The 2022 Sowbug Roundup has come to a close and I can happily and humbly announce that I was the winner of two categories of the Fly Tying Contest. All the winners were presented with very nice plaques for the winning flies in each category. They were presented on Friday night at the Sowbug Roundup “Shindig”. Here are my awards:
2022 Sowbug Roundup Fly Tying Awards
There were some really amazing flies submitted, so I’m pretty astonished that my flies were among them. All the winning flies were mounted in a fantastic looking shadow box which was auctioned off at the Shindig. It went for $1600!. My flies are at the left end of the first row and second from the left in the second row.
I have some fly patterns that call for wool yarn in the material list. However, it seems that many online fly shops carry a rather limited selection of colors or else don’t stock wool yarn at all. Craft stores have literally hundreds of colors but you are stuck with buying a ball that has 100 or 200 yards in it. Also, you have to decide what size yarn to buy from the myriad of choices and the knitting jargon they use is beyond comprehension for a fly fisherman. So what to do?
Enter Classic Fly Tying! I have opened up a new product line for wool yarn. I bought a few giant balls of yarn and repackaged them onto 5-yard cards. It’s the perfect size for your tying bench because it comes in packs similar to other carded fly tying materials such as Antron yarn, polypropylene yarn, and chenille.
Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift
As far as the type of wool yarn goes, I offer the most popular brand – Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift. It’s a lightweight 100% wool yarn and comes in some really great colors. I currently have it available in Oyster, Salmon, Heron and Ivy. You can find them in the Fly Tying Materials section of my online store.
I’ll be adding a few more colors soon. Right now I’m looking at adding more colors such as Buttercup, Tangerine, Cashew and Lime. Let me know if you would like another color and I’ll take a look.
These colors look great on nymphs and scuds! I’ll be demonstrating the “Tellico Nymph” fly pattern, from my Classic Nymph Collection #1, using some of these colors at the upcoming Sowbug Roundup.
5×7 Classic Nymph Collection #1 (black)
Tellico Nymph a southern classic from the Tellico River of TN and NC in the 1940’s
Incidentally, Jamieson’s #290 Oyster is the yarn of choice for the “Utah Killer Bug” fly pattern.
Patons Classic
Patons Classic is another brand of yarn I have come across although it’s quite a bit thicker than Jamieson’s. Patons Classic is a “4-Medium” size yarn and 3-ply where as Jamieson’s is a “1-Super Fine” size yarn and only 2-ply, although it’s fairly easy to pull out one strand. Currently I have two stock colors.
Some time ago, I experimented with dye on fly tying materials. I needed some Bright Yellow and Scarlet hackle that I didn’t have so I colored some pieces of white rooster hackle and hen hackle. While I was at it, I dyed some lengths of Patons Classic yarn in the color Winter White. Here are the yarns that resulted from my experiment.
If you’re familiar with my website you will know that I post quite a bit of information on fly tying. However, another part of my website is an online store where I have flies that have been tied and mounted in a shadow boxes available for purchase. I have at least 8 different themed collections of flies in a couple of different frame sizes.
I’ve been tying them for a little while now and have finally come to my senses and began updating the watermarks that appear on the background of the framed flies. Initially, I just had some fancy feathers in the backgrounds, and they looked okay, but my daughter demanded that I do something better.
Here are the first few watermarks I have updated. These are the 5×7’s. The one on the left is pretty obvious – two bass. The one on the right is an old picture of Ray Bergman tying a fly. If you can read the fine print, the flies in this collection are from his 1938 book titled Trout. It seemed fitting to me.
An English old-timer named Frederic Halford literally wrote the book on tying dry flies back in 1886 – yeah, published 136 years ago – in his book titled Floating Flies and How To Dress Them.
I often thumb through the electronic archive copy over at archive.org. Recently, however, I discovered that there have been some modern re-publications of his books and I now have a copy on order. Little did I know, the seller is shipping it from Australia. Talk about a slow boat from China …
A while ago I created a webpage based solely on the chapter in his book that depicts fly-dressing, Halford-style, in great detail. Recently, I added another section that shows a technique he developed called the Improved Method of Winging Upright Duns. Notice how the wings are tied on with the tips pointing rearward. You can read the rest over at my Fly Dressing page
What I really like about the technique is that it allows you to tie on the wings fairly close to the hook eye (necessary on small hooks) without the difficulty of trimming the wing feather stubs so close to the eye itself. It’s really an ingenious improvement to his original “ordinary” method.
One of the finest fly-dresser in the world today, Davey McPhail of Scotland, demonstrates this exact technique in one of his 700+ YouTube videos and it’s definitely worth a look. Saying that the guy is a master is actually an understatement. Here he spends the first few minutes talking about using hen hackle on a dry fly so you can skip to the 2:05 mark to get right to the fly-dressing.
Tying a Hen-Hackled Dry Fly (Greenwell’s Glory) with Davie McPhail
What a beautiful dry fly. Between the two of them, we fly-dressers can learn A LOT from their work. They are truly two of the best.
Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held in Mountain Home Arkansas. The next event will be held Mar 24th, 25th, and 26th, 2022. This is the 23rd year that the North Arkansas Fly Fishers (NAFF) have put on the Sowbug Roundup. The first Sowbug had 20 tyers and 150 attendees. The 2019 Sowbug had over 140 fly tiers and over 1000 attendees. The official name is actually the International Sowbug Roundup, a Celebration of Fly Fishing. You can read about Sowbug Roundup on their official webpage by clicking here.
Part of the Roundup is a fly tying contest. Initially, your entries were due a few weeks ago but because of the low number of entries (perhaps) the due date was extended to tomorrow, February 21st.
If you’ve read some of my recent blog posts, you would know that I get a kick out of fly tying contests. I decided to enter a fly pair in every single category. I really enjoyed going out and finding some new fly patterns that I had never tied before to complete the lineup. Here are my entries for this year’s contest.
2022 Sowbug Roundup Contest Entries
The first two pairs on the right side are a little scrunched together and the Tenkara flies are stacked head-to-head and almost covered by the Lefty’s Deceivers but I think you can make out all of the rest.
#
Category
Fly Pattern
Reason For Entering
1
Nymph
Polish Nymph
Won the “Nymph” division at the Branson Expo last summer.
2
Dry Fly
Western Green Drake
Won the “Dry Fly” division at the Branson Expo last summer.
3
Wet Fly
Fontinalis Fin
Won the “Wet Fly” division at the Branson Expo last summer.
4
Smallmouth Bass
Muddler Minnow
Tied once before with limited success.
5
Bass
Braided Blue Damselfly
Had never tied it before but looked amazing.
6
Warm Water
Big Eyed Sempermouse
Had never tied it before but looked amazing.
7
Salmon/Steelhead
Thunder and Lightning
Had never tied it before but looked impossible.
8
Saltwater
Lefty’s Deceiver
Had never tied any saltwater patterns before.
9
Tenkara
Takayama Sakasa Kebari
Didn’t even know what it was until I saw the Category list.
10
Dave Whitlock Pattern
Dave’s Hopper
Needed a “Dave” pattern and had actually tied this one before.
The Lineup (from R to L)
The winners of the contest will be announced on Friday March 25, 2022 at the Sowbug Roundup Shindig which will be held at St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church in Mountain Home AR.
Hats with the Classic Fly Tying logo are now available!
Recently, I found a source for some pretty nice looking baseball-style hats and my first shipment arrived today. They are currently available only in White but I should have some Gray ones in soon. They obviously have my logo on the front which has been printed with a digital heat transfer process (I guess).
I’m also looking at hats with embroidered logos and in other colors but that’s for another day. UPDATE: I just couldn’t wait so I went ahead and designed an embroidered logo! As soon as my shipment arrives (due by Feb 23rd) , the embroidered hats will be available in White and Black, and the printed hats will be available in Gray in addition to White, which is available right now.
You can shop for a hat in my online store by clicking here.
White Hat w/ Embroidered LogoWhite Hat w/ Heat-Transfer-Printed LogoHats w/ Classic Fly Tying Logo
From my last several posts you might conclude that I’ve been working on tying some different fly patterns for fly tying contests. If you did, you’d be right. And by ‘different’, I mean fly patterns that I’ve never tied before. Tying new flies is very rewarding but … time-consuming. What I have done is taken the time and ventured into a category of flies I don’t fish very often called Streamers. If you don’t know what a streamer is then here’s a nice definition I found on the web:
Streamers are big flies used to imitate small bait fish and other moving aquatic invertebrates and creatures. The majority of the time these active flies will be given additional movement by different retrieves; also known as strips.
Going clockwise from the upper left, here are the streamers I have learned how to tie and will be submitting to a few fly tying contests that are coming up:
Fly Pattern Name
Contest Category
Creature Imitated
Barr’s Meat Whistle
Traditional Streamer
Sculpin minnow
Dahlberg’s Diver
Traditional Streamer
Baitfish
Muddler Minnow
Traditional Streamer
Sculpin minnow
Big Eyed Sempermouse
Articulating Streamer
Swimming mouse
Streamer Fly Patterns
For the complete details of how these flies are tied, please scroll through the following stack of Fly Tying Cards or optionally download the PDF.
If you’re interested in tying some of these ”different” flies, hopefully these Fly Tying Cards will save you some time so you can get right to it.
Here’s another fly I’m going to enter into that fly tying contest I have mentioned. It is called Thunder and Lightning and it appears as fly #29 in the Salmon section of Mary Orvis Marbury’s 1892 book Favorite Flies and Their Histories. Thus I will enter it in the Salmon category of the contest. Apparently, it got its name in the early days because it was used when the water was rising after a storm.
thunder and lightning photo
I must say that this is one of the more difficult flies I’ve ever tied. There are many details involved and I even had to source some additional materials just to tie it (#4 Salmon Hooks, Golden Pheasant Crest, Orange Saddle Hackle, Blue Guinea Feathers, Artificial Jungle Cock Eyes). Oh well, it doesn’t look too bad for a first attempt – which is always the toughest by the way. Does anyone else struggle with tying a new fly for the first time?
Here is the fly tying card for the Thunder and Lightning:
Fly Tying Card – Thunder and Lightning
I created a new collection called the Old Favorite Salmon Flies Collection and inserted this card into it. You can find the new collection in PDF format in the Wet Flies section on my Fly Tying Cards page. However, it’s the only card in the collection (so far).
