Open Tying Night

Last night was open tying night at The Fly Angler.  Several people showed up to tie with Mike, mostly members of the St. Paul Fly Tiers Club.  It was a good time!  Just before the tying began upstairs, one of my buddies working at the shop put together a nice set up that made me drool.  Seriously...  I only held it for like eight seconds and immediately handed it back.  It felt soo good and the cost of the set up....well let's just say I had to put it back or Jen may have started looking for a burial plot for me.  What was this set you ask?  It was a 8'6" Winston Boron IIIx 4wt, with the Abel Super 3N reel.  Simply AMAZING. 

Once I got upstairs and situated, I tied up a dozen of these Zebra midge variants.  It was the standard pattern but with a red butt that I saw in one of the shops fly bins.  Then I tied a few with a caddis green butt using a gun metal beadhead instead of the copper.  Made for what looked an like an upside down caddis.  Hopefully it will work for me. 

For those interested the next:

• The Rush River Clean Up on April 21st,
• MN Bass Expo 4/20 - 4/22 in Blaine,
• Open tying night at the Fly Angler is May 7th, 6-8pm,
• Club fishing outing on May 20th, 
• and as always, every Thursday night is the Fly Tier's club meetings.  I think there will be some trying their hand at tying tube flies on April 19th.

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"Natural" bases for your fly vise

Hey y'all,

I saw a friend's post on facebook tonight and had to share it with you. 

 

A company over in Michigan called The Granite Fly makes fly tying bases out of various shapes and sizes of granite.  I think this would be a pretty neat accessory for either tying at home or out in front of audiences. 

 

Check out the website and definitely check out the Galleries  http://thegranitefly.com

 

(I am not endorsing, soliciting, or getting anything by pimping this company, I just thought it was a novel concept) 

 

 

 

www.critters-corner.com

Test photos of fly patterns

So I wanted to improve my fly photography by improving the mini-studio I built for taking pictures of flies.  I did a little research online and then picked up two new lights from National Camera Exchange to replace the old convoluted system I was using. 

 

I am now just using those two lights and a reflector inside a light box.  Before, I was using the light box, a reflector, three lights, an on camera flash hooked up to secondary slave flash via a cable, and the full kitchen table with two leaves in it.  Now I'm down to using a third of the kitchen table without the leaves in it.

 

Here are some photos of tonight's practice session (click on each to enlarge).

 

 

sparkle soft hackle

tungston zebra nymph variant

zebra stable (7 different variants): fresh off the vise last weekend

wet fly on bamboo background

wet fly on oak background

streamer with maple background

streamer with dark stained wood background

double midge fly

double midge fly 2

 

 

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Reminders...

After spending several hours in the initial attempt to straighten out the Fly-tying/man-room last night, and waking up to fresh snow this morning I definitely have trout on my mind.  So I just thought I would send out a post with a couple of reminders.

Fly Tying related:

As winter sets in and we restock our fly boxes, keep in mind that the St. Paul Fly Tier's meet every week on Thursday nights at Schroeder's Bar & Grill in St. Paul.  It's great way to get out of the house, socialize, and keep you motivated in your fly tying.

The Fly Angler has a variety of Tying Classes you can sign up for during the winter months to develop those skills of yours.  They also have been hosting an "open tying" night once a month where you can bring your own vice and materials to tie whatever you want in the company of other like minded fisherman.  And if you forget something, they probably can sell ya whatcha need right there. 

Fishing related:

If you are getting twitchy, there's always a trip down to Iowa where the fishing season never closes.  Otherwise the MN Winter catch-and-release season opens to a select number of rivers on January 1st.

For the love of the trout:

I know the past couple of years have had a bumpy road financially for the nation, but don't take it out on the trout.  Personally, my donations this year have been significantly less then in years past however they have been more strategically picked.  So I limited myself to only three or four organizations/causes rather then a dozen that were a little lower on my social responsibility radar.   

