Sunday, January 26, 2014

Weekend Fly Tying & The Flying Midge

  Besides tying a few flies this weekend I inked a little flying midge to start off your week.  Good luck to anyone that attempts to tie this puppy up.  I wouldn't suggest fishing it either.
Like a lot of my recent little doodles I really cant explain it.  I started out with a little line and it all just kind of morphs into a weird kinda angle winged midge thing.  This kind of doodle is what you get when your stuck in an airport with a bone chilling -15 degree wind howling outside and no plane to take you home.
  Simply put - I Need To Go Fishing!

I also took some time Sunday afternoon to tie up some wet flies using bodies of wool I scored from my wife's yarn basket.  Its not the first time I've raided her stash and since I was running a little low on floss for bodies of flies I decided to see what she recently had stocked up on.
  What I found was a nice 85% wool 15% mohair mix red that just screamed to used on my fishy flies.  I had to thin it out a bit while tying it into my bodies but the result was a great selection of blood red bodied wet flies.  I even decided to tie up a few Sawyers Killer Bugs with the material.  I am not sure how well the fish will accept the new color but I figured that since I have had such great success with the original Killer bug, a new color would be well worth the try.
    For the wet flies It was just a simple ingredient mix of #14 hooks, weight, brown thread, red wool, and a Hungarian Partridge.  For the Killer Bug I just left out the Partridge and used a little copper wire.
Butchered Sawyer Bug
  Of course I couldn't just tie up only a few blood red bugs so I used a few remaining Partridge feathers I had plucked to tie up a few green and brown wet flies to fill up the box.  Keeping with the theme of the day I used poached yard for these flies as well.  I have had a variety of success with the brown color yarn on other flies but very little with the green colors but I have never used either color on a wet fly.  Perhaps the addition of a grizzly partridge will help to make these more appealing to those finiky trout.  If not then I am sure the sunfish will love them once the lakes start warming up.  Either way I am sure to get some use out of them.
Enjoy your week.

5 comments:

Mel said...

Certainly a "buggy" looking yarn. Simple patterns made from the simplest of tying supplies sometimes turn out to be the staples in a fly box full of different patterns.

Unknown said...

Mel - if there's one thing I can do in my fly tying it's whip out simple flies. Have me stack some deer hair or complicate it all with more than four ingredients and I'm completely lost.

Bill Trussell said...

Joel
What really gets my attention with these flies is the color selection. I am a big fan of bright colors when tying flies. Bright colors for me are a big attractor on those slow days. You did an exceptional job at the bench with this pattern. Thanks for sharing

Unknown said...

Bill - it might look flashy but I think the camera brings that out. I just got done fishing them today and they look a lot darker in the water. Really deep blood red. Wish I had a picture with one in a trout's lip but those are the breaks. Had to check out about the time things were heating up. I'm sure they will catch fish in the future - they just looked to good in the water not to fish them again.

Anonymous said...

Love the drawing. Would you mind if I used it on my business card?