just like the last. It is effective.
These are my favorite flies for stream dollies… The top is just a wet hackle with a pink abdomen (primrose thread) a couple turns of peacock for the thorax and a speckled buff-colored wet hackle… This happens to be from a bobwhite. I use a lot of partridge and green, p and orange, p and yellow on short shank hooks from 8-14.
The next down is essentially a Thunder Creek with beadchain eyes and the body is Sulky brand blue prismatic thread which I use to tie the whole fly. It is a little bulky…
The third is my version of a scud, with feelers. I believe the fish take these thinking they are sea lice. For a while after the salmon arrive the dollies eat just sea lice… Typical flashback, I add burnt mono eyes and a couple strands of silver pheasant for feelers.
My favorite freshwater silver salmon fly, Jimi Roe. It is just a short pink body, dubbed UV Ice Dub is my current favorite, but pink chennile has been working for a lot of years. There is a single wrap of high quality purple marabou (hence the Purple Haze/Jimi H reference) and a turn or two of either pink or purple, high-quality hackle.
The purpose of a hackle on a marabou streamer is to help keep the stuff from tangling back on the line. The hackle acts like a dam to keep the marabou back.
art
Three skaters… I always have a selection of large dries on salmon hooks just for the first and last cast on every pool. Silver salmon on dries is the best way to giggle outdoors that know. Bombers, frogs, wogs, and such are all good.
The top is semi-spey Alexandra variation and real simple with just the herl wing…
The Rajah is a standard that I always have some of… a steelhead standard. I used variegated pink and white chenille because it was all I had, but do not like it as well as plain pink.
The bottom is an elaborate whole feather Atlantic salmon style fly that will get fished. I make a point of using some full-dress flies every year, just because… This one is prarie chicken, sage grouse, spruce grouse and a bunch more…
These are a couple Carrie Stevens style streamers and one is mostly the same as one of here better known patterns. Intentions are to use these to catch a lake trout here in a couple weeks when they start feasting on downbound salmon smolts. Then I want to take some good photos with these ridiculously long hooks. It has been a challenge previously because the fish have a lot of advantages when the hooks get this long.
They are Mustad 3907A in size 2, which was ahook she is said to have favored for a long time.
And last, these are some simple glue stick eggs with arctic fox veiling the egg. The Nor-Vise makes this job MUCH easier. Start with chunks of glue stick cut from the stick and ready at hand. Heat the hook shank with a heat gun and stick the glue chunk to it when it is hot enough. Keep the glue well back from the eye. Michael’s (or other craft store) sells glue sticks in various colors with glitter and that is what I used for most of this. As the ball formed up I added chips of color and tried to not overheat the glue so it would stay in place… The core and most of the eggs are red and there is quite a bit of white pearlescent to keep the eggs from lookng too dark.
If it starts to be a problem drop the hook with bead in cold water to set it up. The biggest challenge is getting the egg to get round and keep the colors in splotches. Sometimes I have to resort to using a notched tool to shove the egg back away from the eye.
All of them have most of the same colors, but look very different from every angle. I wrapped the Sulkie Blue Prismatic thread on the hook shanks here also. The small bunch of arctic fox fur is wrapped thinly around the shank. It does not need to extend beyond the bend at all.
And I just realized the picture I really wnated to show did not get uploaded… will take me a minute to get it going.
art
I am moving this over from page 2 to reduce the expanded pages…
Bringing up the rear is the official fly of the Alaska Fly Fishers… and still a very good pattern for a lot of different uses. I tie them in sizes from 10 to 5/0.
It is just a bit of red hackle fiber for a tail, a cream or white floss body with silver rib, a sparse polar bear wing with an optional jungle cock nail for eyes. I will often add a little arctic fox on top of the wing to add motion. On small alevin-sized versions a little red at the throat works better.
If polar bear is too hard to find white bucktail, calftail, or better, white “Poly Bear” works fine.
Several different versions:
Some I tied today:
I hope the wide screen is not too annoying… it should allow you to see the flies better, no?
art
Bringing up the rear is the official fly of the Alaska Fly Fishers… and still a very good pattern for a lot of different uses. I tie them in sizes from 10 to 5/0.
It is just a bit of red hackle fiber for a tail, a cream or white floss body with silver rib, a sparse polar bear wing with an optional jungle cock nail for eyes. I will often add a little arctic fox on top of the wing to add motion. On small alevin-sized versions a little red at the throat works better.
If polar bear is too hard to find white bucktail, calftail, or better, white “Poly Bear” works fine.
Several different versions:
Some I tied today:
I hope the wide screen is not too annoying… it should allow you to see the flies better, no?
art
A very nice selection that covers a good range of patterns. I really like the semi-spey Alexandria and the “official fly” at the end. I particularly like the primrose yellow bodied version with the cross hatch ribbing, nice touch.
Jeff
Thanks! After looking again I realize the lighting was quite abit too harsh for what i was trying to do… I got lazy and did not want to set up the diffusion tent and the whites all got completely washed out…
art
Good stuff, Art! These are all very impressive ties. The one that really caught my eye was the full dress salmon fly with all the grouses… stunning work.
Impressive ties - keep them coming!
The arctic fox on the egg pattern makes a nice veil, but the thing that caught my eye the most is the bottom fly on the 7th picture (the atlantic salmon and spey-like flies)… is the body yarn or dubbing in that rusty claret-brown? Either way, it looks perfect!
Well done!
-Pete
Pete
Thank you, but to be my own best/worst critic, the body is called painting yourself into a corner… It is dubbed with real seal and softer furs to get the sparkle and to get it to behave. The problem is the rib. Standard rules of proportion call for rib to space between at 1:3 with no more than 5 turns of ribbing. With 7 turns and the spacing about right I either lost a rib after the body had gone beyond their tie-in, or misjudged, or ignored the “rule” because it is a spey style. (it was ignoring the rule BTW) Then the blue eared-pheasant hackle did not want to play nice so the hackle starts a wee bit late…
art
This one is prarie chicken, sage grouse, spruce grouse and a bunch more…