1) December 8th, 2011 from 6-10pm is the Annual Holiday Dinner and Fund Raising Banquet for the Kiap-Tu-Wish chapter of Trout unlimited.  Buy tickets in advance and save a few dollars so that you can spend it on the silent auction!  This can be an excellent opportunity to pick up a Christmas gift for that special fly fisherman on your list.  Hope to see you there!

2) February 11th, 2012 is the Annual fund raising event for the Twin Cities chapter of Trout Unlimited.  This has been a a great "Date Night" in years past for my wife and I, loaded with tons of energy, excitement and friends while donating to a good organization.  And who knows, maybe you''ll find a unique Valentines gift for the loved one in your life.

Fall day on the Namekagon

Consider supporting a newer organization that has been in the works since this summer called the Namekagon River Partnership.  Their mission is to celebrate and conserve the cold water fishery of the upper Namekagon River.  This group is made up of citizens, business owners, and government conservation entities, and non-profit organizations.  I wrote a check out this morning to them in hopes it will help the Partnership pave their way in protecting this great Wisconsin resource.  If you've never fished it, you are missing out on one hell of a great north woods experience.

www.critters-corner.com

Fall fishing, closing one season and starting another!

Brookies, Browns, Muskies, and Steelhead, Oh My!

Wednesday:

I left early morning and headed southeast to Vernon county to close out the inland trout season.  There was much uncertainty the night before at the Fly Angler trying to decide where to go since so many rivers have been impacted with all the rain, but I rolled my dice to see what I would find.  I rolled into Viroqua, WI and headed straight to the Driftless Angler fly shop for some local intel.  The guy at the shop was way helpful with where to go, where to avoid, and what the hot flies were.  Turns out the rivers North of town were cloudy to blown-out and the rivers south of town were clearing up really well. 

A total of twenty minutes spent at the shop and I was out the door to my first destination where I rigged up my 4wt bamboo rod for the occasion.  That day, with no exageration, I caught close to fifty brookies and browns.  Mostly all the fish were caught on nymphs.  The 15-20 wind pretty much blew out the Blue Wing Olives that were around and killed any hopes for a little dry fly action.  There was one rocket of a trout that shot out for the ant pattern I threw.  He managed to take my line over a big branch sticking out of the water, so when I crossed the stream to "save the trout" I blew a perfectly nice pool only to find that the trout attached my hook to the branch and had left before I got there.  The tricky little bastard conned me.  So not only was he not there to save, but now I had to wait a while for the fish to return to the pool.

At the end of the day, I set up camp and then went to town for a great German beer at Chilito Lindo, the local Mexican restaurant, run by a frazzled Asian girl.  I know, odd three-way combination, but it all seemed to work out okay.  Especially since my order was messed up the least by the cooks.  They must have been new.  I returned to camp shortly after and fell asleep to the sound of the Amish horse and buggy traffic driving through town near the campground.

Thursday:

I woke up in the tent to mid 30's accompanied by pretty damp surroundings.  Nice!  I packed up the site then made breakfast of oatmeal and peanut butter sandwich in make-shift cheap plastic water bottle.  That didn't go too well, I don't recommend making oatmeal in cheap bottles.  It kinda shriveled up and didn't mix as well as I thought it would.  Lesson learned I guess.  Oh and the cheap spoons I commandeered the night before from the gas station doesn't work too hot either when they were heated up by the boiling water.

Anyway, I found and paid the nice lady for using the campground and for my new membership to the West Fork Sportsman's Club.  After shooting the breeze with her for a bit I headed fifteen minutes West to fish, where I caught a really beautiful fall brookie that made my trip that measured twelve inches in a very hard place to fish with crystal clear water on a pink squirrel.

I moved on to another river 45 minutes East towards home and had a blast catching a bunch of browns, picking one to two fish out of a pocket of water, then moving up river to the next pocket for one to two more.  I did this pattern of "run-n-gun" a good ways up the river till evening.  When I was at the bridge earlier deciding whether to fish up stream or down stream, I noticed two signs down stream.  The one closest to me stating that it was open to the public for fishing, and the one back further stating "Beware of Bull."  Some land owner had a sick sense of humor.  Since I wasn't armed with a meat grinder or hamburger bun for a Bull-encounter, I thought it best to fish the other side of the bridge upstream.  I jetted home at the end of the day completely happy.   I stopped in for dinner at the St. Paul Fly Tier's meeting at Schroeder's Bar & Grill and reported the great fishing I had enjoyed to some buddies.

