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a person gets addicted.

This spring I bought a fly rod with the intention of teaching myself this deal. I fished it about 3 times before yesterday.

The creek we were on is HEAVILY fished in the spring and with the run about over, I had plenty of space. I am now to the point where I can get the fly where I want it, don't have much distance but it's wall to wall trees with a 25 feet wide "river" in the middle - ain't casting 90 feet for permit or something.

Finally hooked into a fish last night. Sight casting steelhead. Thing took off and put a bend into my 8 weight I couldn't reproduce with a snag if I tried. He come out of the water twice and I lost him but my partner figured 26 to 28 inches.

I ended up hooking 3 steelhead last night but never landed any. I have to catch more!

I couldn't imagine what a monster like the AK and western boys get. Most fun I've had with a fish on since I was 12.

Uh-Oh...now you've had it...you've been bitten by the steelhead AND the bug!
Good on ya!
Ingwe

steelhead are great fun to catch, to do so on the fly is an even greater accomplishment. your in for it now, better start shopping for a 2 handed or spey outfit as thats your next progression. your screwed now.... enjoy

Yep I know the feeling.

I caught a 24.5 inch rainbow on a 5 wt right out in front of my elk camp this past October.

It was 15 minutes before I saw the fish the first time.

I was screaming and yelling the whole time, with only my dog to hear me.

Fun stuff.

YES! Now you've done it. It's those long relaxing intervals interrupted by brief periods of terror that seems to be the turn on for me. For years I was a rabid trout fisherman expending days and days of vacation time. After hooking into my first summer steelhead, trout slipped into a spare time deal and steelhead get 14 to 21 days of angling time a year. I even get upset when some wimpy 18 inch trout hooks up and I have to sacrifice 30 seconds to get the flies cleared.

Big fish in tight water are difficult to land. Stick with it though, and some will eventually come to the beach. Do take the camera and post some photos. Come west sometime too and tie into a few of those yard long Clearwater or Babine fish. Ones landing percentage quickly goes in the toilet, but the kick is still there. Good luck, 1Minute

Yeah - went and dropped 170 at the fly shop today. Found out there is another river not too far away that sees chrome till mid June. Hot damn - I am off!

Life as you know it is now over! Enjoy the progression. Next comes fly tying lol

Yeah - can't believe what they charge for a fly vise. Crazy. I am up for fly tying. As much as I like my flyshop, I don't want to be spending so much on finished flys all the time. Big steelhead and smallmouth flys aren't cheap!

A dead pheasant in the round went for over $200 on ebay today... Just for fly tying feathers.

The really funny part is thinking tying will save money! First one's on me little boy!

Tying flys - can I make a simple bass popper for less than 5 bucks? Consider I can get enough pheasant feathers to line every bed in your average Holiday Inn for about free?

Pheasant is easy... the right pheasant? Not so much...

Simple bass poppers are no problem... I started tying on a cheap vise and now have a number of good ones... We have more boxes of materials than one can begin to imagine and there is always more "stuff" to get...

Tools, materials, books, hooks... it adds up fast.
art

Art, I'm just getting back into flyfishing/tying, and feel the same enthusiasm for the sport that Andrew does. That said, I've got a decent supply of materials, but I'm still VERY tempted to start pulling over for fresh road kills. Salvaging hair, fur and feathers while hunting also seems like an efficient marriage of sports. Is this an exercise is futility or a doable approach?

I know the fresh material would need to be de-bugged by freezing for a couple weeks and/or zip-locked with a shot of RAID. What works best for pseudo-tanning the skin? Salt, Borax? Is there a way to keep the skins flexible after they're dried out? Should I still keep the commercial materials separate from the salvaged? Should I quickly banish all these thoughts from my mind?

A few things you should do... Sage rat dubbing is really neat, spikey, buggy-looking stuff. SHoot 'em, skin 'em, wash in warm water with a small shot of clorox (a capful in the sink is plenty) and soap. Rinse well and let the hair air dry, fluff with a hair drier if it is matted. Pin out to dry with flesh side up and rub borax into the hide.

DO NOT USE SALT!!!! A tiny bit of salt in the hair may not seem like much, but it will rust hooks like you cannot imagine.

Tanning is only an advantage in zonker strips and buying tanned hides is much cheaper than any home tanning you want to do.

For birds, if legal, you just need to skin them, wash in the same soapy water and clorox, rinse well and dry. But you will have to do almost all the drying with a blow drier to fluff the feathers as they dry.

