The WD-40

At our May meeting Dave Kilhefner passed along some of his fly fishing tips to us. I always pay attention to information coming from Dave and I know I have become a better fisherman because of it. As a fly tyer I was particularly interested in his information on the topic of “Guide Flies”, those flies that guides like to tie up in quantities for their clients because they are effective, fast and easy to tie, and usually have three or fewer different materials in them. Those are criteria that make it possible to tie up some effective flies while you are just taking a break or having lunch and waiting to go back out on the water. Which is exactly what I saw Dave do at Rocky Ridge Ranch this year. After lunch it was fun watching him catch fish, after fish, after fish… The fly he used that day is not this month’s fly. We’ll save that one for later, but this month’s fly, The WD-40, is on Dave’s list of “Guide Flies”.

 

A long-time Colorado guide and fly tyer, Mark Engler, is credited with creating the WD-40 back in 1982. Mark is apparently one of those quiet, unassuming sorts whose entire life revolves around fly fishing. His friends say the fact that he has three ex-wives could be a testament to his dedication to fishing. Stories of the origin of the WD-40 name come in many versions. Many say that WD stands for “wood duck”, a versatile feather that many tyers use for this pattern. But if you search the internet you can find a video of Engler himself tying his own WD-40, and guess what… he doesn’t use wood duck. He uses mallard. So you can subscribe to other versions of the origin of the name given to Engler’s fly. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable passing on the most likely story in this article, but if you ask me in private I would be glad to share it with you.

The WD-40 was originally designed by Engler as a midge emerger pattern for Colorado’s Frying Pan River and it was an instant success. Anglers soon found that it was also a terrific BWO emerger pattern. Because midges are out all year it is a good fly to often tie on as a dropper behind a dry fly or a nymph. The WD-40 is most often tied on a curved scud-type hook, in small sizes, like 18’s and smaller (like down to 24’s !) But if you are going to be tying small flies, it is good to have them be something that are easy to tie. Favorite colors seem to be olive and black, but they are also tied in brown, gray, and tan. As with the evolution of many fly patterns, there seems to be an endless number of variations of the WD-40. One of the more effective ones even has its own name variation… the WD-50. It is like the WD-40 except it takes the emerging process one step further, as it is tied with short emerging wing buds.

Our next Fly Tying Night will be Wednesday, June 28th. We will be meeting at The Royal Treatment Fly Shop in West Linn to tie up some WD-40 flies. Although small, this pattern would be suitable for tyers of all levels of experience. Our Royal Treatment friends will have tools to loan to you for the evening. We’ll be starting at 6pm. Hope to see you there!

The Parachute Adams

One of our older and more productive dry fly patterns is The Adams. I may be biased, but I feel that it has a great name. And more than once I have told fishing friends that it was invented by a relative of mine. You know your storytelling material is getting low when you run out of “fishing lies” and have to start telling “fly tying lies”. But, in reality, a fellow by the name of Len Halladay is credited with the creation of The Adams back in 1922. So perhaps you are wondering why it is not called “The Halladay”? Well, one story goes that Halladay came up with the idea of the fly as a general purpose mayfly imitation. He tied the fly and then gave it to his friend Charles Adams who first fished it on the Boardman River in Michigan and spoke highly of the success he had with it. So instead of naming his creation after himself, Halladay chose to name it after his friend Adams. Another story says that Adams came up with the idea for the fly and had Halladay tie it to his specifications. Either way, as they say, the rest is history. Since 1922 The Adams has been one of the most effective and popular dry flies in the world.

The classic Adams fly is tied with a gray body, upright wings, and usually with both grizzly and brown hackles. It is said to be an impressionistic pattern that can represent many grayish and brownish mayflies as well as other insects. It is often a good searching fly to use. According to Scott Richmond in his book Fishing In Oregon’s Best Fly Waters, the Adams is seldom the exact “right” fly, but it is rarely the “wrong” fly to use.

