Sporty Girl Foam can be purchased at just about every Claire’s in the country and with just about every mall in our nation having one of these stores this material should be fairly easy for you to find. It costs a few bucks a roll and comes in a few nice colors (Pink, Orange, Yellow and Black) along with a few useless ones but the black that is more of a charcoal matches the Grey Caddis fly and is useful for midge bodies and perhaps even Trico bodies. I like this material because it doesn’t hold water, aides in flotation and is easy to use. So here is a simple tutorial for tying a simple fly that could be the most important fly in your box come April if you live around here.

The Sporty Grey Caddis:

• Hook: #18 Dry Fly
• Thread: Black 70 Deiner
• Body: Black Sporty Girl Foam
• Rib: Tying Thread
• Wing/Head: Grey Deer Hair

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To take a trout with one of these. I picture it going down something like this… After a good long day of fishing the Driftless Area during spring/summer I will migrate towards home, along the way I will make a mental note of any and all areas I know to hold larger trout. I’ll pull up right as the sun is setting behind the bluffs, rig up and head to the spot. I’ll get there earlier than needed but that’s the kind of guy I am. I’ll scope the situation out, put myself in the right spot and wait until the light fades.  When the time is right I’ll plop one of these guys near the head of a pool, throw in a big upstream mend to counter the pull of the strong current. I’ll let it drift a bit maybe half way through the pool, then I’ll twitch one of these furry beasts to my feet hoping for the opportunity to take a Driftless Area trout on a mouse. This should pose a decent challenge, I’m sure I’ll let you know how it goes but first it’s got to warm up a bit around here.

If I had to describe myself as a fly tyer it would sound something like this: A stubborn slow tyer hell bent on perfection with a slight hint of O.C.D. who avoids straight shanked hooks whenever possible. It’s the truth and as a result it has prevented me from tying and fishing patterns that I should. With that said I’m not the type to give up, it is the struggle that makes you better at whatever you do. Being a stubborn S.O.B. I of course decided to use the Mustad 37160 to tie my Copper John’s. This presents a bit more difficulty because the drastic curve of the shank tends to mess with the lay of the wire as you wrap the body of the fly (remember “stubborn”). As a relatively new tyer I find inspiration and advice from Switter’sB and KBarton, both of whom present loads of excellent information for anyone willing to read and practice. Specifically, Barton put an inescapable truth in my head. Once you notice a mistake you must fix it then and there, it won’t be able to be corrected after the fact, period. It seems simple but it’s hard to admit it to yourself and at times, harder to put into practice. Read the rest of this entry »

On more than a few occasions I can recall peeping  feeding trout from a distance, presenting my rig in a productive manner, not to disturb the feeding and right as my flies should be chomped they are promptly snubbed. A re-cast with the same rig yields the same result, a look and a snub. The third pass prompts general disarray and with that the fish simply swim away from the flies even with my best attention to presentation and drift. Right in front of their trouty noses and they say no. I often wondered if part of the issue was simply the overabundance of glitz, flash and sparkle. Many of my flies have flashback wingcases or krystal flash for tails something that perhaps the trout just say no to at times. My solution? Prepare a decent quantity of natural, plain jane looking flies. I mean, shit often I’m putting my flies in less than four feet of gin clear H2O, tell me they can’t pick it out? Using only the wire rib as an attention grabber, these Thread Headed Scuds are weighted lightly to have less of an impact on the presentation which can always later be altered with a split-shot and they are damn nasty looking. No tails, not sure if that was a good call or not, didn’t want to use flash, could have used hackle, antron, ect but chose not to. I think the picked out dubbing makes the fly and I’m sure trout will let me know.

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Discipline By King Crimson. Check it Out, it might knock the hook out your vise.

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• Prep Your Hooks In Advance (NFL Sunday)
• Prep Your Materials for the Quantity Your Going to Tie
• Tie with Your Scissors in Your Hand
• Keep Materials and Tools in the Same Spot, Your Brain Needs This
• Avoid Coffee to Avoid the Restroom to Keep Yourself at the Vise
• Keep Your Tunes Pumping
• Take Note of Materials Used for a Quantity of Fly at a Specific Size to Better Estimate Needs When Purchasing for the Future.

I spent time recently working on these Sprinkle Me Baby’s in the hopes that I won’t have to sit at the vise next season the night before I hit a stretch of the clear stuff. Tying more involved flies at a higher rate of speed without the loss of quality can be a tricky thing. Most of you veteran tiers already know and utilize the things that I’ve mentioned above. I know it’s taken me a while to approach my tying from this perspective but it’s a good thing to work towards, the methodical approach to construction. I spent a large amount of the off season last season tying flies that were new to me, some worked, some did not and others I didn’t even try. This year I know most of what I need to tie and I have a rough idea of the quantities needed. With the winter months I’m hoping to become a more efficiant tier. I managed to turn a fly that took me close to 10minutes to prep and tie, down to 5 minutes flat on average simply because I took a bit of time before to really ready myself. I think this is the way to go when dealing with the more time consuming of the flies we tie. It improves your tying skills, wastes less materials not to mention your funds and time.

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