FLYMPH FORUM

Several weeks ago, joaniebo (Bob Olach) sent me a collection of his beautiful soft hackle flies. I spent the morning carefully framing the collection, to display above my tying desk.
Thanks Bob.

Very nice!!

Ray

Those flies are for fishing not framing. Guess I'll have to send more IF I can remember what I sent! Cheers

Bob

Beautiful flies Bob, and great job on the frame Ray.

Very cool.

Dave

Bob,
Your patterns are delicious looking and Ray does a terrific job in bringing them together (framing)! I am in constant amazement at the pure talent that is within the membership of this forum! The cream certainly comes to the top!
Great job everyone in the beautiful contributions that are made throughout the seasons!
Bob, once again, great job in creating such good looking patterns! So well put together! Ray, so well displayed!
Dougsden

Ray.. while I'm cooped up and incapacitated a bit, I've thought about doing some framing of the swap flies I've received from the group. I've been looking for simple ways to mount the flies and yours seems pretty elegant and simple... is that just two holes with some mono to tie in each fly?

Ron,

The flies are mounted on a piece of heavy white watercolor paper (I like the crisp white background, and texture of the surface). I used a heavy needle (left over from the thanksgiving turkey) to poke holed in the paper (one pair of holed for each fly), then used a long strand of fine copper wire (ribbing) to essentially hold the flies in place.

After doing this, I would recommend planning out the holes better. Angle the holes so that the wired runs thru the eye of the hook at the proper angle to display the fly. In this case, I ran most of the holes horizontal (east-west), but wish I had run some of them at a diagonal (perpendicular to the bend of the hook eye).

If you have some fine silver stainless wire, that would work even better and blend in better with the background.

You can also do loops at the bend of the hook, to provide two points of contact, preventing the hooks from ever moving out of place in the future.

As you weave the wire thru the paper and flies, it can be taped down on the back side for added security.

Here is another way of mounting a single fly: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5385&p=100732#p100732

Good luck, and please share your finished set of framed flies.

Have Fun!

Many thanks for the nice compliments and, especially to Ray for mounting and posting the pic of this Old Bearded Bohemian's flies. As you can tell from the pic, I'm of the old school (?) type who beilieves in more heavily hackled and "fuzzy" bodied dressings.

Although I love to see others' flies with slim bodies and a single turn of hackle which make lovely looking flies, I think that my fishing methods (I like to use a fly or flies, for quite awhile and hesitate to frequently change flies) necessitate that I have to use bulkier dressings or else I have to change flies more often as the hackles disappear as I slap the water time after time.

Had several medical problems last season that made me miss the entire Cheese Country trout season (except for two rainy days in early May) but am hoping that I can do more fishing this year as soon as this virus thing settles down. Thanks again Ray for your post and pic and once I get off my butt, I'll send you a few more flies TO FISH !

Awesome! From both of you. An inspiring collection of flies and project.