Cleaning flies

[Craigie17]

Hi,

This feels like a slightly daft post, but I figured I'm unlikely to be the only person this has happened to...

I keep a bottle of floatant and a bottle of sinkant in my wading jacket, in the same pocket as my dry fly boxes. Somehow the lid of the sinkant has become unscrewed and emptied all over the pocket. The sinkant is less paste and more liquid and as such has managed to get into some of my dry flies meaning, in short, that nothing floats!

I wondered if anyone has had this experience or similar, and knew the best way to clean the sinkant off the flies?

Suffice to say I'll be getting some better fly boxes and ditching the sinkant (which I've never used anyway!) in future.

[east wind]

All I can say is when one of my dries gets slimed by a fish or algae I hold It by the hook bend and give it a vigorous thrash about in some fresh river water, dry it on some kitchen roll or my T-Shirt then a wee blaw and fluff up and its good to go.

What about shaking them through some clean cold tap water and leave to dry naturally ?

[Noddy]

I agree probably a god rinse with water and dry them off.  Its most likely that its detergent from the sinkant thats causing the problem.

Jim

[Craigie17]

Grand - will give that a go - thanks guys. Certainly made for a frustrating session on the river the other night when I couldn't even get the size 16 kinks to sit in the surface film!