FLYMPH FORUM

OK, showing my "newbieness" here; anyone know of some good reference material on tying the short leader(?) on an eyeless hook? I've acquired some of said hooks, and would like to give it a shot, but know nothing about this. Can you point me in the right direction??

The price on Kenhook too good to pass up?
If flattened on the end of the shank you can snell on a short length of fine tippet.
I have lashed tippet on with the first run of tying thread, on the side of the shank, bringing the tag end of the tippet back up the opposite side as I return the thread to the "head" of the fly. You have to use fine (7-8X) tippet and thread so as not to build too much bulk, but you have to add some bulk to get a successful attachment.
I have landed some big trout (and lost a few ) on Kamasan B920 spade end eyeless hooks attached this way. The lost ones would have broken the section of tippet above the fly, not pulled the lashed fixing.

Chase,

The classic method was to soak the gut snell to soften it and then using one's incisors, flatten said gut for about 1/8 inch to give a better hold on the hook. Well waxed silk was used to bind the gut to the hook, often in the same operation that formed the body of a North Country Spider. It has been stated by Lawrie that the Tummel style flies were tied with only 5 or 6 turns of silk to bind the gut, attach the wing and hackle and form the body of the fly!
I've experimented with blind eyed hooks for many years and you might try this: Using a small pair of smooth jaw pliers, or the jaws of your tying vise, gently flatten about 1/8 inch of the end of the nylon (I assume you are using nylon and not gut!). You don't have to squash it, just flatten it a bit. This will help the thread grip the nylon and give a thinner body. Holding the flattened part of the nylon UNDER the hook, start your waxed silk on the hook shank just as you would when starting any fly. Wrap silk in touching turns as far back towards the hook bend as you feel you need to and then tie your fly as usual. Its important that the flattened part of the snell doesn't protrude past the forward end (head) of the hook as you don't want a hinge effect at this point.

If you want to actually fish your flies, and why not, put a drop of super glue on the wraps of the snell and it will weld everything together. I've tried this and it works great.

Most of the earlier blind eye hooks had a tapered shank. This made a neater fly especially towards the head. If one studies old flies one will see that most were finished off either behind the hackle or at the end of the body. The reason for this is that if finished off at the head in the contemporary manner, the dressing would slip off the tapered shank and the fly would fall apart! Today, the eye of the hooks keeps this from happening. Remember also that the old tiers didn't have today's glues and head cements to keep things together. It's easy to spot modern tiers who think they are faithfully reproducing classic tying techniques, but actually haven't a clue, just by looking at where they finish the fly...........

John - Very informative post.

Thanks for the information. Jeff - Yes, couldn't help it, the prices were so good.
I'll try all of the above, thanks.
I copied all the above information and put it in my "Soft Hackle" Reference binder.

A bit about Spade End hooks.
These were bait hooks and the leader was "snelled" to the shank. You can Google the snell knot to see how to do this. The small flattened end kept the snell from pulling off the shank. Snelling was easier than whipping the leader to the hook shank and could be done in the field. This type of hook is still used by European and Asian bait anglers as it makes a smoother connection and allows the hook to be hidden in the bait more easily. I can't recall ever seeing an older fly tied on a spade end hook but that doesn't mean it wasn't ever done. However, the spade end would hinder tying a neat head.

Blind eye fly hooks often had a "marked" shank, a series of ridges on the forward part of the shank that gave some grip to the thread and made a better connection when tying on the leader. Another feature of these hooks was that not having an eye, the tier could "adjust" the length of the hook by snipping off a bit shank with cutting pliers. If you needed a slightly shorter/smaller hook you just trimmed a larger one to size!

A clarification.
In my last post I when said that older flies weren't tied off at the head I was referring specifically to smaller trout flies, in particular Spiders. Obviously, Salmon Flies, larger wets, and winged wets, etc. were tied off at the "eye" end of the hook. Salmon Fly heads were finished with "Spirit Varnish". In some of the earlier tying instructions where the fly is finished behind the hackle or at the end of the body, forming the head is the first operation in dressing the fly.

John, thanks for the additional information.
I have a bunch of blind eye hooks with the marked shafts (Mustad 7788 size 12), and your comments are most informative. Looking forward to playing with them, if my thumbs don't get in the way too much.

There were also "notched" hooks, similar to the serrated end shanks John mentioned, but with a single heavy notch near the end of the shank.
I cannot imagine there not being an eyeless look not unlike a jig-head, where the end of the shank was stepped out wider to prevent a snell knot slipping off the end.

I do have reference (Practical Fly-Tying. T.R. Henn) to when lashing a silk gut to the shank as John describes (after flattening the end of the silk) to wrap alternate wraps over both the gut and hook shank and then the gut only. This adds a cushion between the gut and hook shank as well as putting very slight locking bends in the gut so as not to have a straight line pull.
He also suggests the best quality gut available down to 4X, in a tight coil with 2" straight left to tie to the hook, while forming the fly. That and if the extreme end of the shank is left exposed it can be used as a material clip whilst tying the fly. The silk slipped between gut and hook shank end to hold while assembling other materials. Of course this applies to the short lengths of silk used before bobbin holders and spools of thread, but if you want to go full "classic"..........

If you just want to use the hooks rather than stay true to British tradition, you could always just tie in an "eye" using a small loop of fly line backing as the first step in tying your fly. That is what a number of Japanese tenkara anglers do with the bait hooks they often use for tenkara flies, although they use a silk cord rather than fly line backing (if you want to use silk cord, the #2 silk "bead cord" is the right size). One dramatic advantage of tying in eyes like this is that you can make them large enough to actually thread at dusk without needing a light and magnifiers.