Today of all days I decided to return to that fine art that is fly tying – Why? – I have absolutely no idea. I say ‘fine art’ in that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the likes of Paul Little, Tony Riley and Paul Procter tie flies so using the word relates more to their exceptional skills than that of my own.
I would never call myself a skilful fly tier by any means, just a very slow one with a boredom threshold of circa 3 flies if they happened to be the same (Remember death by buzzers?)… true to my word I’ve just tied 2 and already lost the plot. Thankfully this is not due to boredom though – that was 10 years ago, Sarah’s just walked in and gone nuts… “look at this beep… beep… beeeeeep… office”
Carnage – it’s like a bird explosion in a paint factory
I don’t have a tying room, it’s in here my masterpieces will soon be forgotten, amongst computers and every fly casting DVD that’s ever been produced, oh yes! and books, lots of books.
It’s like living out of a hotel, premade clutter box suitcases for all of your – well!… clutter
And here it is – my first fly for over 10 years – nothing more or less than a simple nymph
The tying is as follows:
- A de-barbed hook of sorts
- Thread – some red like colour from the box
- Ribbing was gold wire – I know that one
- Tail – Pheasant tail – and that one
- Dubbing – some reddish/brownie mix that looked prettier than the other dull stuff in the box
Method:
- You don’t really want to make this surely?
Imitation:
- Dogs dinner
Tomorrow afternoon it gets a dipping on the Lower Itchen – if it works you’ll all want one, if it doesn’t I’ll lie anyway and say it caught hundreds… hopefully there’ll be witnesses.
Right then, now on to that fully dressed Salmon Fly 