The Hendricksons ...

No hatch in our eastern waters creates more longing for me than Ephemerella subvaria, better known as the Hendrickson. Like springtime, the Hendrickson hatch seems like a renewal of life and the launch the fishing year. While I've fished quite a bit in every month so far this year, it's such an annual celebration when these big pink mayflies begin to emerge. This weeks post is my Hendrickson Flymph which did quire well this past weekend. The pattern is wood duck flank fibers for the tail, mixed red fox belly and pink rabbit dubbing touch dubbed on Pearsall's #35 Salmonberry silk and sparsely hackled with Gambel's Quail. Coot or Chukar Partridge work equally well. Tie a few, and tie one on ....

The Art of Tying One ...

The process of designing an imitative fly pattern to represent an insect found in nature is an evolution. It starts out with a thought about simple things like color, size, shape, footprint on the water (if it's a dry pattern), and other visual characteristics. Good fly designs often take time, patience, stream research and revision to tune up a pattern that consistently gets things done. The past 4 or 5 years has been spent tying, testing and tuning a series of patterns to imitate our early stoneflies which has been a fun process. I'm getting this really close and maybe I'll roll that out one day. Who knows? The biggest influence on my tying journey has been Vince Marinaro's "In The Ring of the Rise" (Crown 1976). Chapter 5 of his book is called "A Game of Nods" in which Vince describes this process of designing a truly effective fly. A trout that rises to a fly but rejects it on closer inspection says that something is mostly right, but you still have work to do. It's one of the most interesting books in my collection, and the book that set me on a path years ago. The "research" continues. Till next time ....

Tuesday Tease ..... Part II

  Last week I announced the plan for launching “Signature Materials” in the future. A little more detail this week. I met Jack Mickievicz years ago when I was a teenager and stumbling along as a young tyer. For those of you who knew Jack or knew of him, he needs no explanation. For those of you who didn’t, he was the first commercial scale supplier of blended dubbing and many of the blends sold in shops were cooked by Jack. He also got Andy Renzetti started in the business of manufacturing fly tying tools and supplied tyers with great materials over the course of nearly 50 years. The last time I visited Jack, he told me that I should buy his business “Jacks Tackle” and we enjoyed a good laugh about that. I regret not taking him seriously about that while he was still with us, but recently I did just that, buying his equipment, dyes and unprocessed materials. I’ll never fill that set of shoes, but I will do my best to carry on that legacy under my own name. While I still work a full-time job, I will slowly build this over a few years as time my permits and Ramsayflies.com will get an appropriate facelift to reflect that left turn in life.  I’ll be at the Maryland Fly Fishing Show later this month with a few things you might find useful in your tying. Till then ….