Okay, I hate to admit that I don’t know some of the colors referenced by different pattern recipes but I don’t. The steelhead pattern I am looking to create calls for sulphur squirrel dubbing, exactly what color is this? Does anyone know of a resource/website that lists some of the different terms for colors related to flytying? Any help appreciated.
Tim
In my experience, Tim, most of the colors are pretty flexible. Sulphur is obviously gonna be a varistion of yellow… Thread colors and their names vary sometimes wuite a bit from manufacturer to manufacturer, except for black… even white, i’ve found to be different from one to another. Any natural materials which aren’t dyed are gonna vary, you get the consistancy by using feathers and fur from the same animal or patch od hide for mutiple like fly patterns. As for the stuff, feathers, fur, whatever, that is dyed, it too varies and you get consistancy by using materials from the same batch. Fortunately, the bugs and critters we’re trying to imitate vary too… Best explanation I can come up with for ya… Happy Tyin’…ModocDan
Sulphur in fly tying terms is in my opinion used incorrectly. Sulphur yellow is, according to the dictionary, a bright greenish-yellow, but sulphur-yellow mayflies have a very watery yellow with little green.
I am sure color varies across the country and there are examples of brighter, greener sulphurs, but I have not seen them often.
I like making dubbing colors by mixing a variety of colors so the “exact” right color shows up somewhere in the body. A guy named Atherton posited a long time ago that fish are not looking for the whole bug to be exactly correct, but rather, somewhere on that bug they see the exact right color…
Sulphur has two designations when it come to fly patterns; it either refers to the common name of the insect ( such as sulphur nymph), or to a color (such as sulphur orange).
Since this is a Steelhead pattern, I am somewhat disposed to go for the latter (color). The dubbing does not have to be squirrel, but the color should be somewhat bright and iridescent. A Bright Orange, Yellow, or Green perhaps! If you have a photo of the pattern (pictures are worth a 1,000 words), that might give you a better idea.
What is the name of the Steelhead Pattern, do you know who the pattern was dressed by? A url address where we can view the fly pattern, would help us, help you more!
~Parnelli
This is a problem that has plagued people throughout history, not only in fly tying, but in printing, art and the like. To me “sulfur” IS a pale greenish yellow (When using “temperature” comparisons it is cold in nature). To me, fly fishermen use the term “Sulfur” for a pale yellow, often tinged with orange, and I feel that’s incorrect. Perhaps a better term in describing it would be Creamy orange. But to me, true sulfur is pale greenish yellow.
Just remember color is subjective. What I think of when I say “blue” is not the same thing you think of. Try to locate an example of your pattern, somewhere to get a better handle on the color needed. Also remember, what you see on your monitor is not the same that I see. There is also a variation in color adjustment on monitors from one to the other.
As an example, On my home water, two species of mayflies hatch at the same time. One is a sulfur Epeorus vitrea and the other is Ephemerella dorothea. Both are often called Sulfurs. In to my trained artistic eye, vitrea is the real sulfur having a very pale greenish yellow abdomen. Dorothea, on the other hand is a cream turning to an orange tinge as it progresses towards the tail-the strongest being at the tail. I use two different flies to represent these naturals.
Mark
Parnelli,
I am learning a lot here, thanks to everyone. Here’s a link to the pattern.
http://www.mwfly.com/pages/archiveac8.html
Tim
One of the gentlemen whose names you may see often in this sport, Gary Borger, developed a color system with associated numbers, so, #107 is white, #118 is black, and so on. The idea was that no two of us use the same descriptors for color on bugs, and describing a mayfly body as “sort of slate-colored with a bluish tinge” or the like really doesn’t help anyone match it. If you tied a fly using the color system, a person somewhere else in the world could tie the EXACT match of that fly, color-wise, so you could say a body of #XX, wing of #YY, tail of #ZZ, and so forth, and the flies would match.
With that in mind, if you want to use this system somehow, do NOT use your computer monitor to pick exact color matches, since most monitors are not calibrated and will be a little off.
Personally I think this is a little extreme. Besides, the bugs on different streams ARE different colors, usually, even within the same species, due to local differences in food and water chemistry, etc.
Welcome to tying.
Normand,
Me too???
Confusion is, however, my normal state, so it’s probably just me…
Buddy
Jeff “Bear” Andrews is an awesome tyer and comes up with some wonderful flies. Thanks for posting that oldschool. I live near the St. Joe (Michigan) but have never fished that ‘bug’. Good recipe that - I’ll have to try it.
mcsteff
A commercial color comparison chart is on:
http://anthus.com/Colors/Cent.html#79
Colors number 101 or 104 are what I would consider “Sulfur”.
There also are the subjective interpretations of color when you consider that each person has his own mental catalog of colors. As an example, there is a large trucking company called “Yellow” but for some reason all their trucks are painted Orange. I guess it’s different strokes for different folks.
gary borger color system chart
http://www.gudebrod.com/fishing2005/BorgerColor.htm
but how does it correlate to bug colors??
Here is a picture of the exact dubbing called for in your link. There could be variation due to camera, flash, monitor etc. but it should give you an idea. The exact shade is probably not too important anyway.
Normand, if someone tells me that, for instance, the “PMD” or pale morning dun mayfly on their river, that I am going to fish in a couple weeks and need to tie flies for, is kind of a greenish yellow bodied #16, I have to interpret what “greenish yellow” is. But if they have taken a real bug and laid it on the color chart and matched it with, say #167 (made up #), they can tell me to tie a #16 mayfly with a #167 body, and the flies I tie will match the real bugs, even though I have never seen the bugs.
Borger picked the colors that correspond to the bugs they saw while fishing. Admittedly, some of those colors are more commonly used than others, but there are few I haven’t seen on SOME fly or another in my life.
As for the original post, if you can get an actual fly that you want to match, take it to a shop andmatch it with dubbing, but be sure to get a few colors on either side of the one you match, since things look different in different lights, when wet, etc.
If it makes anyone feel any better, I think I have eight or 9 different shades of dubbing for the October Caddis dries I fish in Idaho. And all of em work, which makes me wonder why I bought all those different colors…
Jayatwork, everyone… thanks. I am aware of the Borger color charts but hadn’t seen it online or in any of his books that I own. Most of the time tying a fly from a listed pattern is easy but in this case I was stumped by the term “sulphur” and couldn’t get close on the color but I’ll look for some light yellow dubbing so that I can get started. Another term that escapes me is when a tyer calls for dun hackle, does “dun” equal light grey? I’ve been tying for years and this has always confused me.
Tim
Hi Tim,
Dun, hmmm. I’ve seen dun used in reference to a light dusty brown (using the apparently specific but actually quite vague colour naming convention of fly tiers world wide) and to shades of grey, with blue dun being a specific version of the grey variety. I’ve generally taken it to mean grey though.