One of the most exciting aspects of angling for me is taking fish off the top. I have been reading up on dry fly fishing and see the use of a dessicant powder mentioned a lot by Oliver Edwards. Could anyone recommend a source of this powder and where to buy it. When I google it it takes me to bulk trade companies.
Also while trying to get my head round the technique of the dry fly and coming across the cdc feather. Now the cdc feather will not take a floatant but it is possible to treat with oil, is this right and if it is where do get this oil and when would you use it IE on the bank or at the vice.
Sorry for all the questions and would be grateful for any advice,
Cheers
Mark
I do not know what one Mr Edwards uses may well be Shimaski Dry Shake ,there are a few about A good one I have found is the American made Frog's Fanny. Available in he UK, a google search should throw it up.
Tight Lines
Quote from: Alan on October 02, 2012, 09:40:27 PM
cdc is fine on its own
aye, but only until you catch something. :lol:
Quote from: admin on October 02, 2012, 11:01:36 PM
aye, but only until you catch something. :lol:
Mines seems to last for a very long time :lol:
CDC certainly catches fish, but it's not a good choice where your are catching lots of smaller fish. It is a pig to maintain. Read Wyatt's book, he hates the stuff too, probably based on his many holidays in Assynt - land of bandies. The Dry-Shake stuff really helps rejuvenate CDC quickly and effectively. I would not be without it.
Frog Fanny is good stuff. I am reading on the other places of guys using the powder sold for Archery arrow feathers. I think it is $7 for a good size bottle and I will give it a try this winter.
Cheers guys. The advice on here is brilliant. I have sourced Dry Shake and Frog Fanny and will give both a shot. Still not sure about the oil, I'm kinda thinking its for restoring CDC feathers after a bit of usage :?
ever tried a deer hair emerger with double the deer hair? unsinkable :8)
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I really need to start fly tying :)
I've only just started using a dessicant powder and have to say it worked brilliantly on my deer hair flies.
I pre-treat with a dunk in green mucillin liquid and leave to dry overnight before popping them back in my flybox. They're pretty good after this but brushing on some dessicant powder when they get a bit tired has them skating over the surface again instantly.
If you just want to dry them use ground silica gel;
http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=17025.msg181546#msg181546 (http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=17025.msg181546#msg181546)
I you want to dry AND waterproof them;
http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=16538.msg176860#msg176860 (http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=16538.msg176860#msg176860)
The "wonder cloths" noted there are as good as amadou for drying flies. Moisten slightly, and squeeze dry before use, they will literally "suck" most flies dry immediately, also removing slime etc and are washable.
Oil is generally useless for CDC.
May also be of interest;
http://www.danica.com/flytier/steps/cdcelk/cdcelk.htm (http://www.danica.com/flytier/steps/cdcelk/cdcelk.htm)
http://www.danica.com/flytier/articles/cdc_types/cdc_types.htm (http://www.danica.com/flytier/articles/cdc_types/cdc_types.htm)
Mike, that's fantastic. I appreciate all the work you put into that. You have answered all my questions and more. Its also a great reference for the future. Thanks again for everyone, its great to hear all the different views. i must admit I like CDC flies and will continue to use them with the knowledge I have gained from this thread.
Cheers
Mark
I don't use anything. Just rub the CDC on a dry fleece when ur wearing it. Works perfectly, is less problematic and it's quick. CDC never lasts long and I use a lot of it on the Clyde.
Silica absorbs water but it needs to be dried off. It's awful stuff. Most of the CDC flies I use are emergers so the silica is completely useless. For me fleece wins hands down.
Cheers
Paul
If you get a build up that is because you have not dried the flies sufficiently before using the dessicant. The Dessicant only removes residue, it will not dry completely soaked flies, you need to use Amadou or "wonder-cloth" first.
After use for a while, the Silica gel needs to be dried out. This is done by placing it in an oven. How much use depends on the amount in your container and how often you use it. I usually tip the stuff ( half a plastic 35mm Film can), into a stainless pot after a days fishing, and when I have an amount in there I put it in the oven. This restores the powder completely;
- It will adsorb up to one third of its own weight in water vapour. This adsorption efficiency is approximately 35% greater that typical desiccant clays, making silica gel the preferred choice where weight or efficiency are important factors.
- It has an almost indefinite shelf life if stored in airtight conditions.
- It can be regenerated and reused if required. Gently heating silica gel
will drive off the adsorbed moisture and leave it ready for reuse. ( Twenty minutes at 100°C in an oven).
- It is a very inert material, it will not normally attack or corrode other materials and with the exception of strong alkalis and hydrofluoric acid is itself resistant to attack.
- It is non-toxic and non-flammable.
- It is most frequently and conveniently used packed in a breathable sachet or bag. These are available in a wide range of sizes suitable for use with a wide range of applications.
