Those won’t work at all on the Yellowstone. You should send my shop 6dz each in sizes 12-16 for proper disposal. They also won’t work at all on the Firehole right now if you tie them with a golden-olive-cream body, bleached elk wing, and barred light ginger hackle and then skate them.
Nice, Scott. When you make the band on the deer hair for the hackle, do you start by tying down the hair at the point away from the eye and work the thread forward, or start at the eye and work back? I have had trouble controlling the deer hair when tying flies like this before, especially trying to control it expanding the band forward. Yours looks great. Any special tips other than keeping a death grip on the hair?
Thanks. I tie the wing in where it meets the body and move forward towards the eye. Best way I’ve found to secure the hair after initial tie-in (usually 2 wraps) is to pull some of the butts up, take a wrap through them, pull some more up and repeat (one more time is usually enough), then smooth over with firm wraps of thread; this really cuts down on torquing. I’ll take some pics once the camera battery re-charges.
Thanks, Scott. That is what I’ve tried to do but my hair flairs quite a bit more than yours does. When I wrap the thread toward the eye, I have to hold the hair with my right hand and wrap the thread over the shank with my left. The thread seems to slip back to the previous wrap and I get nowhere in a hurry. You may not have to hold the butt ends tightly like I do to advance the thread with the lack of flair your hair has.
Excellent SBS!
As you said it could be a function of the materials. The stuff I’m using came from a patch of comparadun hair from Blue ribbon; it flares pretty well, but seems to behave itself on the shank.