Flicking feathers

On May 22nd I'll be having the 2nd online tying session for channel supporters To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers This month it's fresh and saltwater baitfish patterns Material list EP fibres 2 colours . (1 white & 1 grey, tan, olive or blue) White bucktail SF blend or kinky fibre 2 colours  (1 white & 1 grey, tan, olive or blue) Strung saddle, white and the same colour as the back colour SF blend Gamakatsu SL12 size 1/0  (other hooks/sizes will be OK too-go with what suits your location)  3D eyes around 6mm White  thread UV resin (optional) Times are 23.00 in Europe, 22.00 in the UK, 17.00 in New York & 16.00 in Texas.  

 Another Sexy Loops article. Recently I've been tying a small box of North Country and Clyde style wets for myself. So I have been re-reading Edmonds and  Lee's Brook and River Trouting which I've been enjoying thoroughly.  The book is thankfully now easily available thanks to a few companies doing reprints. I love spiders, both tying and fishing them. There's something incredibly elegant about these simple slender flies, and it doesn't hurt that they're deadly when fished properly. The upstream method  with only a rod length or 2 of line outside the rod is my favourite although I rarely see others fishing that way, perhaps because it's more effort than the usual down and across swing that seems to have become popular.  It's a shame that many people associate the down and across method with these flies now, because it's frankly inferior to both the upstream and across and down methods which allow the flies to drift naturally with the current, rather

 To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to  https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers  and become a patron or support through  paypal.me/flickingfeathers

 To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to  https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers  and become a patron or support through  paypal.me/flickingfeathers

 To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to  https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers  and become a patron or support through  paypal.me/flickingfeathers

 To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to  https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers  and become a patron or support through  paypal.me/flickingfeathers

 A quick video, giving you guys a look round the Flicking Feathers nerve center. Hopefully it's enjoyable and gives you some insight into sorting and storing your materials. To support my channel,get access to the monthly online tying sessions and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers

 To support the channel and get access to the online tying sessions, as well as being entered into the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up

  To support the channel and get access to the online tying sessions, as well as being entered into the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up

  This Month's recommendation is Patsy Deery's excellent book Irish Mayflies: A Flyfisher's Guide.  It's packed with patterns, lovely pictures and comments on materials, dyeing  and fishing.  it's on amazon here https://amzn.to/3e7Ap5I Last month's book, Smallmouth  is available here https://amzn.to/32Zf1ZS To support the channel and get access to the online tying sessions, as well as being entered into the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and sign up

 Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways Here's another from Sexy Loops I like tying flies, I like seeing nice flies tied by other people which social media is great for. However I am not so enamoured about the number of people who proudly declare that their flies catch fish, not fishermen. It's an attitude that worries me and I'm sure that it's not isolated to flytying -what percentage of fly anglers actually practise casting? Often, when I run a tying class on trout flies I have to make the point that scruffy and buggy doesn't mean badly tied.  Practising and improving will allow the tier to make the decision about how rough-or not- the fly on their vice is going to be.   Obviously there are other advantages to being able to tie more than your shoe laces, not least consistency. If I tie 10 or 100 of the same pattern I want them all to look exactly the

  Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways. Here's another old one I wrote for sexyloops Golden Oldies I've recently been spending a lot of time looking through old tying and fishing books which has been thoroughly enjoyable.  One think it's made me do is start thinking about older fly patterns and how the profiles and materials have changed.   I like a lot of aspects of the old school streamer patterns, not least the simplicity of many of them.  Although many old flies like the Mickey Finn have fallen from favour with most anglers nowadays they still work.  The problem I think, is that they don't look as natural in form as some more modern patterns and don't have the modern mobile materials that have replaced bucktail for many.  The first one I think is a legitimate  issue with these flies , stacked wings, clean cut tails and prominent black thread head

   Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways. Here's another old one I wrote for sexyloops On me 'ed A while ago I wrote an FP that touched on the topic of streamer heads (https://www.sexyloops.com/index.php/ps/beware-the-Confuser) but never got round to doing one that actually covered it properly... So here it is.  I think that the best way to get a handle on streamer heads and how they effect the fly's behaviour is by testing them on the water, and I hope that even after reading this you still will experiment and actually see how things work. I find it helps to split head styles into 4 main groups;  slow, jerk, fast and jigging. Each head type will produce a different action on both articulated and unarticulated flies. So let's look at each of them individually.  "Slow" heads are the big hair, wool or dubbing heads that you see on a lot of modern st

 Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways

 To support the channel and be eligible for giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers . November's giveaway winner is Danny McGinty- the small stillwater selection will be heading to him soon. As we're entering the festive season, I've added some extras for Christmas.  There will be 3 prizes;  1 The usual selection of flies & a signed copy of Steffan Jones' Seatrout 2 A signed copy of Steffan Jones' Seatrout & the fly matters mug 3 A Sport Fishing Asia SPF 50 long sleeve T-shirt

 This is basically a zebra/mercury midge using an ice-blue wire rib and blue pearl glass bead.  I find this fly works very well in tailwaters and stillwaters, especially in winter. To support the channel and be eligible for giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers   Materials list  Hook: TMC 2488 size 14-24 Bead: Blue pearl lined glass bead (I found these in an accessory making shop) Thread: Uni 8/0 black Rib: Ice blue semperfli wire

Another of my articles on www.sexyloops.com   It often seems to me that as anglers we probably suffer from some kind of delusional mental illness.  Now, I think this applies to conventional anglers as well as fly anglers but possibly more so to us...again and again you can hear, read articles or see videos where people assert with absolute confidence that the fish is taking a fly/lure because it imitates X prey species. Fair enough you might say, and I'd be inclined to agree in certain situations. For example, catch a midge feeding trout on a midge pattern that is the same size and colour as the naturals and you can reasonably assume that the fish "believed" the fly was a midge. But the tendency is, to my mind, over applied. Do daphnia feeders really think fire orange blob is a giant clump of daphnia? How about great lakes musky eating a firetiger baitfish? Or do smallmouth really think a boogle bug is a giant insect? It's impossible to truly know but I'm skeptica

  Another old article from www.sexyloops.com Is chicken eugenics the enemy of good fishing flies? I think it is, and the fly tying fashion that is going hand in glove with "improved" genetics is creating a, possibly, vicious cycle.  The improvement in genetic dry fly hackle makes many things easier and for some flies like the Griffiths gnat or stimulator is a vast improvement on what was available before. However, I am not sure if the downside of these hackles has really been acknowledged. Yes they have longer stems that are thinner more flexible and less likely to break, but they also have a far denser count of barbs that are much stiffer and consistent than what you'll find on any Indian or Chinese hackle. On the face of it, this all seems good and makes flies look quit crisp on the vice but is it as good as it seems?  I remember a period in the late 80s or early 90s when the "trick" of trimming the underside of a dry fly seemed to be the top tip in every dry

  The peeping caddis needs no introduction, here I've tied my version using an instajig or offset tungsten bead which gives a hook up presentation but allows you to use a longer hook shank than a typical jig hook and slotted bead, which I think gives a better cased caddis. To support my channel and enter the giveaways head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers and become a patron or support through paypal.me/flickingfeathers Materials list Hook: 1x or 2x long nymph hook (I used TMC 3761) Weight: Offset tungsten bead Thread: Rusty dun 8/0 Uni Peeping grub: Fl chartreuse ice dub Legs: Partridge or hen hackle fibers Case: Natural hare's ear or similar

  another old post from www.sexyloops.com I've recently spent a lot of time looking at pictures of winged termites and hoglice (sow bugs for our American friends) trying to dial in some better imitations than I've seen so far. For termites there's not a lot out there so there's a lot of messing around trying to get something that will look edible to a wild gourami. Because of Paul's input on gourami being very hard to fool and termites being a new imitation, I'm giving it much more time at the design and willing to allow the individual tie to be much longer than a trout fly would take-if my new hoglouse takes more than about 3minutes to tie, it's not acceptable when a Ray Charles will do largely the same job most of the time. So why bother? Well, it's a combination of things for me, a bit of confidence, a bit of giving them something different and just the enjoyment of spending time playing around at the vice, picking out the key features that I think wi