Two Thousand Fifteen is here which bring many dreams of fishing opportunities to come. The downside is that it is cold and soon we will be knee deep in snow (at least here in the Midwest). We do have some diehards who get out on a sunny day and hit the ponds. A couple of friends I spoke with just last week said they caught a number of panfish and even a nice two pound Largemouth Bass just a few days ago when we had a warm streak. For most of us, the warmwater stuff is on hold for a while.

 

We here at Warmwater Chronicles will be doing what we can to help keep the summertime dreams alive. We have a number of tying videos planned. A few videos from last year to process and post as well as a bunch of articles in the works. We also will be attending a number of Fly Fishing Shows. The Indianapolis Fly Fishing Expo is the latest one we will be at. We'll keep posting the details of other shows as they come up. If you can make it by we would love to shake hands and swap stories.

 

Happy New Year from all of us at WWC and keep dreaming!

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for remembering us here at our warmwater section of cyber space.

 

Often the head of the fly is created to cover up butts end or clipped ends of materials that we have used in the creation of the fly (Figure 1). Most tiers will begin forming the head of the fly by applying wraps of thread on the materials ends and advancing the wraps forward. The problem with this is the thread invariably slips off the abrupt end of the material and we then try to continue to wrap thread while "climbing" back up onto the materials. This will always end in a larger and sloppier head than we want. 

 

Instead, once all of your materials are bound in and you are ready to make the head and cover up the material ends, reach your thread up to behind the hook eye and start applying thread wraps away from the eye of the hook to form the head and cover-up any remaining materials (figure 2 & 3). This will help create a taper up to the materials as you are forming the head and thus have more control on your thread placement and the shape and size of the resulting head. 

Try this simple technique to create smaller, neater and cleaner heads on your flies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever had a fly, one you tied or bought, that after a few fish starts to spin on the shank? It behaves as though it wasn't quit tied on the shank of the hook tight enough. Which might be the case but sometimes this phenomenon is a factor of the hook itself rather than how well the fly was tied. There is a way to safeguard against this. Simply file the shank of the hook before you start tying your flies.

 

 

All modern hooks are made out of steel. However, steel itself corrodes very quickly when exposed to water. Because of this, hook manufactures apply a lacquer coating to the steel hook (I am talking about the freshwater 'bronze' hooks here, first image) to make them more corrosion resistant. If you tie your fly right on top of this lacquer coating then your fly will not really be attached to the hook if the lacquer coating breaks away from the steel. This is the case sometimes when your flies start to slid around the hook shank for no apparent reason.

 

The easy solution is to file away the lacquer coating before you start tying your fly. There are files for sale through fly shops that are made for this job but you can also use a common steel file you get at your local hardware store. Take a few swipes at the hook shank trying to remove just the lacquer around most of the hook shank. The second and third image show the hook with the lacquer coating removed on half of the hook shank. When you start tying your fly, cover the now bare shank with a layer of thread. This will provide better friction and keep the resulting fly from sliding around the hook shank. 

 

 

Keep in mind, if your going to loose most of your flies in trees then the added step to make longer lasting flies might not be worth it. But if you want a better tied fly then start with a bare shank and your fly will stay the way you want it.