Feather tips for use as wings for a dry fly are most often taken from hackles but other feathers such as hen, blackbird, pigeon etc. are also used. Feather tip wings tied from fowl tips are generally thin and delicate but tips from other types of feathers can be a little more robust. In either case feather tip wings should be symmetrically.
Feather slip wings should be as wide as the gape of the hook at their thickest point, be symmetrically positioned above the hook with the wings separated by an angle of between 70 degrees and 90 degrees. As for other dry fly upright wings they should be at least as long as the hackle and up to 120% of the hackle length. As for other dry fly upright wings they should be at least as long as the hackle and up to 120% of the hackle length.
Foam beetles remain very popular because they can be truly representational and of course because they float so well.
Closed cell foam is exactly what the name implies. It is for with multitudes of tiny closed cells each filled with air. The material that closed cell foam is made out of varies but it is heavier than water and therefore sinks, it is only the trapped tiny bubbles of air that cause the material to float.
In most cases if deer hair is being used as a dry fly tail the butt ends of the deer hair are generally incorporated as an under body for the fly as detailed below.
The term Palmering a fly has its origins around 1300 AD, that’s right about 700 years ago. Whilst a fly can be palmered in either direction along the hook shank and doesn’t necessarily require wire or thread to be wrapped along it in the opposite direction for reinforcement I always wind the hackle from front to back and reinforce the palmered hackle with thread or wire wound from the back to front.
Legs on flies may well be one of the most significant trigger components of a fly. They add balance , movement and reality. There are many ways of representing legs on flies including the following:
My first fish on fly fell to the magic of a Woolly Bugger and many have gone the same way since then. There are probably more variations to the Woolly Bugger than I have had breakfasts. Some are over-dressed some under-dressed, some weighted other not, on all sorts of hooks and in all sorts of colour combinations. These are the best of the best.
It doesn’t matter if the spun deer hair body you are making is on a size # 2/0 Dahlberg Diver or a size # 12 Adams Irresistible the method of building the body is the same.
When bass are feeding on big insects like Cicadas and Hoppers that crash onto the water they also become susceptible to large noisy and obvious flies like Dahlberg Divers cast around their structure or twitched across the surface. At other times they just have a whack at these big flies because there intruding into their domain. In either case the strikes and hook ups can be spectacular.