Friday: 

After a less then satisfying day at work, I headed up to Peters cabin in Northern Wisconsin

met up within ten minutes of his arrival, we settled in, set up our fly tying vises and cocktails and tied Steelhead flies until late while catching up and swapping stories.

Saturday:

Peter made a great fisherman's breakfast with the added bonus of some good tea that I brewed up.  We were out the door an hour later to our meeting point with Wendy from the Hayward Fly Fishing Company for a day on the Flambeau River chasing muskies.

Peter spent a little time with his special technique of casting flies in the trees, but that didn't slow him down from catching three muskies.  Must be some secret there I don't yet understand.  I caught my first muskie ever.  It was about 32" on a 9wt rod with a big 6" black and orange puglisi fly.  I got to keep the fly in honor of the occasion too!  It was a fun fight and I could hardly believe that it was finally going to happen.  The next thing I knew we had it in the net in the boat and my camera was Peters hands.  Way cool!  The weather conditions were pretty unstable, there were spurts of rain and heavier wind gusts with the sun shining at the same time for most of the day.  Wendy is always fun to spend a day with, and did I mention that I caught my first muskie?!

We returned back to the cabin to pack up the muskie stuff that we used to catch my first muskie, then I converted some stuff over to for Sundays fishing trip to the Brule River for Steelhead.  Once that was done, we celebrated at the local supper club with some cocktails, local micro brews (appropriately named "Mouthy Muskie Light", and the "Crappie Flopper"), animated discussion of various subjects, including each of us writing down on napkins the species of fish we had caught this season.  It was a fun mojo thing.  Peter kinda kicked my ass in that department as my count was 13 different species this year and his count was 23 or 24 species.  For the record though, he did have a minnow marked down on his list.

We moved on back to the cabin and with a little inspiration from our celebrating, some "interesting" flies were tied and then we talked ourselves into retiring for the evening so that we would be ready for more fishing the next day.  And maybe spend some time dreaming of the Muskie that I caught.

Sunday:

With the fading smell of the muskie slime on my hands from my first muskie, we packed our stuff up and closed the cabin down as we were not returning.  We arrived in Brule, WI where we stopped first to look at a potential fishing cabin in town that was listed at an attractive enough price for me to actually think about it seriously.  It could pass for a nice fishing cabin, but it is in the middle of town, which could be both good and not so good.  After a quick inspection we headed to the river to try our luck fishing.

The morning started out slow, but it was beautiful.  We had seen a ton of turkeys everywhere we drove over the past two days and the fall colors were putting on a show for us.  It was perfect fall weather in Wisconsin.  We decided to drive to a different location which proved to be the right thing to do.  Peter landed a 22" chrome Steelhead mid morning on a caddis nymph and I had missed my first take of the season, which made me confident that I was doing something right and that they were in there.

The very few people we ran into said they hadn't had any luck, which wasn't encouraging, but

in the last hour of light of the day on the third stretch of the Brule further down river, I "got on the dance floor" as Peter put it.  I briefly caught and fought a Steelhead long enough for it to launch clear out of the river and spit my fly back at me. I am pretty sure he stuck up his middle fin at me too while laughing at me.  And that was pretty much the end of the action for the day.  We changed out of our waders at the local gas station and headed for home very happy with ourselves.

www.critters-corner.com

Blue Wing Olive UV-Parachute thread body

So to add to my arsenal of flies, I tied up some BWO UV-Parachutes tonight that have a thread body.  I don't normally tie flies with a thread body unless I am tying midges.  But, a few weeks ago, we had a guest speaker who is a commercial fly tier and fly shop owner (Joseph Meyer) do a 'Parachute' clinic for us at one of the club meetings.  The pattern he used had a thread body, so you could say I am a little inspired to add some thread body flies to my boxes.

