Wyatt's flies

[Bob Wyatt]

Gerry,  you're right on the money tonight!  On my hackle spinners I build up a slight thorax and wind the hackle through it.  

On the DD the black centre stripe is plenty.  I sometimes think it makes a good focus point for the trout, like the black thorax on the Klinker.

I try to keep the flies as simple and easy to tie as possible.

[deergravy]

Hi Bob
I've a query about the wing on the DHE - is it flared or tied as a post?
Someone on the 'other' forum was complaining that their tyings always sunk, I suggested they tie it with a wider,almost comparadun-style wing, as I do, but another poster was sure it was tied as a post.
All the pictures I've seen are taken from the side, making it difficult to tell either way.

As for the sedge, I tie shit loads of these for our trips up north every year,  can knock them out in no time using this method;

Align the wing, then tie in position using increasing pressure with every turn while - this is the important bit - holding the tips in your non-winding hand AT ALL TIMES.  Wind tightly through the flared butts then, with the thread dangling, trim them very roughly.

Take care not to cut the thread (duh!).

This keeps the wing and butts seperated. Now you can let the wing go and simply whip finish and get to work trimming.
Takes about one minute per fly. And what a fly it is, too.

Maybe see you guys at the Alt this year?We're going up on the 24th June, staying at a cottage nearby. You might remember us as the dishevelled, hungover trio dossing in tents and Eric's wee caravan round the back of the pub a couple of years ago.

Cheers,
Dave

[Bob Wyatt]

Dave,
You explain it very clearly. That's precisely the way I wing the sedge myself.

As for the DHE, I tie it both 'semi'-Comparadun style and as a narrow upright wing.  I wouldn't describe it as a post exactly.  It's always flared a bit.

I've heard a lot of guys complain about the DHE 'sinking'. It's supposed to sink, but not completely out of sight.   That's why they made gink, by the way.

The narrower upright wing (or 'post' style) will ride lower in the water, like a floating nymph.  I just use gink on the wing to keep it up.

A flared Comparadun style wing is good for fast broken water, as far as the angler seeing it goes, but I use the narrower wing a lot even in the riffles.  You soon 'get your eye' in as to where the fly is, even if it isn't bouncing around out there like a Royal Wulff.  The trout see it just fine.  Which is kind of the point.

If you put a little gink on the top of the thorax it will ride a bit higher, like in Hans' photo here.  But never get any gink on the abdomen.  


DHE Floating (photo Hans Weilenmann)
http://www.danica.com/flytier/

Bob

[Bob Wyatt]

Guys,
You know, I think this is a good place to mention one of, and maybe the earliest, designers of flies specifically meant to represent the emerging dun - Old W H Lawrie, another great Scot from Edinburgh, or thereabouts, who wrote some of the best books on the subject.

He developed a whole string of great emergers before they were called emergers, back before WW2. He called them 'Hatching Duns'. Some rather strong attitudes toward both the wet fly and the dry fly, both north and south of the border, kept his ideas from really catching on in this country until the same sort of thing 'emerged' n the States, much later on.  Now, of course, it's emerger city.

Mottram had a few ideas too, but recanted in favour of the Halfordian  code in the end.  

Skues was thinking along these lines too, but old Lawrie was the guy who made a fist of it.

He's the man, aye.

[Bob Wyatt]

Allan,

I checked out your fly box there.  Good flies, all of them.  I like your skinny DD.  Definitely looks the business.  

You tie the DHE with a slightly more forward leaning wing than I do, which would make it hang deeper, I think.  I usually build up a bit more of a hare's mask thorax and the wing sits up a bit higher.  Personal preference that probably makes not much difference to the trout.  :wink:

Spiders and nymphs.
I reckon the Scottish tradition of fishing the wet fly probably kept the emerger from taking hold here for so long.  However, I think old W C Stewart was actually fishing the wet spider as an emerger a lot of the time, so it's really a matter of giving it a name.

[Bob Wyatt]

Looks absolutely deadly Allan.

[Wildfisher]

I've suspected for a long time that those spider type dries (the one's without tails) fished exactly like an emerger

I have wondered  about that too. As a laddie, I often doubted these dry spiders flies would fish "properly"  as I defined  it then. The stiffness of the nylon must affect it though I would have thought.

[Bob Wyatt]

Fred,

For sure.  In fact the great old tail-less Grey Duster is one of the first and best, although no one seemed to know why for a long time.  Courtney Williams, in A Dictionary of Trout Flies, puzzles over the Grey Duster back in 1949.  He reckoned the GD was probably the best fly you could use in a hatch of Mayfly, but couldn't say why.

The answer, as Allan says, is the way the Grey Duster sits in the surface film - arse down, hanging there like an emerging nymph.  That's why it's a mistake to put a tail on a Grey Duster. The original has no tail, and the original is still the best.

The simple idea behind the Dirty Duster was just to accentuate that feature - get down and dirty with it.  :wink:

[Wildfisher]

Bob, how much do you reckon the stiffness of the nylon affects the presentation of these flies?  Without  doing experiments,  just  can't get my head round this.

[Bob Wyatt]

Fred,

It probably has some effect, but unless the nylon is very thick when it's wet it probably doesn't matter that much.  Trout tippets are pretty thin stuff and when wet are quite limp, or should be.  Stiff nylon's worst effect is drag.

Some attention to knotting is worth the effort.  A bad knot that kicks the fly at an angle is more important than the nylon, to my mind.  Trout don't know what nylon is, and if the fly is drifting or swimming naturally it'll catch 'em.  

Think about how many fish we get on those droppers.  Knots and doubled line all over the shop.  

For very small flies the thickness of the tippet is an issue, of course, but the reasons are the same.

I use the half-grinner, or so-called 'uni' knot myself.  Two turns.  I always make sure the fly is straight in line, and I use the thinnest but strongest limp mono I can get away with, usually 5 or 6 pound test for trout.  Frog Hair is good, but there are plenty of others.  Stroft is reckoned to be good and I'm going to try it.