Recent comments

Phil, thank you for

Phil, thank you for asking that question. The easiest way to answer your question is, very liberally. You need to cover the skins totally in various stages of preservation. As far as the baths are concerned, I bathed them in a utility sink with enough water, soap and white vinegar to get a very soapy solution to cover the 8 skins.

The full amounts of items that I bought are:
Kitty Litter; 20 lbs largest box
White Vinegar: half gallon
Dawn Soap: 9 Oz
Boric Acid: 20 lbs
Baking Soda: 5 lbs

Too much of the above is not too much. The more you use the better the skins will do. Remember these skins are oily and some are fatty. I don't know how many skins you will be preserving which will dictate how much material you will need to use. The rule if thumb I used was, if the skins smelled, I repeated the procedure. The White Vinegar does a great job mixed with the other items. Good luck with preserving your feathers. If you need any other advice, you can email me.
Richard

You neglected to say

You neglected to say what the proportions of soap, vinegar, borax and baking soda were. Phil

Problem

Martin, I use photoshop cs6 on mac...

Perskis

Pit, There's...

Pit,

There's a whole article on handling chickens and preserving their skins here. Once you have the skin, you can use Richard's method as described here or the one I describe using salt and pinning the skin to a board.

Martin

thanks a lot for thi

thanks a lot for this article. I am just going to keep chickens in my garden to have eggs, meat and feathers. is it the same way with chickens and other poultry? like pheasant, black bird, magpie or partridge.
pit

Casts for autism beadhead nymph

Thanks Martin,
That's the fly I was asking about.
I'll try to get in touch with Jim when I establish a You Tube account.
In the meantime, I Googled CASTS and found several acronyms
relative to autism and Asberger's Syndrome.
"Creative Autism Solution Team" and "Childhood Autism Spectrum Test"
are two examples.

Dennis

perskis,

perskis,

I'll look into it. For some reason our system seems to dislike your images.
The originals seem fine, but when our site scales them, they get corrupted some way.
What program/system do you use to make them?

Martin

PoppyT,

PoppyT,

Which one do you mean.

"Casts For Autisim Beadhead Nymph"?

My guess is that this particular fly was inspired by Autism Awareness Day, which was this past week on the 2.

But you can contact Jim himself through his YouTube profile
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFlymanJim/about

Martin

Andrew, in addition

Andrew, in addition to Martin's response, I would also like to add a comment on why it's better to leave the feathers on the skin. Often in tying a fly, you are required to use a left feather and a right feather for tying wings. It is almost impossible to do that with all the feathers detached from the skin and stored in a bag. It would drive a tier insane and take up so much time trying to match them correctly. When I first started tying flies, I did what most tiers do, I bought feathers from a supplier that were randomly thrown into a bag. Not knowing what I know now, I thought that was okay. Then I started to build winged flies and quickly realized how much time I was wasting just trying to match feathers. That's why when you buy capes they are still on the skin. I look at it this way, time and quality are relative. If you tie your own flies, you do it because you get pleasure from building your own flies to use instead of going to the store and buy what they have to offer. If you put the time in, it will be worth it. Thank you for reading my article.

Andrew,

Yes you c

Andrew,

Yes you can, but the feathers are much easier to handle when they are on the skin. If you only need specific feathers - flank, CDC or wing feathers, you can pluck what you need and they will often be fine enough to be used as is. But a whole skin hold so many useful feathers, which can be nice to have.

Personally I find it worth the work to have the feathers "well organized" on the skin rather than stuffed into a bag.

Martin

Martin

Can you just pluck t

Can you just pluck the feathers from the skin, and wash the feathers?

This is hilarious...

This is hilarious...

Great article on pre

Great article on preserving. Looking forward to your next article.

Thanks Martin!

Thanks Martin!

perskis,

perskis,

perskis,

I managed to get your pictures to show. It seems that they had some kind of color management in them, and by opening them in Photoshop and stripping that off and saving them again I got them to behave.

Refresh the page, and you should see the flies. very nice flies as I said already!

Martin

Rick-I was fishing i

Rick-I was fishing in Pagosa Springs Colorado last summer using the hopper copper dropper. My guide tied the hopper directly to the leader and then the copper to 4X tippet and the dropper to 5X tippet. I hope I have that correct, the larger tippet first. I see the diagram above has this presentation with the flies on droppers off the leader. I am wondering if you might know he did that. How did he tie the fly and tippet to the next tippet and fly. Hope this makes sense.

Richard,

This was

Richard,

This was shot in Denmark, on the west coast of the island Sjaelland.

Martin

First, let me say ho

First, let me say how much I appreciate the excellent quality of your videos. You have provided a clear, concise, extremely informative compendium that has been my main resource for technical improvements in my tying. I've seen that, on some patterns, you will use thread to build up the body or provide coloration whereas I will typically use floss on the same pattern. Do you notice any difference in action or durability comparing floss and thread? Again, thanks so much Mr. Misiura. You are a real master and those us who strive to become one appreciate you sharing your skills and expertise with us.

Best,

Matt Glascock

perskis,

perskis,

I have no idea what happened to your pictures! They look nice enough when you click on them... strange!

Very nice flies by the way. Thanks for posting them.

Martin

Very nice photo. T

Very nice photo. The color is very clear and sharp.

This fly would fish

This fly would fish well in streams and lakes. Bass and Pike would take it.

Nice tube fly.

Nice tube fly.

Beautiful sunset! Wh

Beautiful sunset! Where was it taken?