Ten Different Schools Swap

[Old Hat]

Mine arrived safe. Very nicely done everyone. I really enjoyed looking at these carefully. Some truly wonderful work. As always, thanks Ray, you run a good swap.

[William Anderson]

Mine too. What a nice set. It's great to have such beautiful examples of this style of fly and some really beautiful work. Very nicely done.

Eric, thanks so much for the wax. It really is sticky and a nice tone. I'll have to give it a try soon. Thank you.

Ray, the biots are excellent. What is the dye on these? Such a nice color. Thank you for the biots and for hosting a really interesting swap.

w

[Ruard]

Ray my set arrived today and I am really glad with it. Thank you for being the swapmeister and thank you for all the goodies in the envelope and all the tiers thank you!!!


Greeting


Ruard

[letumgo]

Ruard - The little cards contain a set of wool yarn, from our friend Jeff. He had sent over a bag of different yarns to share with the folks who went to Yellowstone. I have not tied with the yarn yet, but it looks absolutely perfect for small wingless wet flies. Please play around with the yarn and show us what you make. Have fun.

Hopefully Rasevic (cicvara) receives his package soon. They were both mailed on the same day.

[cicvara]

The shipment arrived, the flies are beautiful, Ray, many thanks for everything.
Thank you all.
All the best.
Rasevic

[letumgo]

Rasevic - I was getting worried the shipment had gotten lost. I was hoping it would arrive on your birthday, but that didn't happen. Happy to hear you finally received the package. I would be very interested in seeing photos of any flies you tie with the wool from Jeff. Have fun!

I think Rasevic's was the last of the sets to arrive. The swap is now officially closed.

THANK YOU TO ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS!

[Smuggler]

Thanks for hosting, Ray.

[William Anderson]

Another exceptional example of what this section can be. I hope this thread inspires a string of threads (I couldn't have come up with that pun if I tried) regarding these flies.

w

[daringduffer]

I have been trying to catch up a bit on what has been posted on the forum. Since I have a tendency to go 'all in' when something catches my interest, I have been but a random guest since last September. The post I am quoting trigged a question; How do you fish, for example, spent spinners from the Baetis specie? Those that crawl sub-surface to lay their eggs and then may, or may not, return to the surface film. Do you use a Waterhen Bloa, or something similar? Or would you tie on one of Cassady's beautiful Clyde style wets? What does it look like, in the water column? This spent Baetis spinner, I mean.

I remember that Johan Klingberg asked for our experience regarding this stage on the other board, but I can't recall whether he received any replies or not. He was showing one of his patterns that can be seen on Hans W:s site.

http://www.flytierspage.com/jklingberg/ ... upwing.htm

dd

Howdy folks,

I've been pretty quiet of late, and I also ran somewhat late on the swap flies... fortunately, they don't have far to go!

I chose the Clyde style, since I had done some for a previous swap, and enjoy tying the style. As a plus, it seems to work quite well on our Western NY waters, especially when fished upstream.

Here is the fly:





And the recipe:

Clyde Style Dark Olive:

size 14
Pearsall's Primrose Silk
Olive hackle
Wing: Gambol's Quail secondary wing feather, folded.
Winter tying wax (which darkens thread somewhat better than the summer wax)

A few notes about the Clyde style Dark Olive:

I couldn't find out a lot about this from historical or research sources. I was hoping to find a recipe which I could work with, but I only found one in Reid's *Clyde Style Flies*, which I suspected was different than that in Skues. Here is the a variant of the Reid Dark Olive:



The major difference, of course, is the stripped peacock hurl body, which I liked -- but it didn't seem traditional enough. Another thing called for in Reid, but omitted in this fly, was 2-3 whisks of olive hackle as a tail. I chose to stick with tradition - in appearance, anyway.

A few more issues regarding Clyde-style flies that I haven't yet fully figured out:

1. The wing. I tie my Clyde-style flies with a folded wing. I've seen sources, traditional and modern, advise several types of wing, from matched slips to folded to rolled. I prefer folded: a slip is cut from a wing, evened out somewhat at the tips, and then folded carefully, in this case light side out. Reid recommended snipe of fieldfare, neither of which I have (I had never even heard of fieldfare) -- so I settled on Gambol's quail, which is perhaps similar and more importantly something that I do have. And although some Clyde-style flies have wings tilted at a 45 degree angle, most have them at 90 -- and the Skues picture made this choice easy.

One more note about the wing: when I was first doing research on Clyde-style flies, a traditional source -- one of the ones I downloaded from archive.org -- which I cannot now find suggested that a drop of varnish be applied to the tip of the wings for strength and to keep the slips together. I tried it, and liked it -- so I do that now on my Clyde-style flies. I do not, however, use varnish -- so I used Dave's Flexament.

2. The hackle. One of the things I can not ascertain with traditional Clyde-style flies is where the hackle should be in relation to the wing, especially when it is an upright, rather than slanted wing. I have seen Clyde-style flies, tied by reputable tiers of the genre with the wing behind, in front of, and surrounding the hackle. The books I have access to have similarity disparate advice. I prefer a turn or two in front and a turn behind, so that's how I tied these.

I have also developed my own way of tying these, which is somewhat different from any of the authorities. The first thing I do is affix the hackle, tied in flymph style by the butt, with the feather ahead of the eye (in the style of Dave Hughes and Hans Weilenmann). To keep things sparse, before tying it in, I strip one side of the hackle (which I imagine would have been anathema to old school Clyde-style tyers, who were known for their thrift). I then dress the body -- in this case, simple silk, but peacock hurl works great, as does black flashabu spun into a cord -- and then the wing. two wraps in front to affix the wing, and one or two behind to prop it up. I leave the thread behind the wing, and wrap the hackle back -- one or two in front of the wing, one behind, then tie off the hackle with one or two wraps, and -- in a familiar move for flymph tyers -- wrap the tying thread forward through the hackle to lock it in. I tie these to fish, and it helps to protect the hackle. A little more wax on the silk or tying thread, and then three whip finish wraps (if not tying with silk, I will sometimes not use wax, and will instead do a second three-wrap whip finish).

Here is one with corded flashabu (ideally, it would have a jackdaw wing -- but I have no jackdaw, so I used the dark opalescent tops of a turkey tail feather as a wing):



I would encourage folks to tie and fish these, so I tied a bunch of extras -- of different kinds -- in case you're like me, and want to keep the skues set complete.



(some of the bonus flies are on the left in the photo below)



Cheers!