Last Updated:
03/07/05
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Innovative Fly tying the featured speaker for the evening was Danny Riley, who is a local resident and member of the FBBF. This was the first of the in-house speakers following the recent suggestion that the club tap into the extensive expertise of its membership. Danny’s presentation was about fly tying with an emphasis on innovative, non-traditional methods and materials for making flies for angling in local waters. He displayed a varied assortment of flies and began by emphasizing the value of sharing knowledge among club members to encourage others to share their wares about any aspect of flyfishing via future presentations to the club membership. He described the methods and materials for tying spoon flies and poppers, as well as some non-traditional flies including the Nylure and Rapala flies that are his own creations, and the batman fly. The materials for tying spoon flies can be a variety of accessible things such as aluminum cans, metal from crafts stores, and others that are found in items that we encounter at home and work. Plastics in many varieties, including synthetic finger nails, are also useful in making the popular spoon flies. Any of these materials can be cut to the desired size and shape and glued and/or tied to a hook to make a spoon fly. A coating of epoxy provides durability, luster, and weight to aid in the casting of the light and wind resistant metals. Color is added via painting or using the craft “leafing” method, which involves the application of a liquid adhesive and, following its drying, apply the colored side of the color coated cellophane. When the cellophane is removed, the color remains. Available colors are gold, copper, silver, green and red. Most of the poppers and sliders described were those made from a foam block that is typically used as a cushion for protection when carrying a canoe on top of a car. The advantages of using this material are its buoyancy, light weight, density and durability, and it is inexpensive (about $2 per block, which will make many flies) and easy to shape with scissors, razor blades, and emery boards. After forming and mounting the popper heads of foam or other material, colors and finishes can be done according to your preference using the traditional painting options or the craft leafing method described above. Another finishing option available with the use of the foam material is to cover it with mylar tubing, which comes in various sizes and colors. Also, an alternate method of attaching the body and the hook is by running a piece of wire leader material through the foam and placing a haywire twist in each end, one for attaching the hook with a split ring and the other as the fly’s eyelet to which the leader is tied. The use of wire provides unlimited possibilities for shapes and sizes of flies. The Nylure fly, which was previously described in a FBBF newsletter article, is new and improved by using a hollow conical shaped piece of shiny silver or gold metal found in crafts stores. The Rapala fly is simply a foam slider with a minnow-like fusiform shape covered with any of the Chinese handcuff-like colored fiber tubings used in fly tying, like the mylar or monofilament kinds. Then a tail of your preference is tied at the rear as with any other slider or popper. The expressed preference is marabou with crystal flash due to the life-like action of the fly in the water, and the lower susceptibility of those materials to causing “helicoptering” of the fly, which inevitably twists your line. With the use of wire and foam, individual segments of a jointed Rapala fly can be con-structed and joined to get the increased minnow-like surface action of one of the best salt or fresh water lures known. The Batman fly was discovered from Russel Tharin on a recent trip that Danny made to Amelia Island to fish for the full-time guide in that area, and is scheduled as the FBBF’s February guest speaker. One of his favorite flies is the Batman fly. It is basically a Clouser minnow with the barbell eyes mounted much farther back on the shank of the hook and “wings” of one-inch rabbit strips jutting out perpendicularly from the hook shank on the side of the barbell eyes proximal to the eye of the hook. Of course the length of the “wings” can vary with the size of the fly or the preference of the tier. Other materials such as marabou and hackle feathers have been used by Danny to accomplish the same purpose, which is to increase visibility and attractiveness to the fish via life-like recoiling movements. The body of the fly from the bend to the eye of the hook is wrapped with large ice chenille. Russel prefers the dark colors of these flies for redfish. This is consistent with other guides polled by Danny about their favorite redfish flies in other parts of the state including Chokoloskee, St. Joe Bay, and now the Jacksonville area. Varying dark brown, bottom reaching flies with good movement and a little bit of gold flash seem to be the universally preferred redfish fly characteristics for Florida waters. Russel also uses the Batman fly in other colors like chartreuse, black, and olive. |