Ten Different Schools Swap

[zen leecher]

Mine should mail out Friday morning.

[letumgo]

Carl - I received your set of flies this morning. You, sir, dress a mean fly! Classic...

[cassady]

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!

[tie2fish]

Lovely tie and great supporting info!

[Smuggler]

Very well done!

[letumgo]

Chris - The flies look beautiful. Very nice! Terrific information and commentary too.

I really enjoyed reading about the different choices you were faced with, and why you decided to to dress the flies as you did. I find that I am always making these sorts of decisions when I am tying. I make small substitutions, when I do not have the specified material. Slight proportion changes, to suit my tastes. There may be slight differences, but they are still rooted in the historical patterns we love so much. I remember going thru the same choices earlier this year for the historical swap, when I was trying to tye the "February Red" pattern. Fishing with these historical patterns adds another layer of enjoyment to the experience. I was happy to find that the trout on the Firehole River approved...

We need to get out fishing together one of these days. You can show me how it's done!

Swap Participants - The swap is wrapping up nicely. A few more days and all the sets should be in hand, ready for sorting and return shipment. I am hoping to drop them in the mail later in the week.

[redietz]

Great info!

[hankaye]

cassady, Howdy;

Chris, Thank for the break-down on the how's as well as the why's for tying
yours the way in which you did. Probably the best I've had the pleasure
to read left nothing to the imagination, which leads to misunderstanding.

hank

[letumgo]

Chris and Bill (zen) - Your sets of flies arrived this week, while I was away on travel. Beautiful flies guys!

William - Did you send in your set yet?

[letumgo]

All of the sets are now in. I will try to get the sets sorted and in the return mail this week. You guys are going to be VERY happy with these flies. Superb job by all of the participants.