Sep 6
Tying steelhead flies is problematic. At every turn, you discover some new material that’ll revolutionize your tying and fish catching abilities, and you just have to have it in every possible color. One day you’re dropping $50 on seal dubbing, only to discover you love Alec Jackson’s spade body and now need $100 worth of ostrich. Guinea, schlappen, no, wait, saddle hackle, no, wait, grizzly capes in 15 colors and 4 hues of pink. It never ends.
But with just a little bit of work and $25, you can buy enough dye to last you a lifetime, and save gobs of money on materials.
Dying is not only easy, it’s fun, and quick. Follow these steps, and you’ll be dying feathers and fur in vibrant colors in less than 10 minutes from start to finish. No joke.
First off, you need some dye. There are a zillion ways to dye stuff, but if you want the rich, vibrant colors you find in a fly shop, you need to use an acid based dye. Don’t be scared, the “acid” simply means vinegar, the same white distilled stuff you have in your cabinet.
I’ve tried a few brands, and Jacquard is by far the best. Amazon sells it for $3-4 per container.
Next, you’ll need some synthrapol, which is simply an industrial detergent for removing excess dye. Have you ever used shitty fly tying materials, that when exposed to water, lost their dye or worse yet, transferred to dye to the rest of the materials on your fly? That’ll be your end result if you skip the synthrapol. Again, Amazon, for $8.
A stainless steel pot and some tongs and you’re done.
Step 1: Select the materials you plan to dye, and soak them in hot water with some synthrapol to remove any excess dirt. Rinse, and then soak in water, and press firmly to remove any oxygen. This is important! If you’re dying fur or a cape of feathers, you’ll want to put the material in the water skin side up and press at the bottom of the container. You’ll see oxygen bubbling out, and once the bubbles stop coming, you’re done. Skip this step, and there will be air bubbles in the material when you go to dye it, resulting in an uneven dye.
Step 2: Bring a few cups of water to a boil, or enough to fully submerge your materials. Now, add a bit of dye, and a few tablespoons of vinegar (the vinegar sets the dye). You don’t need much dye, literally 1/16 of a teaspoon or so. Some colors are stronger than others, and you’ll figure this out as you go. If you’re colors aren’t as vibrant as you’d like, you can always add more.
Step 3: Once the water is boiling, add your materials. Be sure to keep the materials submerged, and stir around a lot so that they dye distributes evenly. If dying fur or feathers that are on a hide, don’t boil for too long! More than five minutes and you’ll risk disintegrating the skin. Not cool.
Step 4: Remove the materials from the dye bath, and rinse under hot water. Now, in a large bowl add some synthrapol and hot water, and wash the materials until all the excess dye comes out. Rinse under fresh water, drain, and set on a towel to dry.
Step 5: If you’re impatient and want to use your feathers right away, grab your girlfriend’s blow dryer to quickly dry things out. She’s already pissed at you for getting dye and animal skin all over the kitchen, so things can’t get much worse for you at this point.
To date, I’ve had great luck dying Arctic Fox tail, Jungle Cock flank (pictured above), Guinea Hen flank (pictured above) and Golden Pheasant crest/tippets. Marabou and Rabbit would be obvious materials as well. Rather than spend $3 on a little pack of rabbit, buy the hide for $10 and dye and slice your own bunny leech strips.
A good source of materials in bulk is Continental Feathers.
And the finished product, using some JC flank and guinea I dyed yesterday:
Aug 18
Having spent the past 4 months balls deep in trout nymphs, it’s been fun sitting back down at the vise with my steelhead materials and whipping up some wet flies for the Deschutes.
I also finally got around to buying some seal dubbing and silk floss from Feathersmc, which is hands down the best place to get your steelhead fly tying fix. I normally shy away from exotics like Seal, but he shaves the fur off of old Russian WWII jackets, so I have no moral qualms. It’s also cheap, and at $3/gram is roughly what you’ll pay for STS or some other trilobal dubbing, but the quality is far and away superior.
Green Butt Skunk - It’ll certainly catch fish, but isn’t the prettiest
Getting better. Big fan of how the floss body turns out, with small bump of seal behind the hackle.
Inspired by the streetwalker, no hairwing, just some krystal flash. Nice and simple.
4th try’s a charm, and this Skykomish Sunrise rendition is definitely my favorite. I found my whip finisher for this one, and it’s apparent in the cleaner head.
Can’t wait to test them out this weekend.
Apr 26
Disclaimer: Things are about to get geeky, and unless you really care about tying heavy flies without a lot of bulk, save yourself the sanity and stop reading!
Ok then.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with Czech Nymphing lately, and of course, that has spilled over to the vise.
One of the keys with this style of short line nymphing is keeping contact with your flies, and getting them down as fast as possible, hence the untapered leader. Placing split shot above your flies doesn’t help with this, and you generally won’t find people czech nymphing with split shot on their leader. Instead, your point fly, or anchor fly should be heavily weighted in order to pull the rest of your flies down.
And that’s where things get tricky. On big, fast western rivers, you sometimes need a lot of split shot to get down, especially if you’re trying to nymph something over 8 feet. To aid me in this process (and for helping measuring specific gravity for beer), I bought one of those little scales that your college pot head friends used to own.
I’ve already discovered a lot with this scale. First of all, lead shot is about 60% heavier than the non-toxic variety - a BB sized lead shot weighs 0.4 grams, vs 0.25g for non-toxic. There are plenty of times when I use 3 or more lead BB’s, which equates to 1.2 grams. That’s often in addition to a couple of tungsten beaded flies.
