The Artistic flies of Mark Romero

[willowhead]

Thank you very much Ray.......that my flies are little paintings is the whole idea.....or concept i should say. Little (and sometimes not so little ) sculptures or panitings is what i'm after.

[willowhead]

This pics suckx by comparison to how nice the fly actually came out.....but since Misako is nice enough to take the time to take the pics and get them to my email.....i can't ask her to try it again.....so, such as it is. This pic really does suck.....
Bout 4 days ago, i went dowstairs to putz around for a while.....and after i was down there for an hour or so.....i notcie that one shelf of one of the book cases had collapsed and books were all over the floor............jesus h.......so it takes almost two hours to clean the books and put everything back right.....no sooner than bout 15 minutes later.....YUP! it collapses again.....
Now we're bout 4 hours into this thing.....my back is killin' me, and i get this brainstorm to redo the entire library down there. (we have an upstairs library as well.....no fly fishing/tying books in that one ).....so, by the time i get the entire job done.....it's 6:30 a.m., and i'm BEAT. The next day, i get another brainstorm.....i now have taken a crap load of flies outta the Swallows Nest and put them in the Laundry Matt Fly Shop.....that's what we're callin' our little fly shop in the room outside the main tyin' room. So now the Swallows Nest has been reorganized to a pretty good degree, and the Laundry Matt has gone to another leve. i've been workin' on it for 4 days and nights.....alllllllllll night, every night. That round table in front of the couch in the Swallows Nest is cleared of flies and can be much better used as a table, and on and on and on. It's SOOO much nicer now. Oh, btw.....this fly is on a Partridge Black Barbless Ad-Swier Pike Hook 6/0 i think.....or 8/0.....i forget which i used.

[willowhead]

Pic will be up later tonight.....this fly is on one those hooks i found at the locl antique tackle shop. In fact i gotta get over there.....the guy says he has a few more for me. The bead was less than a buck....great little bead for the money. OOppss..... i just realized i forgot to take the fly out of the cork and put it in the hackle pliers clip, so you can see the hook point and barb.......oh wel.....you've seen the hook(s) before.....and Misa has already taken the pic.....next time.....she wants to go do casting paracitce.....later.
now it's "Later".....
DANG, this pic kinna suckx too..... i can see the head needs another coat for sure. The pic shoulda been taken backed off a bit more.....but anyway. The fly was fun.

[willowhead]

Artistic Steelhead Flymph.....just for the fun of it. Pic SUCKX! Light blue cock hackle thru the thorax and one or two turns past that.....and then a light blue Guinea hackle in front. The Guinea feather is the speckled type, not the spotted type, and shows up MUCH better in hand than this washed out pic shows. Eye is dyed dacron fly line backing. Beads on the trailer line are from Walmart. Trailer hook is a Gamakatsu Octapus. Tag is Kreinek braid. Dubbing for the thoax is the same as the butt.....i blended it from two different dubbings i had.....SLF (ight blue), and some other (dark blue), dubbing.

[hankaye]

Willowhead, Howdy;

What did ya use to tye the rear hook to the front hook

just askin'

hank

[willowhead]

Green wire doubled, with 6 little beads strung along it.

[willowhead]

Here's an old fly from a couple/few yrs. ago.....

[willowhead]

Another from 2/3 years ago.

[willowhead]

This went to a friend in Sweden.....along with bout 20 others. She took the pic.

[willowhead]

pic won't be up til tomorrow........later (Wed.), today..........well, now i can see Misa musta messed with it while takin' the pics (i was in town at the time), and some "things" got a bit wacked outta place.......but no biggie.....you get the idea. It needs quite a bit of primping now.....and i'll do that before it goes in a frame or whatever.............just keep scrollin'

a few years back i took a class with Paul Pitalis.........he was a world class Salmon fly tyer, who has since passed away. i took the class in Danbury, Conn. at the Fly Fishing University show.....Misa took it with me. The fly we did, was one of Paul's original designs, called the Roy G. Biv, and he always used it as THE fly he would teach students because it covered (very well), all the basic design areas in a full dressed Salmon fly. Btw, Roy G. Biv stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Those were the colors of silk used in the fly's body and "slips" in the wing. When we took the class, we did not finish the fly that day, but Paul gave us all the materials it would take to go home and finish the fly. i held onto all those materials until just a couple days ago, when i did "finally," finish the fly. It's been at least 5 years between times i'd say. When i got everything out, i immediately realized that i could not finish the fly as it was.....by just picking up where i had left off.....for a couple reasons. First, i had over crowded the eye and not left myself enough room to get eveything else in the recipe tyed in correctly, and two, i had built one side of the wing upside down and had to re-do it. So, i took the far side of the wing apart and rebuilt it, chopped the head, underwing, throat, ribbing, body, butt, tail and tag off.....and basically started from scratch with a rebuilt wing. i kept the color scheme the same, put a new tag, new and added to tail while also using the orginal GP Crest feather plus more, changed the butt from black to white, did a whole new body, dubbed instead of a floss body, new ribbing, re-used the underwing feathers, and mounted the wing. Then i put back the throat using the original hackle fibers, added the sides of Jungle Cock and cheeks of Blue Chatterer using the materials Paul had given us, and added the GP Crest topping and an extra topping (also provided by Paul), in an unusual way, using all materials that Paul had originally provided. And of course it's all on the hook that he had provided that first day, which is an antique Mustad 3899 7/0. i'm glad i finally got it together after all this time to complete something i started long ago. Paul was a very special person, and a friend. He taught us a lot in many ways. i was fortunate to be able to watch him tye at Somerset many times and also in the CFFC Museum at the annual Christmas party one time. That was the year he played Santa and had copies of his new book (Century's End) for sale. Naturally we got it so we could get him to sign it for us, and because i had been badly biten by the Salmon fly bug. i'll get the pic up asap. Wed.'s gonna be a very busy day, and we have tyers commin' over in the eve. The fly came out fairly well.....albeit kinna wacked as all my flies are. If you like to study all about hooks.....pick up a copy of Century's End.....the chapter on hooks is terrific. Bright Moments