The original Adams fly has been modified into a number of variations over the years, including the Adams Irresistible, the Adams Wulff, the Adams Loop Wing, the Adams Hairwing Dun, and the Adams Humpy. But the most popular variation is The Parachute Adams , the pattern that we will be tying at this month’s Fly Tying Night. The skills we practice in tying the Parachute Adams can translate to other parachute patterns. In his book Tying Dry Flies, Randall Kauffmann describes fifteen other parachute dry fly patterns, that includes the Parachute Ant, the Parachute Black Gnat, the Parachute Baetis, the Parachute PMD, the Parachute Green Drake, and others. So once you master the skill of tying the parachute wing of the Parachute Adams you will be ready to experiment with other parachute patterns.

Thanks to our club librarian, Carson Taylor, for forwarding some interesting information regarding parachute patterns and why they are so effective. Apparently, in author Gary Borger’s opinion, the Parachute Adams should be best considered as the ultimate emerger pattern, and not an adult dun or spinner pattern. The profile of the Parachute Adams, and other parachute patterns, sitting low in the water are viewed by the fish as  insects struggling to emerge through the surface film. For more details regarding emerging insects see Carson for Gary Borger’s book Fishing The Film (2010).

The first parachute stye fly may have been tied by a Scottish lady named Helen Todd back in the early 1930’s. She is said to have used a boar’s bristle as a “mast” around which she wound the hackle. Her idea was taken further by others and special hooks with a built-in “mast” at a right angle to the hook shank were produced.

A patent was taken out in 1933 and the first parachute style flies were sold as “gyroflies”. Improvements were made over the years and today the unique horizontal hackle of the parachute is wound around an upright wing or “post”. The horizontal hackle allows the fly to land upright in the water and float in the surface film. The horizontal hackle fibers on the water apparently make a good imitation of the legs of an insect and also provide more buoyancy than hackle that is wound vertically. White calf tail was once the most common post material but today synthetic materials like poly yarn are often used. The post material really increases the visibility of the fly. As any angler knows, it is really easy to lose track of the location of a small fly on the water, especially in low light conditions. And that is especially true with an Adams fly that is mostly gray/brown in color. So the post of a parachute fly becomes a big asset in tracking the fly in the water. Despite the visibility to us, post materials don’t seem to deter fish from taking the flies. In fact some anglers prefer Parachute Adams flies tied with  a post using hi-visability colors like pink, orange, or chartreuse.

Our next Fly Tying Night will be Wednesday, May 24th. We will be meeting at The Royal Treatment Fly Shop in West Linn to tie up some Parachute Adams flies. This pattern would be suitable for tyers with at least a moderate amount of experience. It would not be a good fly for your first ever fly tying experience. Our Royal Treatment friends will have tools to loan out for the evening. We’ll be starting at 6pm. Hope to see you there!

The Soft Hackle Fly

To say that this month we are going to be tying The Soft Hackle Fly would be a bit misleading because the term “soft hackle” refers not to a single fly pattern but to a whole family of flies. Soft hackles have many forms and variations but they tend to have a few common characteristics, employing a minimum of materials. In fact, a recipe for tying a soft hackle fly in its most basic form would look something like this…

thread: 6/0, 8/0 ; color of your choice
hook: style of your choice, #12-18
body: thread or floss
hackle: partridge

That’s it! Of course, if you search the internet you can find lots of innovative variations of the basic soft hackle with added bells and whistles because, as fly tyers, that’s what we do.

The history of soft hackle flies goes back at least 500 years to the earliest recorded history of fly fishing. If you want to really get into the details of these flies you can refer to many of the books that are specifically dedicated to soft hackles. Sylvester Nemes is often credited with reintroducing soft hackle flies to the modern world of fly fishing after these flies had lost their popularity over the years. One of his books, not surprisingly named The Soft-Hackled Fly (1975), is considered a classic. Dave Hughes has written two versions of a book titled Wet Flies: Tying and Fishing Soft-Hackles, Flymphs, Winged Wets, and All-Fur Wet Flies (2015).

