This is a story about the woes of a fly tyer I thought you might enjoy. I’ve been tying flies for our upcoming trip to Argentina and Chile and the next fly on my list was Swisher’s PMX Royal. For those of you who don’t tie flies, you might enjoy this as well because it isn’t about how to tie a fly.
I’ve tied flies for over 50 years and during the last 10 have tied several thousand. My fly tying really increased after I retired and eventually started RiverKeeper Flies. I’ve tied flies for many customers and pride myself as being able to tie almost any trout fly and can turn out some nice-looking steelhead flies and even a couple saltwater flies for one of my customers.
But I found myself struggling to tie this fly. In fact, I walked away from my fly tying desk several times frustrated I couldn’t tie the fly like I wanted to.
The first image and the one below are either fly number 10, 11, or 12 from the dozen hooks I started with. I’m finally satisfied with the fly, but oh the journey of frustration to get here!
Many times if I haven’t tied a particular fly in a while, I’ll watch one of my own YouTube videos from my RiverKeeper Flies channel. It’s a great way to refresh my memory on proportions, tricky parts, and tips to tie them.
But I didn’t do that. No, I just pulled out 12 hooks, smashed the barbs and began tying them. In my mind, I had a good idea of the steps and proportions.
I was wrong.
Here are my first three flies.
I didn’t like the number of peacock wraps at the back which made the red body too short. And don’t get me started on why I forgot to tie in the legs!!!
When I finally remembered, I struggled to achieve the “X” where the fly had two legs in back AND front.
Notice anything wrong in this next image of the legs?
Yup, all the legs are sticking out the back. It was a result of wrapping the peacock herl wrong.
Next, I was confused about the hackle color. I think I tied these last year using grizzly hackle like those shown above. For some reason, I thought the hackle should be brown this year and spaced that. I selected 12 grizzly hackles and just started tying.
You’ll probably ask “will the fish care?” Probably not, but that’s not the point. This fly had really messed with my brain for some reason.
OK, let’s move on.
The next image shows a fly where I finally tied the wing with brown hackle. But look closely and you won’t find any legs at all on the right side. It’s tough to see, but just go to the next image.
A nice looking fly, but no legs on this side!
Arghhhh!
Somehow I pulled the legs off. I have no idea how it happened.
How about another problem with legs?
You can’t see all of the legs, but trust me when I say there are four. But the problem with this fly is one of the front legs is too high. It’s like the fly is raising its hand and saying “try me!”
I might have caught the leg with thread when tying hackle off around the post.
Well, I finally was able to complete a few flies I was happy with and will add them to my Patagonia fly box.
And don’t ask me to tie this fly for you because I’ll respond back with a resounding NO!!!!!
After reading this and you’d like to challenge yourself to tie the fly, I recommend Charlie Craven’s YouTube video where he demonstrates how to tie the fly.
I’m headed back to my fly tying table to pull out six more hooks and give it another go.
Wish me luck!
If you’ve encountered this problem before, please leave a comment below. It might help my ego a little.
Enjoy…go fish!
Thanks for sharing the frustrations that many of use feel when tying goes bad! Although I think a off kilter leg or two hardly matters. I caught my biggest rainbow ever on the Big Blackfoot this year with an old style bullethead that the legs were torn off on one side by other fish but the big one still liked it. go figure.
For as many years as I have been tying ( about 54 ) I to have been through the same frustration. I know what you went through. Good article.
This pattern always befuddled me , in that it always took way longer to tie than I thought it should. It is one of my favorite attracter patterns. If I forget something on a fly it is usually the rubber legs.
Having no shame, I don’t hesitate to check your patterns even if it was just a month or two since I tied a particular fly. Thanks for taking so much time and effort to do them so well.
Even when I go off to tie my own variants or patterns, you taught me and others higher expectations. Thank you very much for that as well! And I definitely go back to my patterns sheets to check them. Memory demands it…
This would be a great fly to teach at the NW Expo in march
Your culls do look good enough to fish anywhere, just not satisfactory for the tier knowing what they look like while fishing. I’ve cut off legs, tails and wings. My latest happened while tying a dozen Film Critics. It took a half dozen ties to get the hackle and wing to lie right, then on the seventh, which was almost perfect, my dog barked while I was trimming the wing and I cut it at the base! Had to tie some perdigons to get my confidence back.
Your ‘culls” are by far better than my flies. I enjoy your posts and learn from them.
Enjoy your trip to South America. Safe travels.
Kindest Regards,
JB Pipes
Love this and will have to attempt the fly as complicated as it is. I prefer tying guide flies as my attention span diminishes commensurate with my age.