My typical Deschutes nymph rig is a #8 Tungsten Bead Stonefly in Heat (0.75g) followed by a #16 or so Bead Head Caddis (0.18g). If BWO’s are around, I’ll add a 3rd fly, a #16-18 Micro May (0.12-0.2g). So that’s 1.05 - 1.15grams, plus another gram of split shot, for a final payload of about 2 - 2.25 grams of weight delivering my flies to the river bottom.
Now, I need to pack at least that much weight into my flies, and possibly more for when the rivers are swollen. Since the Stonefly in Heat is my top producer on the Deschutes, I want it to be my anchor fly and about 1.5 - 2 grams. But there’s the rub. That fly is already wrapped in lead wire and a 3.2mm tungsten bead, and weighs only 0.8g. Going up to a 3.8mm bead will net me a bit more, but still won’t get me over 1g.
Enter Flat Lead Wire. Because standard lead wire is circular, there’s tons of wasted space, and it makes for a bulky fly. Not so with the flat stuff. The other advantage is that it’s way easier to build a tapered body than with the round stuff. On my first attempt, I rattled off one of my best looking Stones in Heat yet with a great tapered profile, and it clocks in at a juicy 1.45 grams. There’s still room to fit more lead without distorting the profile, and going from a 3.8mm bead to a 4.6mm should get me over the 2 gram mark. Blown out rivers, here I come!
The one downfall of this flat lead wire is that it’s yet another thing you have to buy, and I’ve never seen it in a fly. Wflies.com sells it for $5 for a medium pack, which contains 20 strips, each weighing about 0.85 grams. But i’ll easily go through a single pack on 20 anchor flies. The good news is wflies also has the cheapest tungsten beads I’ve found, so even one strip of medium lead plus 1 tungsten bead is only going to set me back about $0.48, which is still the cost of just 1 tungsten bead at most shops.
But, there’s gotta be a cheaper route. This lead has to come from somewhere, and a quick google search brings up enough lead to have you bleeding out of your eyes and coughing up the black death in no time. One square foot for $12, or just a few cents of raw material per fly.
And now’s when my mind really gets into the gutter. If I can buy lead sheets, how about tungsten? A bit of googling turns up a bunch of chinese companies, who don’t list prices and presumably only sell in bulk. Given that my Cantonese is a bit rusty (OK, non-existent), let’s check ebay. Naturally, it exists on ebay, but it ain’t cheap - $62 for a 6x6” piece! I did find some old forum posts that reference tungsten sheets, so I have to believe they exist in reasonable prices, but the search continues.
Until then, lead it is, and don’t forget to join me for my next segment, Fly Tying from the Cancer Ward.
Feb 26
I wrote a few weeks back about a site called Continental Feathers, with crazy good prices on a wide array of feathers, including some fancy stuff like Lady Amherst.
I originally found the site while googling for some golden dyed Peacock hurl for a Golden Stonefly prototype I’m working on. Because the site isn’t aimed at fly tyers, it’s naturally, 75% cheaper than your local fly shop. As always, when buying at “too good to be true” prices online, I place a fairly small order, expecting to receive the worst. $9 for a 36” lady amherst tail? Well, that’s certainly going to be caked in mucous and blood…
Well shiiiit, was I wrong or what. Like a good steelhead run, I really shouldn’t be telling any of y’all about this, for some lingering fear that all will be ruined and prices will skyrocket. But, I’m in a kind mood, so check this out:
A beautiful Lady Amherst tail, two Golden Pheasant Tails (sure to breath new life into my Pheasant Tail nymphs), about 3 dozen peacock sticks, with eyes (even though I only ordered a dozen), and a dozen purple dyed Turkey rounds, which I don’t really even know what I’m going to do with, but at $3, who can resist!
All told, with shipping, I’m down $32. Or, roughly the price of a Grade A dyed Amherst Tail at your local fly shop.
Quality is excellent, shipping took only two days, and I’ll definitely be a repeat customer!
Now I just need to find someone to split orders with me, because I’m really not sure what to do with a gross of Ostrich Herl…
Feb 24
If I could fish any Trout stream in the country, and only bring one nymph, it’d probably be Mike Mercer’s Micro Mayfly. This fly is imitative of a number of small mayfly nymphs, particularly Baetis (BWO) nymphs. Aside from that, it just flat out works. It’s a rare day that this fly isn’t at the end of my leader, and it probably accounts for 30% of my fish. It’s been responsible for some of the nicest trout I’ve ever caught, including this 22.5” redside on the Deschutes. When nymphing, I always fish it below a heavier pattern, such as a stonefly, and it’s also a wonderful pattern in a dry-dropper combo.
I generally fish a size #18 olive-brown, but also like to tie in a #16 and #20, and also in olive and black colors.
This fly isn’t the simplest to tie. While no one particular piece of it is complex, there is a lot of detail that goes into a very small package. If you can easily tie a #16 or smaller pheasant tail, then you’re ready for this fly. If not, practice up, and head to the fly shop in the meantime.
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Feb 17
The next few months are going to turn into a messy experiment on dubbing blends.
Update: Boneheaded move, photographing the evidence on the dining room table. Sorry honey!
Feb 9
Lady Amherst for $9
Pheasant Tails for $1.50
Ginormous packs of Strung Marabou for $6
Checkout Continental Feathers, chock full of tons of cheap feathers. It’s not specifically aimed for fly tyers, so naturally, it’s 1/3 the price.
I found this while googling for some Gold Dyed Peacock Herl, while trying to come up with a sick Golden Stone pattern. They had the golden herl, and I realized I’d just hit the feather jackpot.
I’m going to buy the herl, and a few other things this week, and will report back on the quality.
