Autumn is coming...

As the fans of the fantasy writer George R. R. Martin are no doubt aware, Autumn is coming! Given the sorry state of Czech rivers this is welcome news, even if the current (still rather) hot weather makes it hard to believe. After the hottest and driest summer in recent memory we are looking forward to some cooling off.

The trout stocks took a hard beating, with the hot weather delivering a double whammy of low water and low oxygen. The grayling are said to have taken it better, but I have not fished for them since the early July and so I can not confirm it from the first hand.

As I waited for the weather to calm down I did some experimenting with presentation and imitation. The question on hand was the difference in how the fly dresser (i.e. me :) sees his emerger fly and how a fish looks at the same subject.

Not surprisingly, there are some differences. The hook is much more pronounced - I was sort of expecing it, and yet it took me by a surprise - and the wing is almost invisible. The submerged body looks about the same...

The tie:
#18 Hanák H130 BL hook
16/0 Veevus tying thread, colored Gray
body of natural peacock quill, dyed Olive
thorax of natural Muskrat fur - on second thought a water absorbent material, such as hare, might be more appropriate
wing of 3 feathers of CDC

On the wings of an Owl

I am a great fan of the Owl feather flies. The feathers of an owl are designed in a way to muff the sound of the approaching predator. They achieve this by very fine, velvety structure. This structure lends itself very well to fly dressing applications.

The fine structure shows the most in the tiniest flies. Here are a couple #20 owl feather flies, tied using Hanák 130BL hooks. They are displayed on an actual Eagle Owl feather. The feather has laid a while on my fly dressing table and I am afraid it got a tad dusty; the structure is still clearly visible though.

This pattern is best saved for grayling - the Lady of the Stream, being a creature of gentle disposition, shows great appreciation of fine and delicate flies. At the same time it has no pointy teeth to ruin your precious imitation. Brown trout, ugly beasts they are, will ruin the herl body in no time. They are better served by more robust patterns.

What a difference dubbing makes?

What's in a dubbing? That which we call a fly
By any other fur would catch as sweet.

This sort of question occurs each tying season to many fly fishing Juliets; and just like a name in drama the dubbing in fly tying matters more than seems obvious at the first glance.

I am tie the all time favorite Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear on a gathering of fly tying pals. To make it a bit more interesting - after all the GRHE is not exactly rocket science - I have prepared a demonstration of various dubbing choices.

The following flies are all variants on the GRHE theme, tied on #10 Skalka wet fly hooks with 3.3mm bead, partridge tails and ribbed with Gütterman golden tinsel. Only the dubbing varies.

#1 - Young Hare

This fly is tied with fur from a young hare. The fur is light in colour and smooth in structure. It will have lots of movement in water, but it will have a "soft" feel to it.

#2 - Old Hare

This fly uses fur from an older animal. It is darker, with some hints of grey. The dubbing is mostly guard hairs from the back of the animal, where the hairs are longest and roughest.

#3 - Hare mixed with Fox Squirrel

This is actually the same fur as in exhibit #1 (I mix my dubbing myself, so I know for sure it comes from the same pelt). It has been mixed with some Fox Squirrel hair to give it some structure. The Fox Squirrel is very rough fur, with plenty of structure but it does not dub easily and is very messy. Mixing it with some Hare makes it much easier to work with.
This fly has the most structure, in fact so much it might have trouble in sinking to the catching depth.

#4 - Flashy Oppossum

Something else for a perspective. Entirely different from the previous flies - the result is not exactly undesirable, but definitely something else.

Ode on a Hare's Pelt

Oh, Hares Fur, how can I use thee?
Let me count the ways...

The Hare fur has long been my favorite material, with only CDC Feathers coming close to its versatility. But unlike the CDC feathers which - wonderful as they are - are just one kind of a material, the Hare fur comes with several different types of hairs, all having their places in a fly tiers arsenal.

The dark and spikey hairs on the back of the hare are extremely scruffy, excellent material for a nymph body. This is the premium material on the hare, greatly desired by Czech fly tiers. Each hunting season I am able to bum at least one hare pelt from my hunting friends in exchange for a Ziploc bag of processed dubbing of this type.

The longer and lighter hairs on a hares's flanks are finer and much more mobile. Very good for larger patterns, such as this #8 Peeping Caddis.

The underfur of the hare is very fine and easy to dub into a tight rope. On the abdomen of this CZ Nymph it is seen in its natural greyish color, but it takes dye very easily and the range of its use on both wet and dry flies is limitless. Note the difference of the structure of the abdomen and the "legs" made from hair from the back of the very same pelt as the abdomen (the hot spot is rabbit fur).

Update: a very interesting article on the use of Hare can be found on blog pages of my UK based friend Alun Rees.

Tungsten Density Experiment

Tungsten beads are popular in fly tying circles, but they are subject to never ending discussions about their quality (or rather cost vs. quality ratio). The discussion usually ends up that the cheap beads are sure to be Chinese (with implication that nothing good ever came from China, with possible exceptions of paper currency, gunpowder, tonkin cane and cheap takeaway food).

By a fortunate coincidence I received a significant order for tungsten beadheaded flies and discovered very competetively priced beadheads on a Polish internet site (www.taimen.com) in a single week. This led to me obtaining enough beadheads to be able to measure their density directly.

I used a method very similar to the one employed by Mr. Archimedes to determine the purity of a golden crown for Hiero II of Syracuse. I measured 10 ml water in a beaker and poured enough 3.3 mm beads for the water level to rise to 20 ml. It took 755 beads to acheive that.

The second step was to let the beads dry and weight them. The 755 beads weighted 188.5 grams, i.e. the observed density of my beads was 18.85 gr/cm³.

The result came as a pleasant suprise, as the observed density was very close to the density of pure Tungsten (19.25 gr/cm³) and significantly above both Brass (around 9 gr/cm³, depending on alloy) and Lead (11.34 gr/cm³). Lower density than pure tungsten was to be expected due to technology used to make the beads and the fact that the beads are gold (i.e. brass) plated.

My conclusion therefore was that the Taimen beads are perfectly OK to use; to get better ballast I would have to resort to pure gold (density 19.30 gr/cm³) or platinum (density 21.41 gr/cm³), both of which are highly impractical for fishing use.

It also led me to think that some of the disparaging of cheap "Chinese" beads by fly shop proprietors might be due to other reasons than quality of the product.