Recent comments

John,

When I make floss bodies of any kind, I don't treat them. But on the other hand I rarely fish them, and the problem is that they are fragile. Many tyers who tie synthetic floss bodies on fishing flies will coat them for durability. You can "fuse" them with acetone (it kind of melts some types of synthetic floss) or use varnish or some light curing resin for the purpose.

Martin

Submitted by John Murray on

Permalink

Silk fly bodies, either floss or thread,do you treat with any cement or coating?

Darren, the 365 Streamers project has been a huge success. I am thrilled that Global Fly Fisher has this article on this. Outstanding!

I tied some near perfect patterns last year for the Bahamas using normal materials and Loon UV Clear. Nada. They were ignored by herds of bones. I went back to gotcha's and crazy charlies (tan arctic fox wing with pink head) in size 6 and... Those flies look like nothing that I have seen in the ocean but are amazing! My guess is that the movement of the fox wing suggested life whereas the "perfect" flies did not.

And, almost all of my hookups were not on the strip but when the fly stay on the bottom with the current moving the wing. I kept a tight line and could feel the take and missed very few strikes.

What color wing to use? I suggest using the color that best matches the bottom/sand where you are fishing. I found that my darker Keys flies were useless as the sand in our area was an almost white beige. We also discovered, at low tide, the flats were covered with this color crabs just larger than a US dime. We moved to size 6 and 8 flies and had much more success. Match the hatch! Just like when fishing a new stream and turning over rocks to assess insect life to match, spend some time on the flats determining the color and size of the prey and your luck will increase.

I am not a marine biologist but assume that prey in an area spawn at about the same time and their offspring grow from very small to full size at a fairly uniform rate. So, determine what size is predominant at the TIME you are there and match that size.

I hope that a biologist reads this and opines on my assumption!

Roger

Submitted by Ed Null on

Permalink

That's why most of my streamers are marabou or bucktail! ;-)

I really don't think it looks all that bad. I have tied uglier.

Submitted by Kate Pike 1737246321 on

Permalink

Darren,
Kudos to you for taking on such a monumental, but very rewarding project. Your photographs are outstanding.
Also, thank you to your fly tiers, without whom your project would not have been possible. I look forward to receiving, and reading volumes 1 & 2 of Streamers 365. Blurb is a very good publishing group. April, and Streamers 365, Vol. 3, is on my calendar. Thank you Martin for bringing these volumes to our attention. Kate

Submitted by RICKY on

Permalink

Excellent utilitarian tying station! The only addition i would suggest is to inset in the board itself magnets for holding finished flies and various size hooks. This can be done with a router. Or you could just glue the magnet to the top of the board. Craft stores have all sizes of cheap magnets. Again - excellent!

Ron,

I have no camera for video and still two photo step-by-steps to make, but then........I'll try to do my very best.

Cheers

Jan

Submitted by Ron Lomas on

Permalink

This would be a good fly to show in a video as it has applications for many fish.

Since you got this far …


The GFF money box

… I have a small favor to ask.

Long story short

Support the Global FlyFisher through several different channels, including PayPal.

Long story longer

The Global FlyFisher has been online since the mid-90's and has been free to access for everybody since day one – and will stay free for as long as I run it.
But that doesn't mean that it's free to run.
It costs money to drive a large site like this.
See more details about what you can do to help in this blog post.