Tuppsincomprehensible

They all look like fine patterns that I have no doubt at all that fish would readily take. If you numbered your patterns in the order in which you have posted your pictures I particularly like no's 2, 3 + 6. We are a little zealous in the UK regarding buzzer cheeks. It must be said though at times when fish are caning sub surface buzzers over here and you are having no or only limited success with patterns without cheeks. Changing to a pattern with cheeks will sometimes appear to make all the difference in the world.

I respectfully suggest that you are getting a blob and a booby nymph mixed up. Booby nymphs incorporate high floating materials such as closed cell foam which give them bouyancy and when attached to a sinking line tend to drag up off the bottom. Blobs in my limited experience have no such floating materials being constructed only of marabou and fritz which will of course float initially but as they take in water they will sink deeper than Neptunes toe corns. As a 'traditionalist' you can of course be forgiven for mixing the 2 up.

This has got so much potential it makes my eyes bleed. Please tell me how you have tied it?

I like this. Can you tell me please what the difference is between standard and ceramic coated copper wire. I have never seen ceramic coated over in England.

Step 11: whip finish and varnish the head taking care not to let the varnish run into the claret seals fur and the fly is complete. The longer the fly remains in water the redder the body becomes.

I posted on this dressing a couple of weeks ago. I hope that you can make something of the pattern. Tying Materials Hook: Fulling Mill Competition Heavyweight Size 16 Thread: Pearsall's Gossamer Silk Orange Half Rib: You can use anything you choose, I demo with fine silver wire. Dubbing: Claret over olive. Cheeks: Jungle cock - yes got them into something else Tying Method Step 1: Secure the hook in the vice with point protruding. Step 2: Catch in the orange thread, do not remove tag end but run thread back to bend leaving tag end trailing. Build up a body up to about half way up the hook shank. Step 3: Pull tag end of thread over the top of the body you have formed, catch in and trim waste end. Step 4: Tie in ribbing material. Step 5: Pinch a very small amount of olive seals fur, dub onto thread and wind onto body in 2 or 3 open turns. The dubbing should cover approximately the third quarter of the hook shank. It should be very sparse and the underbody left partially visible. Step 6: Wind rib over dubbing in very tight turns. The dubbing needs to be held as tightly as possible. Step 7: Select 2 small jungle cock feathers and strip away waste material from base of stalk. The feathers should be tied along the hook shank over the dubbing to form cheeks. If you have dubbed correctly then the body should remain slim and the cheeks should lie flat. Step 8: Wind forward with the thread and the cheeks should not move if they do then remove them and start this part of the process again Step 9: Pinch a very small amount of claret seals fur wind onto the thread to form a dubbing rope. Step 10: Make a few turns to form a small thorax. Step by step continues in part 2

Once again, standard formula just black thread, fine silver wire, hot orange goose biots and epoxy, well actually ladies nail varnish. the pattern is tied short on a heavy hook in an attempt to get the thing down to a decent depth in deep water.

To be perfectly honest I have never used a rotary drier. I have managed so far without one. I must say though that with my usual hankering for gadgetry, now that you broach the subject I think that I may consider buying one.

Here are 6 of my favourites over here for this time of year. An abbreviated pattern on a large shrimp hook (size16) works well as a point fly in a team. This serves to get smaller less heavy stuff down if the fish are lying deeper. The olive and black works well on its own or as part of a cocktail of buzzers. The tyings are all extremely simple generally utilising either plain thread as a body fine silver wire as a rib, hot orange goose biots as a cheek. We go absolutely mad over here on ladies nail varnish branded as Sally Hansen Hard As Nails used as an epoxy coating but obviously you will have your own products over there.

This pattern works very well in Britain. It is actually an Irish pattern that I managed to erm..........liberate!!! from a good pal. He tells me that he in turn liberated it from an Irishman who acted as a guide for him on Loch Corrib. I know what you are all thinking, it is totally the wrong colour, well actually no because when you add water The jungle cock cheek is representative of blood that becomes visible at the 'head end' of the pupa. I think it forms an interesting contrast against the dark red blood colour that the dubbing turns when wet. I hope that some of this proves at least a bit worthwhile to some of you.

A Czech is a nymph tied up on a particular style of heavyweight hook usually tied up with lead as extra weight. The body is usually dubbed and ribbed, a shell back incorporated and is ribbed usually with nlyon monofilament. Take a look at this dirty old rascals tying: http://ukflydressing.proboards83.com/index...read=1189605925 I hope that this helps Regards Geoff

Ok my contribution is size 18 barbless hook. That takes the pressure off me doesn't it? ONLY JOKING!!!!!

How about you open a swap without giving it a theme. You then look at the 'take up' and each victim whoops sorry participant suggests a tying material. Preferably one that requires a little imagination. You then invite participants to tie up using the odd concoction from the list that people have provided. You leave the overall pattern to each of the tiers to gain as much variation as possible. Obviously this idea needs a lot of refining but the basic theme is there.

May I respectfully suggest that you all take a look at the C+F bobbin holders. I bought my first for twenty quid......erm about 40 dollars (I think) about 12 months ago and now I have 6 of the little mongrels. They come with a sponge liner behind the thread barrel the upshot of this is if you let go of the holder then your thread doesn't unwind on the bobbin and make pretty spiral patterns as your fly comes unglued (metaphorically speaking). Not everybody in the Uk is all that taken with them but I absolutely love them to death.

It may sadden most of us to realise that there are few if any new patterns to tie. The most that any of us can hope for and very few of us can actually achieve is to refine a pattern and hone it to the point that a good pattern becomes a great pattern. Having said this there has never before been a better time to achieve this with the vast armoury of materials available to us today. Materials that our grandfathers had no access to and they had to make do with what they could shoot or trap. Game fish eat from a relatively finite menu of bug life. It has all been done by somebody else at some point before. On a more positive note and certainly thankfully for the likes of myself, the fish don't seem to care. I for one hope that they don't. Regards Geoff