Our first meeting will be on Saturday October 19th, at the Fall City Firehouse at 9am. Those wanting breakfast will meet at the Raging River Cafe at 8am.
I hope you all are well and have been enjoying your beautiful summer weather! Well its that time of year again to get back together and continue our journey into Classic Salmon Fly tying. Due to the fact that some of our members will be heading up to Calgary for the ASFI 24′ with many of them heading up to fish, I postponed the September meeting. I wish them the very best and hope the will represent our group and continue this great event.
Dues are due for the new year and can be sent to Megan Brocco at brocco.megan@gmail.com they are $40.00 for the year. Thank you.
For our first meeting we will be having a Tri-Fecta of flies to select, the Fiery Brown (Rogan), the Thunder & Lightning (Wright) and the Lady Caroline.
I selected these flies as being fairly simplistic in their construction, but by no way easy. As with all things, understanding the construction, materials and methods to use to achieve your desired results is our goal. That being said, I have been asked to go back to the beginning, and show how I fully gut a Salmon hook, and then do an underbody. I usually show up with that done already, but we will do the start up process together. Hooks can be procured from our resident Hook Maker Byron, and I would think around a 1/0 will do just fine, even a little smaller is ok too.
I will write some of the points to consider on the whiteboard, as some like the idea as we move into the construction of each pattern. If it helps I will continue, if not we can stop it, your feedback is important here. While these patterns have the classic components like tip, tag and tail they don’t have all the busy accouterments other patterns may have. I would like to start to slowly build up to more difficult flies as we progress. I would like to work on Upright Mallard Wings this month, while its easy to talk about, it’s a little more difficult to pull off correctly. I will show you a few tricks to use which can give you some options during construction, and how the “Style” can change the look of the fly. We also will employ Tippets in strands, but I will show you some methods ( you may already use) to help you if the strand thing isn’t your cup of tea! Herl heads or Wool head will be used too. The Thunder & Lighting wing is one where you can use different methods and Materials depending on the size of fly being tied. A foundation is very helpful in tying these flies, it gives support for the soft flimsy Bronze Mallard strips to lay against, here I employ strips of Mottled Brown Turkey strips. An underwing of sorts, it gives a solid foundation for the main wing of Mallard, 2 strips on each side. That gives us a nice deep color to the wing. The Tippet strips do the same for the Fiery Brown, again we will be tying “Upright” Mallard Wings as our monthly technique. And finally I threw in the Lady Caroline, a very popular and widely use fly even today. Although the fly uses Bronze Mallard wings, they are tied in low and tented over the body, “Spey” fly style. Multiple tinsels are used on the Caroline along with a flowing Heron (or substitute) feather up the body and a throat of G.P. Flank or breast feather.
That should consume our day together, give you a few tricks and ideas you can use on other patterns down the road. As always the feedback from the group is instrumental in helping me try to provide quality meeting content, which will move you forward in your tying. So please think about where you are as a Salmon tier, give me either patterns you want to attempt, questions about fly interpretation and materials, anything YOU need help with. It’s easier for me to bring you content when I get ideas from you guys! I can throw stuff together and just put our heads down and bang em’ out, but what’s the sense in that? Been there, done that… but have you gotten better? The level of your tying ability is a direct result of understanding and practice. So, give that some thought and provide me ideas and flies we can do together to get you where you feel motivated, engaged and wanting to tie a better fly.
If anyone needs a shirt of something embroidered let me know, we can put an order in.
As usual we will have the coffee on, lunch provided and cold beverages waiting for you. Look forward to seeing you all, and hope we can have a full house for our first meeting!
