FLYMPH FORUM

Fiddling around late year caddis tonight...call it a "Royal Nonesuch" maybe, since it has most of the parts of a Royal Wulff, just kinda rearranged...

Stunning combination. Love the look of the tipper hackle.

DAMN! "and the hits just keep commin'." GORGEOUS!!!!!

Love the look of the tipper hackle

Thanks--another homage to Hans, wouldn't you know. These were a little shorter hooks (#14 TMC 200r/#10 Grip 14723BL, respectively) so I was playing around with getting the color "accent" without glomming a whole big section of it on to the hookshank. (Of course, there's also the "Brown Effect" in play as well; i.e., if UPS delivers new materials in the morning, they're going on a hook later that night... )

I'm trying to get over my aversion to synthetic materials lately, so while y'all have been knocking out perfectly proportioned, classic ties, I was getting happy with DMC embroidery thread last night. Here's a Tennessee Wulff that uses "jewel effect" green for the band:

And a "Royal Nonesuch" that uses a strand of "pearlescent effect" thread spun in an Pearsall's floss loop:

BTW, you hardly ever see that color scheme here in Knoxville.

To be honest, I think I'll have to consider the results marginal at best--the "jewel effect" might just work of a band, but it's a little fiddley to work with otherwise, being simply a long strand of mylar wrapped over a thin nylon core that it easily separates from; the "pearlescent" seems to be just a more robust strand of Krystal Flash. The search for a synthetic/silk combo that's a little more elegant continues...

But I heard Knoxville was Pearl-less-ent these days . The flies are really nice variations on your theme, by the way, and are the things magazine articles are made of (that's supposed to be a compliment). These look to me to be waaayyy more difficult to tie than, say, a snipe and purple.

But I heard Knoxville was Pearl-less-ent these days

Man, you're raising the bar in all sorts of ways.

At any rate, as you no doubt know, the real masters don't tie on anytthing they don't need. Your snipe and purple is the equivalent of of Hemingway's "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn;" my Wulff's are more like something Thomas Wolfe would come up with after a three-day drunk while he was looking for his shoes.

CreationBear wrote:

But I heard Knoxville was Pearl-less-ent these days

Man, you're raising the bar in all sorts of ways.

At any rate, as you no doubt know, the real masters don't tie on anytthing they don't need. Your snipe and purple is the equivalent of of Hemingway's "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn;" my Wulff's are more like something Thomas Wolfe would come up with after a three-day drunk while he was looking for his shoes.

CreationBear wrote:

But I heard Knoxville was Pearl-less-ent these days

Man, you're raising the bar in all sorts of ways.

At any rate, as you no doubt know, the real masters don't tie on anytthing they don't need. Your snipe and purple is the equivalent of of Hemingway's "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn;" my Wulff's are more like something Thomas Wolfe would come up with after a three-day drunk while he was looking for his shoes.

This is classic. Cool compositions too. Keep the options coming.

w

File this under "Department of Obvious Solutions," but I think I might have finally found combination that might fish--in this case, a strand of Sulky "Holoshimmer" tinsel spun in a silk floss loop.

In this case, "rootbeer" tinsel in a two-strand loop of Orange Pearsall's Marabou:


And one with a single-strand silk loop:


Which makes what seems to be a manageable solution on even what (to me ) is a small hook (in this case, a #16 Mustad 53s):


At any rate, the Holoshimmer seems to have possibilities, both in terms of adding a little flash, but also as a quick and dirty way of adding a color tint to the silk. For instance, to my eyes I'm getting close to the natural color of an actual Quill Gordon here (Epeorus pleuralis, not the eponymous wet )...I could see touch-dubbing one leg of the silk floss loop before spinning the tinsel, and getting very close indeed.