Hook: TMC 100 (or other dry fly hook) size 16
Thread: Uni-Thread 0/6 Olive Dun
Body: Tapered thread body using the Uni-Thread 0/6 Olive Dun
Tail: three or four light dun cock barbs
Parachute: 4 strands of Wapsi Tan UV Krystal Flash and white polypropylene floating yarn, with three or four wraps of a medium dun dry fly feather.

www.critters-corner.com

A UV parachute midge

Last year on the Big Horn River, there was a hatch we hadn't come across before that the trout were keyed in on.  After looking at a few, I had to come up with something that night that would come close.  Below is what we came up with at trout camp.

Hook: TMC 100 size 18 - 20
Thread: black
Body/tail: black Ultra micro-chenille
Parachute: 4 strands of Wapsi Tan UV Krystal Flash and black black polypropylene floating yarn, with three or four wraps of a light dun dry fly feather.
FYI: The over all length of this fly from tail to eye is about a half an inch.

www.critters-corner.com

Ray Charles

In preparation for my trip to the Big Horn River that is coming soon, I tied up three different colors (orange, natural, and tan) of Ray Charles in two different sizes (#14 and #16) on a TMC 3761 hook today.

The first two pictures were taken with my 18-55mm Nikkor lens.  The second two pictures were taken with a lens that is on loan to me, which is an older fully manual Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens.  I love how detailed the ribbing is, especially since the x-small ribbing is so very thin to the naked eye.  Enjoy!

Hook: 3761
Tail: tan hen fibers
Body: Ostrich herl
Ribbing: red (x-small) wire for some, and for the others copper (small) wire
Shell back: mylar tinsel, Pearl
Thread: dark red

 

www.critters-corner.com

The last four days was kind of like Christmas for me.

The last four days of the Great Waters Expo was kind of like Christmas for me.
To keep things from getting long winded on this post, I will just note my highlights from the week, so as to not bore ya too much.  So hang on and here we go!

A year ago, at the expo I was not really enjoying it as much as I could have.  With the weight of having been informed that my department was being off-shored and I was to be out of a job soon, having my DVD player stolen at the expo, and wrapping up all the mess that was involved in replacing the engine in my truck, I was having a serious bad streak that was beating me down.

With that in mind, we flash forward a year for the 2010 expo, I am in a different place.  A happier and more appreciative place.
 
Thursday:

• Thursday night at the club, we had a great presentation by Jeff "Bear" Andrews from Michigan on fly fishing for Labrador Brookies.  The photos and the stories had me dreaming of going on such an adventure.  In support of Bear (and my want for a fresh lesson) I purchased one of his fly tying DVD's on tying trout flies.
• Thanks to Andy Fiskness's hard work, we also got our hats and clothing back that night with the new club logo embroidered on them so that we would have them for the expo.

Friday:

• Greg Meyer gave me a nice display piece of driftwood that I can use to display my flies on when I do tying demonstrations.  It's very cool!
• Mark Tibbetts brought his 105mm lens for me to use to see if I like the results in regards to my macro fly photography.  I can't wait to set up Critters Fly Studio and start snapping a few pictures to see what happens!
• The Fly Tiers gang had supper at a nice Italian restaurant, called Biaggi's, that was way too good and way too filling and way nice atmosphere.  I HIGHLY recommend it as a must try for anyone needing a night out.