It ONLY dries flies. If you want dry AND waterproof then you need hydrophobic fumed silica as indicated in the post I linked to.
Putting completely soaked flies into the various dry shake powders, ( including ground silica gel and hydrophobic fumed silica), will only cause the stuff to clump up, and it wont work. It is essential to remove all excess moisture or slime, blood etc, before using any of the dessicant/floatant powders or they simply wont work. Slime is one of the best "sinkants" extant! Even relatively dry slime will sink a fly very quickly, and of course it clogs fibres.
Using an oven only applies to silica gel. How other "dry shake" powders may react I do not know.
Of all those I have tried the hydrophobic fumed silica works best, in this the "floatant" component is silicone. This has also been confirmed by many other people.
I don't know all the ingredients of all the powders so if you experiment with them be careful.
Quote from: Mike Connor on October 03, 2012, 09:06:27 PM
If you get a build up that is because you have not dried the flies sufficiently before using the dessicant. The Dessicant only removes residue, it will not dry completely soaked flies, you need to use Amadou or "wonder-cloth" first.
Yes, that's absolutely right. If you dip a soaked fly into dry shake or similar you will pull out and waste 1/2 the tin. The fly has to be dried as you say, the desiccant does the final grooming very efficiently and really rejuvenates CDC very well indeed.
As far as CDC oil goes, never used it, I imagine it would clog up and destroy the feather structure.
Quote from: admin on October 03, 2012, 09:11:16 PM
Yes, that's absolutely right. If you dip a soaked fly into dry shake or similar you will pull out and waste 1/2 the tin. The fly has to be dried as you say, the desiccant does the final grooming very efficiently and really rejuvenates CDC very well indeed.
As far as CDC oil goes, never used it, I imagine it would clog up and destroy the feather structure.
None of the oil or paste type floatants like GINK etc will work on CDC. They ALL clog the radial barbules, thus reducing the surface area and the fy will sink more quickly.
"Watershed" does work if the flies are soaked in it, allowed to dry and then fluffed up, but it does not make enough difference to be worthwhile and it wont work "on stream" anyway. It has to dry completely before it works at all. Great on conventional hackled flies though.
Permaflote does not work very well on CDC either, the wax also clogs the radial barbules.
The hydrophobic fumed silica will work on any dry fly and is convenient to use but the flies MUST be pre-dried with Amadou, "wonder cloth" or similar beforehand.
The silicone in the Hydrophobic Fumed Silica works because it is in a semi solid form and heterogeneously but still very thoroughly mixed with the silica, so it does not clog the fibres.
The usual silicone used is polydimethylsiloxane ;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_grease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_grease)
there is no point at all applying ANY floatant to a completely soaked fly, all that does is seal the moisture in. the fly must be dry before floatant is applied. Some floatants ( permaflote, Hydrophobic fumed silica) both dry AND treat the fly. Others are merely floatants.
There is no such thing as "natural" CDC preen oil in bottles. There are two ways of extracting this, one involves boiling feathers and skimming the oil residue which comes to the top, this is then mixed with solvent and is sold as "preen oil" which it no longer is. Even natural preen oil only resists water for a while and has to be constantly renewed by the bird, using its preen gland and its beak to collect and distribute the oil. It is a very complex substance and boiling feathers does not extract it properly anyway. The second way is to extract it from preen glands. This would make it one of the most expensive substances in the world, and it is not viable for this reason.
The other stuff commonly sold as "preen gland oil" or similar is purely synthetic and does not work on CDC anyway as it also clogs the barbules.
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.
If you want a very cheap method of drying flies use cat litter, this is invariably a dessicant clay. Just mash it up a bit in a cloth bag or similar with a hammer. It is quite efficient but not as good as silca gel. It also does not waterproof anything only dries it.
This is often just fuller's earth, ( which also makes a first class degreaser, deglinter, for nylon when a little washing up liquid and a few drops of glycerine are added), but there are other types as well, The "crystal" litters are silica gel.
Zeolite, diatomite and sepiolite are all good non-clumping dessicants.
For more info; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_litter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_litter)
Quote from: keithfish on October 03, 2012, 09:54:08 PM
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.
Indeed, that works quite well, as will anything that pulls most of the moisture out of the flies. The "wonder cloths" are very good indeed, and work well even without using any floatant, but using hydrophobic fumed silica as well makes them float very well indeed for a long time, and also returns them to pristine condition more or less immediately after catching a fish.
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.
Quote from: keithfish on October 03, 2012, 10:17:34 PM
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.
excellent was wondering what i was going to do with it all thanks.
Quote from: keithfish on October 03, 2012, 10:27:34 PM
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.
Quote from: keithfish on October 03, 2012, 09:54:08 PM
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?
Quote from: deergravy on October 04, 2012, 09:21:05 PM
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!
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.
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-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 (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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfiber)