Flicking feathers

 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 prominen...

   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

   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

 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