Saturday:

• I scored three dry fly capes for the price of two.  I only intend on keeping one for myself, and donating the other two as raffle items for our club presentations.
• Then, from the chicken pimp, I scored four nice sections of cock feathers, each different colors, for use as hackle that will be suitable for 18 - 24 flies, along with two hen necks.
• My buddy Jeff Kennedy and artist, came up to me on Saturday morning as I was set up doing some fly tying demonstrations and asked for one of my flies, so I gave him one of my Spruce streamer flies and he headed back to his booth to paint it.  He painted up a very nice water color portrait of it then returned the fly to me along with the water color painting.  I was very shocked and VERY grateful for the gift.  I have purchased some prints of his work in the past along with his recent book, Drawing Flies 365, and to have an original painted by Jeff of a fly tied by me...well that's something I just can't describe in words.  Wow.
• I found a nicely made 4wt Pennington bamboo fly rod that felt very good and is going to work very nicely on about half a dozen streams I know.  Not to mention that both Steve Pennington and his wife were extremely nice and wonderful to talk to and talked a little about his home waters in Northeastern Iowa.  The feel was right, the price was right, and now, I am in need to find the right reel for it since I bought it home.
• Another bonus was that I had several opportunities to socialize a bit more with another tier, Bill Heckel, whose flies and personality I really admire.  A Really nice guy, with some illustrative and funny stories involving his friends Lefty Kreh and Dave Whitlock.  He also was nice enough to tutor me on a technique to improve a problem I was having with the wings of a fly I was struggling with, which worked instantly to improve the quality of the flies I that I was tying at the show. 

Sunday:

• We started the day with breakfast at the french restaurant across the street.  I normally get their awesome eggs Benedict, but this year I chose to deviate from the tradition and ordered their French Crepes made with salmon and dill.  It was very good, but something that would have made a better dinner then a breakfast as it gave me strong salmon breath.  I'd do it again as there was no need for lunch after that.
• I was able to take a breath from the show and go to two hour-long seminars.  One on fishing the Timber Coulee, a river I want to get to know more about since my last encounter where I had an epic battle of man vs. trout, and the trout won.  The other seminar was actually not a seminar but a open forum workshop for those looking for help with writing and publishing.  I found it very interesting and wished that we could have had an additional hour for the discussion to continue.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell.  I hope everyone that attended had a great time, it appeared that everyone from the club that was volunteering was having a good time.  I think this was the first year that I wished that the expo would have gone on for one more day.  Usually I am completly worn out, this time, I was energized by it all.   

So as promised, I won't get into all the other sub-stories to keep this post short. Time to kick off the socks and grab a beer.

Updates from the frozen tundra.

I see that it has been a little while since I've posted anything so I have a little update.  This past week I was feeling a little "off" for the first half.  Good or bad, I missed out on the open-tying night at the Fly Angler and couple other opportunities the weekend before, but I got a lot of sleep and filled myself up with lots of vitamins and fluids.  And after the past three days, I think my shoulder is back in where is should be, that is to say it has stopped clicking every time I raise it up now.

I had a blast at the Thursday night fly tiers meeting.  Anderson had a weird sense of humor that night, and it was making us all laugh our asses off.  I mostly just came to socialize and had tied a couple of flies at Feiker's vise when I decided he had abandoned his tying station longer then I could bear.  So he had a couple more flies in is box when he had eventually returned with a fresh beverage in hand.

Saturday was the highlight of the week for me.  Ben, his wife Amy, and Andy all came over for a Lie-n-Tie.  We had set an additional challenge for the event in that everyone could bring beer or wine, but they all in some way had to be related to fish, fishing, or rivers.  Most of our finds were pretty tasty.  Jen and I had cleared the kitchen table and turned on the Olympics for background noise and we tied flies from 1pm to around 7pm or so.   Amy brought some delicious goodies for the event, including home-made chips in the shape of fish.  How can you go wrong with that I ask?  Well, you can't!  Jen had also prepared chili in the slow cooker for everyone to snack on as we chatted and tied flies.

Baily checked in occasionally to see what we up to and more importantly to inspect what materials we were using.  I think, after last weeks 'encounter' were she found and distributed two full packs of peacock herl throughout the house, she now has a heightened awareness of the potential play things for her amusement.  I'm just glad she didn't get into the more expensive feathers.

At the end of the day, I set up my mini-studio to photograph some of our flies that we would use for the next four months for the "Fly of the Month" patterns, and called it a night after that.  I am positive everyone had a good time and that this is something we will have to keep in mind to do again.