Tumbling skins of both birds and mammals in boarx and sawdust will clean, polish and fluff them beautifully.

Storing your materials in plastic with a small piece of flea collar in the bag will protect stuff from bugs... Skip the Raid and the freezer. The only thing the freezer does is allow you to wait on cleaning up the skin until later. It does not kill eggs.
art

Yes. Borax is the best of preservatives. I have skins that were degreased via any number of methods, and given a good rubbing of borax and then shaken in a ziploc with borax just to work some into the fur or feathers. They've been stored in unsealed cardboard boxes for 20+ years are are untouched by vermin.

Some of my commercial skins have been lightly attacked, and they are stored in a cedar chest with a dose of moth balls.

A second on some of the ground squirrel hides. They make some very buggy thoraxes when dubbed with the guard hairs still in the mix.

Cleaning tying material
By Wayne Luallen

Good description of much that goes on except there is at least one point I feel is strongly wrong... He suggests larger bird skins be air-dried on paper...

I have dried hundreds of ducks and a bunch of turkeys. They need washing and blow drying or tumbling in borax and sawdust. Air drying allows the feathers to matt and they do not fare well when used...
art

Eric Leiser's book, Fly-Tying Materials (their procurement, use, and protection) devotes some 35 pages on skinning, cleaning, and storing.


And don't discount conditioner. Think of what it does for your own curly locks (and own feathers, for the weirder among us).

/

Thanks for the help guys. I think that's enough information to get started with. I'll start with sage rats since they're "in season" and plentiful. Once I get the hang of it I'll watch for badger and rabbits, then birds this fall.

For fur that's going to be dubbed, or mixed and dubbed, is it still best to leave the fur on the skin, or can it be clean, dried, shaved and bagged? I'm not sure what would be gained other than time, but I'm curious since so many commercial dubbing materials come clumped in plastic bags.

In spite of the fact that this next question may completely knock this thread off it's track, here goes. Has anyone tried dubbing house cat? The shaving approach prompted the idea. I'm not publicly advocating the mistreatment of cats, but my town is over-populated with 'em, and they're constantly getting smacked by cars. I'm just thinking of all the various colors, lengths and textures of fur that cats have, and wondering if I might be living among a treasure trove. Sorry, just trying to think outside the box. In addition to possibly accessing some new colors and textures, I can't help but think how fun it would be to name the flies!

Re pre-bagging: most furs consist of underfur and guard hairs. Sometimes a fly wants only one or the other (or both). Separation is easily performed at the time of removal from the hide; not so if the fur has been jumbled together in a bag.
Production tiers and speed demons would find it useful to do the prep work ahead of time (in some cases making up different packages of underfur alone, guard hairs alone, and mixes). But it might not be as useful to the casual tier.

Back in the days when Men were Men, tiers made messes and spent hours dyeing and mixing their own dubbings. Industry saw an opportunity (once fly fishing became popular enough to represent $), and put out bags of preprocessed stuff. Like meat at the grocery store.

Kitty-cat has a long history in tying.
If you've money to burn, buy these volumes.

Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense to leave the hide intact. For the same reasons, I guess it makes the cat issue even more sensitive. Since cats don't come with coroner's reports, a tier might easily draw suspicion, even if he's honestly salvaging cats with a poor sense of timing.

Thanks for the lead on those books. I've spent a tidy sum on my library already but nothing like THAT! That's the kind of thing I'd have to stumble into at an estate sale.

Thanks all for the information. Logger here on the fire was most good enough to send me a bunch of old school fly tying things he had no use for - hackle clamps, a Thompson vise, some bodkins and the like. Plus more Mustad-Viking hooks than I can shake a stick at. All made in Norway. Super cool. (logger is a great guy)

Was wondering if someone had access to a chart - showing any changes in nomenclature from when these were made to today? Something I can compare for when I start stringing up flys?

The shaver idea works for animals still living. Collecting lion mane might be a bit dicey, though...

Are you referring to everything in general, or the Mustads?
If you'll PM me an email, I'll send you a PDF of some hook info from a course.
And the web should have a bazillion hook comparison charts. There are books on that, too.

"stringing up flys" - THAT sure isn't current nomenclature! Next you'll be calling it a "fishing pole"!

It's a fishing stick

"Build her a cake or something."

Pedro

I just want to fish well enough to catch a delicious bass.