Soft hackle flies get their name from the soft hackle feathers that are used in place of the stiff rooster hackles that are seen in traditional dry flies. Partridge is a favorite, but tyers also commonly use grouse, hen saddle, starling, and others. As the soft hackle fly hits the water and begins its descent the hackle fibers fold over the body of the fly and tend to trap air bubbles, simulating an adult insect’s wings,legs, and antennae emerging from the transparent shuck. Many soft hackle patterns employ a dubbing ball right behind the hackle that helps to keep the hackle barbules from completely flattening against the body, thus aiding in trapping the air bubbles. Most patterns are tied without weight but some tyers like to lightly weight their soft hackles to help the flies break through the surface film. Traditional soft hackle flies are generally tied without tails, while adding a tail changes the name to “flymph” or “soft hackle nymph”.

There is hardly a wrong way to fish a soft hackle. Perhaps the technique most often used is the classic wet-fly swing where you cast down and across, letting the water move the fly, usually just under the surface, across the current until it is hanging down below you. I recently saw a video of Simon Gawesworth where he mentioned that, because of its simplicity, swinging soft hackles was his favorite way to introduce a beginner to fly fishing. More advanced presentations would involve controlling the speed of the fly by using upstream or downstream mends, according to the action of the current, in an effort to keep your fly in obvious feeding lanes. And imparting a light twitch or a lifting motion to the fly has been known to be irresistible to fish during a hatch where emerging insects are struggling to get to the surface. Fishing the soft hackle fly as a dropper below a dry fly can be very productive, especially during caddis hatches. Although soft hackles are considered wet flies, many anglers report that applying floatant and then fishing the fly in the surface film is definitely worth a try. Apparently it gives a pretty good representation of an emerger or a cripple that didn’t make it off the surface of the water. Good results can also be achieved with soft hackles in still waters.  Cast out and strip your line back, varying your retrieves until you find what works best on a given day.

I will have to admit that I have generally been a creature of habit in my trout fishing, concentrating either on dries or nymphs and emergers fished under indicators, while ignoring the wet fly option. In researching the soft hackle fly I have come across testimonials from fly fishermen/fly tyers who state “ this is my favorite fly”, or “If I could only fish with one fly for the rest of my life…”.  I suggest you click on the following link for an article called “Lessons From A Simple Fly” in the online Fly Fisherman (July, 2016) magazine to read the words of Yvon Chouinard, the outdoorsman extraordinaire and founder of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company.

http://www.flyfisherman.com/fly-tying/yvon-chouinard-lessons-from-a-simple-fly/

Chouinard tried to simplify his fly fishing by fishing for a year with only one fly pattern, a pheasant tail soft hackle. In using a range of sizes of just that one pattern he was able to land an amazing variety of fish, including salmon, trout, atlantic salmon, steelhead (up to 37 inches), as well as bonefish and many other saltwater species.  Despite all of the fishermen that swear by soft hackle flies, and fish them religiously, there seems to be many more anglers that rarely, if ever, use them. So, even though we have countless modern materials and fly patterns that we have at our disposal today, you would think that we could find a place in our fly tying arsenal for a simple pattern that has withstood the test of time for half a millennium. Perhaps you can join me in setting a goal for this season to stop ignoring those soft hackles in your fly box, and to start experimenting with different presentations in order to discover why these flies have been so successful for hundreds of years.

Join us at the Royal Treatment Fly Shop in West Linn on Wednesday, April 26 to tie up some soft hackle flies. These are flies that are suitable for tyers of all levels of experience. Our friends at the Royal Treatment have some equipment to loan you for the evening, so come even if you don’t have your own vise and tools yet. We’ll be getting started at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

   

Fly Tying 101:  Tools, Tips, and Techniques–Part 2

Last month we held a class for beginning fly tyers titled “Fly Tying 101: Tools, Tips and Techniques. We had a large turnout and those in attendance had a good introduction to fly tying and hopefully left with a Wooly Bugger(s) that will see some action in the coming months.

