Dessicant powder, CDC flies and floatants.

[keithfish]

i have a very large tub of fullers earth obtained for me to make leader sink, so can i use it neat  as a drying powder. 

[Traditionalist]

i have a very large tub of fullers earth obtained for me to make leader sink, so can i use it neat  as a drying powder.

Yes it will work OK, but not as well as silica gel, and not nearly as well as the hydrophobic fumed silica. You can also dry it in the oven for re-use.

[keithfish]

excellent  was wondering what i was going to do with it all thanks.

[Traditionalist]

excellent  was wondering what i was going to do with it all thanks.

With regard to usage it soaks up a lot less moisture than silica gel or the hydrophobic fumed silica, so you need to dry the fly as well as you can with a wondercloth or similar before you use the fuller's earth. It will also clump if the flies are too wet. The trick is to drop the fly into the container ( on the end of the leader), and shake the container vigorously, so that the powder is well distributed. I use 35mm Film cans for this, although these are getting harder to obtain nowadays due to the advance of digital photography.  A pill bottle or similar with a "snap-on" cap works as well, this means you can snap the cap on with the fly on the leader inside.

I still carry a can ( again a 35mm plastic film can with a snap on lid) of ground silica gel. I keep it as warm as possible ( inside pocket, as the warmer it is the more moisture it sucks up). This is a matter of expense, the silica gel costs me nothing I have a lot collected from various electronics packaging and it is cheap anyway even if you have to buy it.  The various "dry shake" powders are quite expensive.  I now have a large pot of the hydrophobic fumed silica, but there is no point in wasting it, and so I try to dry flies ( especially CDC) as well as I can before I use it. As that is what contains the floatant.  Shaking the flies in the container applies the stuff much better than trying to brush it on, and is less wasteful, especially if the flies are dried as well as possible before applying it.

I don't know whether it is safe to put the hydrophobic fumed silica in the oven. I have not tried it. I have no idea what fumes might be caused from the silicone, or what other effects heating it might have, so I am not going to try it.

[deergravy]

on the river i find a good rinse after each fish and a pocket full of kitchen roll will keep your cdc floating most nights.

Not just CDC, in fact I find I use CDC flies almost never nowadays.
But a wad of kitchen roll and a tub of Ledasink are the two indispensible accessories a dry-fly fisher needs.
Anointing the wing on, say, a DHE or Sedgehog with watershed, then, after drying, applying mucilin, then giving it a quick blast with a hair-drier is a great way to provide long-term water proofing. 
If you can be arsed! But it really works, slimed flies are rejuvenated after a quick dunk and a rub with kitchen roll. (doesnae work with cdc, obviously )

A lot of fuss, but, like straightening a tapered leader over a steaming kettle, or cleaning and greasing your line, worth the backstage effort when you're on the water.
And we all do that eh?
Me? Anal?

[Traditionalist]

Not just CDC, in fact I find I use CDC flies almost never nowadays.
But a wad of kitchen roll and a tub of Ledasink are the two indispensible accessories a dry-fly fisher needs.
Anointing the wing on, say, a DHE or Sedgehog with watershed, then, after drying, applying mucilin, then giving it a quick blast with a hair-drier is a great way to provide long-term water proofing. 
If you can be arsed! But it really works, slimed flies are rejuvenated after a quick dunk and a rub with kitchen roll. (doesnae work with cdc, obviously )

A lot of fuss, but, like straightening a tapered leader over a steaming kettle, or cleaning and greasing your line, worth the backstage effort when you're on the water.
And we all do that eh?
Me? Anal?

Regardless of what you actually do or how you do it attention to detail will always pay off.  Preparation is a part of that.Some things may not seem all that important but if you ignore them you will catch fewer fish and often have a lot more trouble with various things.  There are lots of things that work, but some work better!

[Part-time]

I've not used dessicant powder but the best thing I've found to dry out CDC is the material they use for Karrimor or similar T-Shirts - the ones that 'wick away sweat' according to advertising blurb. After a quick rinse in water it dries out the CDC much better than anything else I've tried. 

[Traditionalist]

Indeed, that works, but the micro fibre "wonder cloths" work even better. The material is similar but the cloths are invariably thicker than the T-shirt fabric. They are not very expensive;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microfibre-Multi-Purpose-Cloths-White/dp/B004XI1PD6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1349618615&sr=8-7

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microfibre-Multi-Purpose-Cloths-Sage/dp/B005GUBHLK/ref=pd_sim_kh_6

quite a few supermarkets and similar have them.  They will absorb up to eight times their weight in water.

Some info;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfiber