My fly tying has found me back to steelhead flies. I finished a steelhead fly order last week for 40 flies. I thought I’d share them with you.
This project was a little change of pace from the many trout flies I’ve been tying. I’m trying to finish some customer orders between all my fishing and the volunteer activities I signed up for.
Before I get too far into this week’s post, I wanted to remind you to write a letter about the Metolius River regulation changes. Here is a link to the letter I sent – Metolius Letter.
I was asked to tie classic hair wing steelhead flies as well as spey flies…40 in total.
Let me begin with the “easy” flies…hair wing steelhead flies.
How about a few spey flies? You might have read about my first experience with spey flies Tying Spey Flies – I’m Scared. That post is from December 2014. I’ve come a long way since then!
I wrote a post in January 2015 entitled Another Spey Fly – Done. Here are the issues I was dealing with then.
- What feathers should I use for the heron substitute?
- How many wraps will I get with a specific feather?
- Where should I tie in 3 different tinsels…side, bottom, side? And in what order?
- What spacing should I use to get the standard 5 turns for each tinsel?
In the Spey Flies Lessons Learned post (December 2016), I shared my thoughts about tying a spey fly with married wings.
Still Working on Spey Flies (December 2016) found me working on:
- Mounting the tail without splaying the golden pheasant topping fibers.
- I’ll continue to mount the tinsel ribbing materials with long tags so not to create little bumps at the tie-in, tie-off points.
- Selecting the proper materials, particularly goose shoulder feathers. I’ve never tied with goose before. I found most of the feathers I have to choose from have slightly feathered tips, which aren’t good for married wings. The tips are difficult to stay married together. The proper materials are critical.
- Two-strand wool yarn vs. floss for the fly’s butt section.
- Don’t forget that proportions are very important for mounted flies.
These posts were an important learning experience for me because I was able to verbalize the struggles I had. Over time, I overcome my fears and become a much better fly tyer.
How did I do that? Practice!
Simple right? Tying a variety of flies for my Throw Back Thursday Fly feature has really helped my fly tying. It reinforces techniques and having the proper materials to tie a fly. I seem to write about that aspect of fly tying quite a bit.
Fast forward to today, I’ve been VERY happy with the spey flies I’ve tied. Recently, I finished a Spey Fly Project.
And today I’m sharing pictures of the spey flies I tied for a customer.
And one of my favorite steelhead flies to tie, the Lady Caroline, a fly pattern from the 1800s..
Lastly, the Green Butt Skunk Spey. It’s the fly I was working on when I tried married wings.
I hope you enjoyed viewing the images of these steelhead flies.
I’m on to the next project.
Go fish!
WOW.. well done my friend