With the generation schedules and the weather, Jack Hise and I have not been able to get out on the rivers the last few days, so, I have been tying at the vise and thought I would see what you all thought…
Warren,
Thisone reminds me of a fly used a lot here in the Northwest, I just can’t think of the name off the top of my head. Nice looking fly. The bunch wing look good.
I checked out the rest of the pictures in the album. Your getting the soft hackles down, aren’t you. Great flies to tie and even better to fish.
“reminds me of a fly used a lot here in the Northwest, I just can’t think of the name off the top of my head”
I saw and read about this pattern in one of my Fly Tyers magazines. If my memory serves me right, it was called The Gimp. Very old pattern and very easy to tie. The wing needs to lay back more according to the pattern. You just need to remember to form the body/thorax area with less taper so the wing will be tied on top of the thorax area which will make the wing lay flatter. The original pattern called for a body made of gray wool and the tail, wing and collar just hackle. The wing is suppose to be made from 2 after shaft feathers which I did on my first ties but after using them I decided the after shaft feathers were to fragile. After a couple fish, they were gone so I changed to the pheasant herls instead and they last and are more durable and the fish did not seem to mind. I decided to make the body from Punch Yarn and used brown punch yarn. The tail, wing and collar are hackles from a hen pheasant skin I have. I really like the hen pheasant whole skin because it has so many different size feathers on it and I use it a lot for collars on my flymphs and wet flies.
Thanks for the input…
Warren,
It really pays to buy whole skins when you can get them, just for the range of size, and the quality of the feathers is always so much better than getting loose or bagged feathers.
I have managed to acquire enough skins to fill a fairly large plastic tote with pheasant, quail, magpie, hen, starling, partridge, etc. I know I have more feathers than I’ll ever use in a life time. Some were just to pretty to pass up.