some of you might recognise the nom de plume from FFF or UK Fly Dressers. REE put me onto this site and hopefully I can make a few contributions with my meagre skills.
Roddy
I was having a play with some microbarb hackles generously given to me by Tango(51) and came up with these on Fulling Mill DE size 16 31310s. I omitted the peacock herl as they work well enough without it.
Took longer to arrange them for a photograph than tie them. little blighters kept springing about!
Welcome aboard! I have seen your work on the UK Fly Dressers web site and I am delighted that you have chosen to grace us with your presence and talents on this side of the pond.
Roddy!! Glad to see you drop in. I’ve been missing the UK Flydressing board. I’ve been helping out a friend that was diagnosed with liver cancer and haven’t been on the board in ages. Good to see you my friend.
Very nice. Probably very good for Grayling too. I have a similar fly with a hare?s ear dubbing body and more open turns which works very well. I use either grizzle or cree as hackle. Have put a red tag on some as well!
:DRoddy,
Welcome to The FAOL Family.
My Lovely Bride(of almost 35 yrs) is a Downey and is curious about your “Nom de Plume”, what is it’s meaning?
Like Your Flies by the way.
Thanks to everybody for the warm welcome, it is good to see that Mike’s excellent posts are here!
Your resourcefulness still amazes me, Mike, and I enjoy when you get technical! AMU sends his regards.
Bill, Albannach Cuileag means Scottish Fly, what’s a ‘downey’? The only relation to that I know is the ‘Uppies’ and ‘Doonies’ from the Borders Hand Ba’ games - Hawick and Jedburgh to be precise.
EdD, you must have me confused with someone else! I can’t tie a fly to save myself!
Ron, missed yours and VEE’s excellent work in UK - have eventually managed to get you real Typhoo! You might like the next post - it used that Boar’s Bristle that you sent me a while back - interesting stuff! Hope all is well with you both.
the fly I have tied is a single hackle in the style of Griffiths whereas the Bivisible incorporates an additional couple of turns of white hackle at the head to aid in it’s visibility to the angler. Looking at the link you provided, the Bivisible is also ‘tailed’ where the Griffiths Gnat is tail less. A variant across here uses a couple of fine strands of pearl mylar to imitate a shuck and can increase the taking capabilities of this fly no end at all.
Representative of a Midge cluster in it’s fully dressed form with Peacock Herl under the hackle, Griffiths created a fly that no dry fly fisher should be without in his or her box.
Taking this fly down to sizes 20 to 24 can fool a lot of smutting fish that would ignore any representative patterns at other times.
Clever man was your Mr Griffiths!
Perhaps I should have looked at this link before Ray’s.
The funny thing is that across the pond we have always known this as a Griffiths Gnat even without the Peacock Herl. Great thing about fly tying is that you are always learning something new everyday!
From what I recollect, Griffiths Gnat originated on the same river, the Au Sable, this link takes you to a short description in Catches. Griffiths Gnat
Why don’t you come to the Michigan Fish-In sometime, and prove that you can’t tie flies. Bring Donald Nicolson with you. We’d love to meet you two, and Roy Christie, and…
Ed
P.S. You don’t have to tie 'em to save your life, just your wallet.
I am not even in the same school as those guys let alone the same class!
Donalds site on the traditionals is excellent and Roy ties a mean fly of any description. Now that we have those gifted Scandinavians in UK Fly Dressers things are hotting up as postings of flies from everyone have increased expotentially! Scotfly is another who ties a really class fly.