During the IFFF Fair in Bend, Oregon earlier this month, I had a chance to sit down and watch some pretty good fly tyers. I thought I’d share a few flies from the IFFF Fair.
Lee Clark has a new version of the Clark’s Golden Stone he calls the Clark’s Lady Stone. The fly is very similar to the original, but Lee found a way to imitate the female egg sac that really seems to work. Lee’s excited about the new fly and allowed me to add the fly pattern sheet to RiverKeeper Flies.
You know I enjoy a soft hackle…so I sat down in front of Carl Sanders and received a few tips on tying the old patterns. Carl’s inspiration for soft hackles comes from The Art of Tying the Wet Fly & Fishing the Flymph by James E. Leisenring and Vernon S. Hidy.
How about a small fly? Here is a size 32 parachute my friend Charlie Schillinsky tied for me during the show. He does an amazing job on small flies. Don’t know how he does it! Yes, that’s a DIME!
And an old style of tying I’m intrigued by…the George Grant style flies. I was able to get two flies from James Flaherty using the hand-woven hair hackle technique. The first fly incorporates a partridge feather in the body; the second fly uses jungle cock.
My friends Al and Gretchen Beatty were there too. Both are amazing fly tyers and excellent teachers. I usually try and stop to see what they are tying and leave learning a new technique. Here is a simple Green Drake fly pattern Al tied for me. He used a unique method of tying in the deer hair upright divided wings. He selected some deer hair and tied in the bunch with the tips extended over the eye of the hook. Normal, right? Well, he wanted a larger profile. Instead of using twice as much deer hair to start with and creating unwanted bulk in the body, he selected a similar sized bunch and tied the hair directly in front of the first bunch with the butts over the eye. The resulting pressure from each bunch causes both to stand up straight from the pressure pushing against each other. Lastly, he separated the deer hair to complete the upright divided wings.
Great idea!
Al Beatty Green Drake
I met Wayne Luallen at the IFFF Fail in Bend. He is the IFFF’s 1991 Buz Buszek Award Winner. Wayne was teaching a thread control class at the Fair and a friend of mine attended. He found out Wayne had been to the Metolius to check it out and suggested he meet me for a little local knowledge.
Since I had heard about Wayne’s skill at the vise, I decided to watch him tie a fly. After he completed the fly, I handed him my card to introduce myself and he said “I need to talk with you!” He stopped by my tying table the next day and watched me tie some flies and chatted about fishing. I invited Wayne and his wife Donna to accompany Karen and me to the river. I told him I might know where a fish or two live.
Well, we had a great time and both of them caught fish.
Later that week, I attended a shortened thread control class Wayne taught for Central Oregon Project Healing Waters. Wayne is an incredible and knowledgeable teacher.
He was quite generous and offered a few flies from his massive fly box collection he brought with him to fish. Here are a couple examples of his flies I pulled from his fishing boxes.
Soft Hackle – size 20
Beetle – size 20
Rusty Spinner
Mike Telford was tying his latest creation he calls a Crystal Chronomid. This fly is his go-to fly he uses at East Lake. I better give it a try! He’s allowed me to add the fly pattern to RiverKeeper Flies so I called it MTs Crystal Chronomid. I think it’s a great looking pattern.
I tied flies all day on Friday and demonstrated how to tie some of the flies I’ve been fishing lately…Callibaetis. Here are a couple of them.
RiverKeeper Callibaetis Emerger
Harrops Callibaetis Paraspinner
And I showed my technique for tying the RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple that works so well for my wife and me.
And I showed my technique for tying the RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple that works so well for my wife and me.
I had a great time watching these talented tyers.
Now…go fish!