Photos from last weekend at the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo - Chicago

Hey everyone, I have spent most of my day doing some quick clean up, editing the photos I took last weekend at the expo.  Because there are so many of them, I posted them to one of my online web albums, which is at Picasa.  I hope you like them.  Happy viewing!

A fly filled week.

It's been a busy week for me in Critter-world of it being the middle of winter.

Back on Tuesday night Jen and I participated in the open-tying night at the Fly Angler.  I think around ten or twelve people brought their vises and materials for their fly du jour.  Like many fly tier gatherings, the group was an eclectic bunch with varying backgrounds and specialties.  All were outgoing and very sociable and  shared stories, laughs, and even some impromptu teaching of tying tricks.  We had a great time and met a couple of people we hadn't seen before and was a great way to get out of the house.  For those who attended, there was also the added bonus of a 10% discount on fly tying materials for the night.  I'd like to give a special thanks to Mike Rolek for hosting the event, I look forward to the next open-tying night next month!

Then on Thursday the club had our annual business meeting where we elected new officers for the year, appointed volunteers for various committee chairs, and set a tentative schedule for the fly fishing outings.  The results have been updated to the Officers page of the club website for those who are curious.  My three year term as a board member has ended with the passing of the meeting, but I was elected to serve as club Treasurer for 2010 and will still be actively participating with the clubs business meetings.  Congrats to all the new Officers, and thanks to the past Officers for your contributions to the club in 2009.

On Friday night, after a long and mentally draining week at work, I had decided to do something about my frustration with not being able to remember off the top of my head, the web address to this blog.  Not a big deal for those of you who subscribe and get emails sent to you automatically.  But when trying to give it to someone who is interested, I needed an address that was easy for me to remember so that I can pass it around.  Well, I fixed that.  I bought a domain name for the year which cost me eight-whole-dollars at NameSecure.com, coincidentally the same company I use for the St. Paul Fly Tiers website that I manage.  Which I think was worth the money to squash out my frustration and embarrassment when people asked about my blog and I got the deer in the headlights look when trying to recall the URL.  People can still find me with the current/old address, but now I can be found at: critters-corner.com  and be redirected here.  Much MUCH easier than the http://critter-critterscorner.blogspot.com/ for me to remember and for others to write down.

On Saturday, I was able to finally attend the Screaming Chicken's annual Lie-N-Tie after several years of missing out for various reasons.  I had set this in my schedule back in early December, and am very glad I did.  We had a good sized group attend, many of them were members of the Wis Fly board, so I knew most of them, if not by face, then by their on-line aliases.  So it was good to connect the names with the faces.  The Screaming Chicken was a very nice gentleman who had a great "Man-Cave" for the event which was very cozy and visually stimulating.  We had five tables of fly tiers in the middle of a large wood heated building, surrounded by tons and tons of hand made bows, arrows, Native American style painted jaws and skulls, and leather & bead garments.  It was the Possum lodge meets fly fishing meets the Anchor meets Native American archery.  Stuffed animals such as raccoons, deer, and a full size standing black bear looking over us.  Then there was the tom cat who checked each of us out and returned to playing with one of the fly tiers squirrel tail it was so enamored with.  While tying we had the chickens and very vocal turkeys outside letting us know they were there too.  I have to say, I loved it all.  And of course the most memorable thing to me was the old Herters vise that one of the grand kids of Mr. Screaming chicken was tying on.  I think it was an early model as it looked to weigh a good ten pounds and of old-school metal work.  I got a little crap from the gang for tying so many flies this time and not chatting as much as I normally do.  I didn't think I was too quiet, I was just "multi-tasking" more than usual as I really need to get my fly boxes refilled for this spring.