This month we would like to continue helping novices get off to a good start as we further explore the basic tools and techniques for tying flies. We will focus more closely on the use of a whip finisher, as most of those in attendance last month had not quite mastered that skill yet. (Yes, it does take some time, so don’t get discouraged!) We’ll also give some new instruction on learning to apply dubbing correctly, a skill necessary in forming the body of many artificial flies.

The fly we will be focusing on will be The Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear, or just Hare’s Ear as it is commonly called, arguably the most popular trout nymph pattern in the world. The Hare’s Ear is said to be an impressionistic nymph as it can imitate many forms of insect life in the trout’s diet. It can be tied weighted or unweighted, in an unlimited variety of colors, and in a wide range of sizes, typically from 8 to 18. Historically, Hare’s Ears were tied with fur from the face, or mask, of hares (and not the hair from just the ears). You can buy packaged hare’s ear dubbing which often blends natural furs with modern day synthetics. But many tyers still prefer to purchase a whole hare’s mask and use the guard hairs and underfur, mixed together by hand or by using an electric blender.

Some anglers like their Hare’s Ears to be tied slim and streamlined.  Others anglers prefer the flies to be bushy, and the more scraggly looking the better.  Compare the two flies below, both Hare’s Ears, but each having a distinctive profile:

Whatever your preference, you can never have too many Hare’s Ears in your fly box. In fact, with all of the color and size variations possible, and bead head/no bead head choices and weighted/unweighted options, and with different wing case materials being used, it is possible to fill up whole fly boxes with just Hare’s Ear variations and nothing else!

Our next Fly Tying Night is Wednesday, March 29. We’ll be meeting at the Royal Treatment Fly Shop in West Linn at 6:00 pm. Bring your own fly tying tools if you have them. If you don’t have any equipment come anyway. Our friends at The Royal Treatment will loan you everything you need. Hope that you can join us!

The Josh Linn Special

At our October, 2016 meeting Josh Linn gave us an informative presentation about steelhead fishing in the Columbia River basin.  Josh is an experienced northwest steelhead fisherman, having guided on the John Day, Sandy, Clackamas, Klickitat, and Grande Ronde rivers.  My ears perked up when he started describing a fly he had created that had become his go-to fly for winter steelhead.  I later talked to him at The Royal Treatment Fly Shop and got some details about his creation and decided that it would be a good choice for our monthly  fly tying night.  I asked Josh what he called his fly and he said I could call it whatever I wanted because it didn’t have a name.  So we’re calling it the Josh Linn Special.

I think that fishermen would be foolish to disregard tips, tricks, and advice from those that are more knowledgeable than we are.  And like all of the people at The Royal Treatment Josh is very knowledgeable about all aspects of fly-fishing.  And it’s safe to say that he catches more fish than most of us.  (Of course he probably fishes more than most of us!)  So when he says this fly produces fish I think we should at least give it a serious look.

.

I got the recipe from Josh and found that it is a tube fly much like Brian Silvey’s Silveynator that we tied last year, but with a few other innovations.  Josh ties them in numerous color combinations and usually with some weight.  He likes them large when the water is cloudy and ties them smaller when the water is low and clear.  One suggestion would be to tie them all on the large side and keep a pair of scissors available to trim the flies shorter as needed.  And there is no reason to not use them for summer steelhead as well, such as on the Deschutes when the sun is on the water and you are using a sink tip when the fish are no longer looking up.

I tied up a few Josh Linn Specials and felt the need to test drive them on the Clackamas just after Christmas and was rewarded with my first winter steelhead of the season on the second day out on the water.  Not a large fish but it was a nice frisky wild steelhead.  The fly I used was  actually one of the flies shown on this page.  I’ll leave it to you to guess which one it was but they should all be productive.

The winter steelhead season is just getting underway so think about joining us at our next evening of fly tying when we will be tying up some Josh Linn Specials.   The winter weather has played havoc with all of the club’s scheduled activities and Fly Tying Night has been moved to Wednesday, February 1st .  We’ll be meeting at The Royal Treatment Fly Shop in West Linn at 6:00 pm.  Hope to see you there!