Two soft-hackle wet fly patterns

Yesterday, while milling about in my fly tying room, I came across a scrap of paper with my chicken scratches and a crappy fly drawing on it.  The chicken scratches turned out to be a materials list for a fly pattern that someone at some point must have given me.  After doing a little research, the fly is a "classic soft-hackle" from way back before my time.  It is similar to a fly known as a "Blue & Black wet fly" even though there is nothing blue in it.  One deviation from the classical pattern is that I used a wire rib instead of tinsel, and I'm okay with that. I think it the would not have been as sleek looking and not every fly needs "flare."  If I were to tie some with tinsel, I would go all out and use either the silver holographic or red holographic that I have laying around.  The other deviation is that the one I tied here, didn't have the Golden Pheasant Tippet tail.

Hook: TMC 200, #12 - #16

Thread: Red Uni-thread 8/0

Rib: copper wire (small)

Body: Black dubbing

Hackle: Black Coq De Leon (I’m sure any black hen feather would suffice)

Note: I took the extra time to spruce up the fly by applying a coat of Sally Hanson’s “Wet & Wild” red nail polish on the thread head. Once it dried, I applied two coats of clear Sally Hanson’s nail polish.

The next fly I tied was based on the previous one and similar to the "Blue & Black wet fly," but I modified it so as to incorporate some of the new Golden Pheasant Tippet that I got for Christmas from Mrs. Critter. The Golden Pheasant Tippet was listed in the Black & Blue pattern.  I also substituted the black hackle for a Brown Speckled hackle.  I am sure if I researched a bit, that both flies have have a name.

Hook: TMC 200, #12 - #16

Thread: Red Uni-thread 8/0

Tail: Golden Pheasant Tippet

Rib: copper wire (small)

Body: Black dubbing

Hackle: Brown Speckled Coq De Leon (or other brown speckled hen feather)

Note: I spruced the head of the fly with the same steps as the previous fly.

I have not fished either of these patterns, but I tied up a dozen of them in two different sizes and I look forward to trying them out this spring.

Skinny Nelson

The Skinny Nelson

Hook: TMC 200R #20
Body: Black 8/0 thread
Rib: silver wire (small)
Thorax: two strands of peacock herl
Shell back: Pheasant tail
Tail: Pheasant tail

Griffiths Gnats

Tonight I noticed that I only had bigger Griffiths gnats that survived last trout season, so I tied up a dozen size 22's to fill that void.

Hook: TMC 100 size 22
Thread: 8/0 Black Uni-thread
Body: Ice Dub Peacock black
Hackle: Grizzley
Post: Black 'Float-Vis' (a high float material to help see the little bugger at dusk)

"Craft" project

So for lack of a better title, I have been working on a "craft" project the past couple of nights.  With inspiration from a previous post showing a picture I had taken of a fly I tied, it hit me that I could do better.  And since I had all the camera equipment to make that possible, I set out to see what others do.

I surfed and surfed and saw some themes of how people set up to take good pictures of flies and I built my own "portable studio."  The total cost of this project for me was $0.00.  I just happen to have all the crap crafty stuff I needed around the house to make this thing.

I grabbed a mid sized cardboard box and mutilated it with a razor.  The idea was that the object inside the box would be lit up by lights outside the box, hence the holes on the opposite sides and the top.

Then, I added the "deluxe" option to this project which was adding a piece of Velcro to the back of the box and to the back of various colored file folders.

To the bottom of the box I taped in some white ink jet glossy photo paper to reflect light back up to the bottom side of the fly.

I re-enforced the box with packaging tape and then covered the openings with two layers of that gifty tissue paper stuff.  Here now, is the set up.  The camera is a good distance away because the lense I am using is the Nikkor 70-300 with the Macro option.  So, unlike a normal macro lense, I needed a little distance before the vise and fly where in focus.

The other thing you will notice is the vice is in front of the box instead of inside it.  After a couple of hours of messing around with different positions of the flash and trying to get it to work with the slave flash, I had to change tactics.  I wasn't getting good lighting, or when I did a huge shadow would be cast upon the background making for a serious distraction.

Once I brought it out in front of the box, the shadow issue disappeared and I could adequately light the fly enough for a descent picture that could go along with a pattern description.  It's obvious that I'm no Jim Schollmeyer, but I have to start somewhere.

So here are some of the pictures that I did while playing around with this project.